All posts filed under: z554

Mexico: Persecution of Christians who refused to participate in Catholic services

Published by Dean Smith

Over the past few years, protestant Christians in certain areas of Mexico have been encountering persecution and censorship, particularly in the state of Hidalgo, located in Southern Mexico, the Christian Post reports. On April 26, 2024, 150 Christians, who are members of the Great Commission Baptist Church were driven from their homes after they refused to bend the knee to government officials and support Catholicism. This included forced attendance at Catholic festivals and as well donations to the Catholic Church. Previously, government officials had tried to pressure these Christians into participating by denying them access to public services. However, their continued refusal to comply resulted in the government taking more extreme actions. In his article for the Christian Post, Anugrah Kumar provides more details: In December 2022, a church member was hospitalized in critical condition after being tied to a tree and beaten by village leaders, according to a previous report by CSW. Other community members have faced arbitrary detention, beatings, denial of medical care, job dismissals, blocked access to burial sites, and land confiscation. …

Religion? What religion? What is our future?

Published by smcintos

The world around us changing, and some big changes are coming hard and fast. Can you remember the time before cell phones? Can you still find a phone booth near you? Do you remember the first Internet connection, over the phone, with no pictures? Children got in big trouble if they touched the phone, and broke an Internet connection when someone like Dad was trying to read some writing from the Internet, on a monochrome computer screen. If you touched the phone, you could break the Internet link, and loud arguments would start. Now, visit any coffee shop, and count how many customers are surfing the Internet from a cell phone that they took out of their pocket. And the pictures on the phone are in color. There was a time when we were seriously concerned about climate change. The big difference from today was the strong conviction that we were moving into “snowball earth” which was a new ice age. We were all going to freeze, and now we are going to fry with …

Vani Marshall shares the day her Hindu mom went to church

Published by Dean Smith

Vani Marshall grew up in a Hindu home in Malaysia. A few years back, she shared a story about how her Hindu mother ended up going to a church in Malaysia to encourage people to keep praying for their family members. She recalled the day she received a phone call from her cousin about how Vani’s mother had recently taken a bouquet of flowers to church. Knowing that her mother was a committed Hindu, Vani said that obviously, her cousin meant to say that her mother had taken the flowers to a Hindu Temple. The cousin said, no, her mother had taken it to a church. Vani, who still couldn’t believe what she had heard, called her mother to find out more. “Mom, Jenny said that you went to church with some flowers. Is that true? Was it a temple you went to?,” Vani asked her mother. Her mother replied that in fact she had gone to a church with the bouquet of flowers but didn’t want to tell Vani about it. Vani immediately asked …

Praying father and son on dark background

Do you still consider yourself an Evangelical Christian?

Published by Dean Smith

Mixing religion and politics has always been a dangerous recipe. Does who we vote for politically in any way define what it means to be a believer in Christ? In recent years, the mainstream media and others have smeared Evangelical Christians politically as nationalists or right-wing extremists. However, a 2023 survey suggests this is not how Bible-believing Christians defined themselves, the Christian Post reports. According to Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts’ (GMRIC) analysis of the survey of 1,000 Evangelical Christians, a very small minority believe that a person’s political position in any way defines their Evangelical beliefs. “Only 2% define ‘evangelical’ at least in part by politics, such as being politically conservative, supporting Donald Trump, or being Republican,” GMRIC’s report concluded. “So, while others, such as The Economist, commonly conflate this term with politics, evangelicals themselves rarely do,” the report continued. Initially, the term Evangelical was used to describe those who held a Biblical view of Christianity. According to the National Association of Evangelicals, this included four foundational beliefs: However, there has been a …