Catechism classes, religious schools, study groups, Sunday schools and religious publications were all declared illegal and banned. This caused many religious tracts to be circulated as illegal literature or samizdat. The Mexican government 's campaign against the Catholic Church after the Mexican Revolution culminated in the constitution which contained numerous articles which Catholics perceived as violating their civil rights: When the first embassy of the Soviet Union in any country was opened in Mexico, the Soviet ambassador remarked that "no other two countries show more similarities than the Soviet Union and Mexico".
When the Church publicly condemned the anticlerical measures which had not been strongly enforced, the atheist President Plutarco Calles sought to vigorously enforce the provisions and enacted additional anti-Catholic legislation known as the Calles Law. At this time, some in the United States government, considering Calles' regime Bolshevik , started to refer to Mexico as "Soviet Mexico". Weary of the persecution, in many parts of the country a popular rebellion called the Cristero War began so named because the rebels felt they were fighting for Christ himself.
The effects of the persecution on the Church were profound. Between and at least 40 priests were killed. This persecution drove them from New York and Ohio to Missouri , where they continued to suffer violent attacks. Lilburn Boggs declared that Mormons had made war on the state of Missouri, and "must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state" [] At least 10, were expelled from the State.
In the most violent of the altercations at this time, the Haun's mill Massacre , 17 were murdered by an anti-Mormon mob and 13 were wounded. The Mormons subsequently fled to Nauvoo , Illinois, where hostilities again escalated. Smith's brother, Hyrum, was also killed. After a succession crisis , most united under Brigham Young , who organized an evacuation from the United States after the federal government refused to protect them.
Queen Ranavalona I reigned — issued a royal edict prohibiting the practice of Christianity in Madagascar , expelled British missionaries from the island, and sought to stem the growth of conversion to Christianity within her realm. Many Malagasy citizens were put to death during this period as a consequence of their refusal to recant their Christian faith. The tangena ordeal was commonly administered to determine the guilt or innocence of an accused person for any crime, including the practice of Christianity, and involved ingestion of the poison contained within the nut of the tangena tree Cerbera odollam.
Survivors were deemed innocent, while those who perished were assumed guilty. Persecution of Christians intensified in , and ; in , deemed the worst of these years by British missionary to Madagascar W. Cummins , 1, people were fined, jailed or otherwise punished in relation to their Christian faith, including 18 executions. The Second Republic proclaimed in attempted to establish a regime with a separation between State and Church as it had happened in France When established, the Republic passed a number of laws that prompted progress in education, but also challenged the power of the Church, entrenched values and traditional public ceremonies.
A process of political polarisation had characterised the Spanish Second Republic, party divisions became increasingly embittered and questions of religious identity came to assume a major political significance. Different Church institutions presented the situation resulting from the proclamation of the 2nd Republic as an anti-Catholic, Masonic, Jewish, and Communist international conspiracy that heralded a clash between God and atheism, chaos and harmony, Good and Evil. Carlists , Africanistas, and Catholic theologians fostered an atmosphere of social and racial hatred in their speeches and writings.
Persecution of right-wingers and people associated with Catholic church before and at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War involved the murder of priests and other clergy, as well as thousands of lay people, by sections of nearly all the leftist groups, while a killing spree unleashed also across the Nationalist zone. The death toll of the clergy alone included 13 bishops, 4, diocesan priests and seminarians, 2, monks and friars and nuns, for a total of 6, clerical victims.
In addition to murders of clergy and the faithful, destruction of churches and desecration of sacred sites and objects were widespread. On the night of 19 July alone, some fifty churches were burned. Exceptions were Biscay and Gipuzkoa where the Christian Democratic Basque Nationalist Party , after some hesitation, supported the Republic while halting persecution in the areas held by the Basque Government. All Catholic churches in the Republican zone were closed. The desecration was not limited to Catholic churches, as synagogues and Protestant churches were also pillaged and closed, but some small Protestant churches were spared.
The rising Franco's regime would keep Protestant churches and synagogues closed, as he only permitted Catholic church. The terror has been called the "most extensive and violent persecution of Catholicism in Western History, in some way even more intense than that of the French Revolution.
Hitler and the Nazis had some support from Christian communities, mainly due to a common cause against the anti-religious Communists, as well as mutual Judeophobia and anti-Semitism. Once in power, the Nazis moved to consolidate their power over the German churches and bring them in line with Nazi ideals. Some historians say that Hitler had a general covert plan, which some say existed even before the Nazis' rise to power, to destroy Christianity within the Reich, which was to be accomplished through control and subversion of the churches and which would be completed after the war.
Thus, the Nazi government consolidated religious power, using its allies in order to consolidate Protestant churches into the Protestant Reich Church. The syncretist project of Positive Christianity was abandoned in Like other intelligentsia, Christian leaders were sometimes persecuted for their anti-Nazi political activities. Outside mainstream Christianity, Jehovah's Witnesses were targets of Nazi Persecution, for their refusal to swear allegiance to the Nazi government. In Nazi Germany in the s and early s, Jehovah's Witnesses refused to renounce their political neutrality and they were placed in concentration camps as a result.
The Nazi government gave detained Jehovah's Witnesses the option of release by signing a document indicating renouncement of their faith, submission to state authority, and support of the German military. Some lost their lives in the camps, but few renounced their faith". The Nazi Dissolution of the Bruderhof was also carried out by the Nazi government because the Bruderhof refused to pledge allegiance to Hitler.
In their property was confiscated and the group fled to England. Since Charles Taze Russell 's Bible Students group had formed after the American Civil War there was no formal position on military service till , when the body came out against military service. Jehovah's Witnesses are forbidden to engage in violence or join the military by their religion. Political and religious animosity against Jehovah's Witnesses has at times led to mob action and government oppression in various countries, including Cuba , the United States , Canada and Singapore.
The religion's doctrine of political neutrality has led to the imprisonment of members who refused conscription for example in Britain during World War II and afterwards during the period of compulsory national service. Religion in Albania was subordinated to the interests of Marxism during the rule of the country's communist party when all religions were suppressed. This was used to justify the communist stance of state atheism from to Many clergy and believers were tried and some of them were executed.
All foreign Roman Catholic priests, monks, and nuns were expelled in Religious communities or branches that had their headquarters outside the country, such as the Jesuit and Franciscan orders, were henceforth ordered to terminate their activities in Albania. Religious institutions were forbidden to have anything to do with the education of the young, because that had been made the exclusive province of the state. All religious communities were prohibited from owning real estate and they were also prohibited from operating philanthropic and welfare institutions and hospitals.
Although there were tactical variations in Enver Hoxha 's approach to each of the major denominations, his overarching objective was the eventual destruction of all organized religion in Albania. From to , the number of priests was drastically reduced and the number of Roman Catholic churches was decreased from to , and all Catholics were stigmatized as fascists. Every year, the Christian non-profit organization Open Doors publishes the World Watch List — a list of the top 50 countries where it is most dangerous to be a Christian.
- 3 editions of this work.
- You Make Loving Fun.
- The Lost Cities of Elvenshore (Elvenshore Series Book 2).
The World Watch List has the following countries as its top ten: Christians have faced increasing levels of persecution in the Muslim world. Muslim-majority nations in which Christian populations have suffered acute discrimination, persecution, repression, violence and in some cases death, mass murder or ethnic cleansing include; Iraq , Iran , Syria , Pakistan , Afghanistan , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , Somalia , Qatar , Kuwait , Indonesia , Malaysia , the Maldives.
Furthermore, any Muslim person—including any person born to a Muslim family or any person who became a Muslim at a given point in his or her life—who converts to Christianity or re-converts to it, is considered an apostate. Apostasy, the conscious abandonment of Islam by a Muslim in word or deed, including conversion to Christianity, is punishable as a crime under applications of the Sharia countries in the graph.
As a result, they are practising Christians, but they are still legally Muslims, and they can face the death penalty according to the Sharia. Meriam Ibrahim , a Sudanese woman, was sentenced to death for apostasy in , because the government of Sudan classified her as a Muslim, even though she was raised as a Christian. A report by the international catholic charity organisation Aid to the Church in Need said that the religiously motivated ethnic cleansing of Christians is so severe that they are set to disappear completely from parts of the Middle-East within a decade.
In Afghanistan , Abdul Rahman , a year-old citizen, was charged in with rejecting Islam, a crime punishable by death under Sharia law. He has since been released into exile in the West under intense pressure from Western governments. They were held for two months and were found dead on 21 May A Muslim gang allegedly looted and burned to the ground, a Pentecostal church in Tizi Ouzou on 9 January The pastor was quoted as saying that worshipers fled when local police supposedly left a group of local protestors unchecked.
On 3 June nine people were killed in an explosion at a Roman Catholic church in the Gopalganj District. Foreign missionaries are allowed in the country if they restrict their activities to social improvements and refrain from proselytizing. Particularly in Upper Egypt, the rise in extremist Islamist groups such as the Gama'at Islamiya during the s was accompanied by increased attacks on Copts and on Coptic Orthodox churches; these have since declined with the decline of those organizations, but still continue.
The police have been accused of siding with the attackers in some of these cases. There have been periodic acts of violence against Christians since, including attacks on Coptic Orthodox churches in Alexandria in April , [] and sectarian violence in Dahshur in July Although Christians are minority in Indonesia, Christianity is one of the six official religions of Indonesia and religious freedom is permitted.
But there are some religious tensions and persecutions in the country, and most of the tensions and persecutions are civil and not by state. In January [] tens of thousands died when Muslim gunmen terrorized Christians who had voted for independence in East Timor.
The presence of Muslims in these traditionally Christian regions is in part a result of the transmigrasi program of population re-distribution. Conflicts have often occurred because of the aims of radical Islamist organizations such as Jemaah Islamiah or Laskar Jihad to impose Sharia , [] [] with such groups attacking Christians and destroying over churches. Muslims allegedly set fire to several Christian houses, forcing the occupants to leave the buildings.
In December , a second church in Bogor , West Java was ordered to halt its activities by the local mayor. Another Catholic church had been built there in Local authorities refused to lift a ban on the activities of the church, despite an order from the Supreme Court of Indonesia. While the state has ordered religious toleration, it has not enforced these orders. In Aceh Province , the only province in Indonesia with autonomous Islamic Shari'a Law, 20 churches in Singkil Regency face threat of demolition due to gubernatorial decree requires the approval of worshippers, while the ministrial decree also requires the approval of 60 local residents of different faiths.
On 30 April , all the 20 churches 17 Protestant churches, 2 Catholic churches and one place of worship belonging to followers of a local nondenominational faith have been closed down by order, from the Acting Regent which also ordered members of the congregations to tear down the churches by themselves. Most of the churches slated for demolition were built in the s and s. The regency has 2 churches open, both built after Though Iran recognizes Assyrian and Armenian Christians as ethnic and religious minorities along with Jews and Zoroastrians and they have representatives in the Parliament , they are nonetheless forced to adhere to Iran's strict interpretation of Islamic law.
After the Revolution , Muslim converts to Christianity typically to Protestant Christianity have been arrested and sometimes executed. In June the Iranian Supreme Court overruled his death sentence on condition that he recant, which he refused to do. By the end of the 13th century there were twelve Nestorian dioceses in a strip from Peking to Samarkand. When the 14th-century Muslim warlord of Turco-Mongol descent, Timur Tamerlane , conquered Persia , Mesopotamia and Syria , the civilian population was decimated.
Timur had 70, Assyrian Christians beheaded in Tikrit , and 90, more in Baghdad. The Hamidian Massacres and Assyrian Genocide — were followed by a further series of killings in , with the Simele Massacre which accounted for the slaughter of thousands of Assyrian Christians. In , the last Iraqi census counted 1.
However persecution by Saddam Hussein continued against the Christians on an ethnic , cultural and racial level, as the vast majority are Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic -speaking Ethnic Assyrians aka Chaldo-Assyrians. Many Assyrians and Armenians were ethnically cleansed from their towns and villages under the al Anfal Campaign in , despite this campaign being aimed primarily at Kurds. In , five churches were destroyed by bombing, and Christians were targeted by kidnappers and Islamic extremists, leading to tens of thousands of Christians fleeing to Assyrian regions in the north or leaving the country altogether.
In , the number of Assyrian Christians dropped to between , and ,, of whom , lived in Baghdad. As a small minority, who until recently were without a militia of their own, Assyrian Christians were persecuted by both Shi'a and Sunni Muslim militias, Kurdish Nationalists, and also by criminal gangs. In , Chaldean Catholic Church priest Fr.
Six months later, the body of Paulos Faraj Rahho , archbishop of Mosul , was found buried near Mosul. He was kidnapped on 29 February when his bodyguards and driver were killed. The attack left at least 58 people dead, after more than had been taken hostage.
The al-Qaeda -linked Sunni insurgent group. In , Assyrian Christians were departing for their ancestral heartlands in the Nineveh plains , around Mosul , Erbil and Kirkuk. Assyrian militias were established to protect villages and towns. Many of them took refuge in nearby Kurdish -controlled regions of Iraq.
On 18 July, ISIS militants seemed to have changed their minds and announced that all Christians would need to leave or be killed. Most of those who left had their valuable possessions stolen by the Islamic terrorists. During an attack on the Assyrian Christian town of Qaraqosh, a 5-year-old boy, who's the son of a founding member of St. In Malaysia , although Islam is the official religion, Christianity is tolerated under Article 3 and Article 11 of the Malaysian constitution. But at some point, the spread of Christianity is a particular sore point for the Muslim majority, the Malaysian government has also persecuted Christian groups who were perceived to be attempting to proselytize Muslim audiences.
Pusat Pemulihan Akidah where they are counseled to remain faithful to Islam and some states have provisions for penalties under their respective Shariah legislations for apostasy from Islam. It has been the practice of the church in Malaysia to not actively proselytize to the Muslim community. Christian literature is required by law to carry a caption "for non-Muslims only". Article 11 4 of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia allows the states to prohibit the propagation of other religions to Muslims, and most with the exception of Penang, Sabah, Sarawak and the Federal Territories have done so.
There is no well-researched agreement on the actual number of Malaysian Muslim converts to Christianity in Malaysia. In effect, they are practicing Christians, but legally Muslims. In the 11 Northern states of Nigeria that have introduced the Islamic system of law, the Sharia , sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians have resulted in many deaths, and some churches have been burned. More than 30, Christians were displaced from their homes in Kano , the largest city in northern Nigeria. The Boko Haram Islamist group has bombed churches and killed numerous Christians who they regard as kafirs infidels.
They will openly tell you that the relief is not for Christians. In Pakistan , 1.
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Pakistani law mandates that " blasphemies " of the Qur'an are to be met with punishment. At least a dozen Christians have been given death sentences, [] [] and half a dozen murdered after being accused of violating blasphemy laws. In , 80 Christians were behind bars due to these laws. Ayub Masih, a Christian, was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death in He was accused by a neighbor of stating that he supported British writer Salman Rushdie , author of The Satanic Verses. Lower appeals courts upheld the conviction. However, before the Pakistan Supreme Court , his lawyer was able to prove that the accuser had used the conviction to force Masih's family off their land and then acquired control of the property.
Masih has been released. In October , gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on a Protestant congregation in the Punjab , killing 18 people. The identities of the gunmen are unknown. Officials think it might be a banned Islamic group. In March , five people were killed in an attack on a church in Islamabad , including an American schoolgirl and her mother.
In August , masked gunmen stormed a Christian missionary school for foreigners in Islamabad; six people were killed and three injured. None of those killed were children of foreign missionaries. In August , grenades were thrown at a church in the grounds of a Christian hospital in north-west Pakistan, near Islamabad, killing three nurses.
On 25 September , two terrorists entered the "Peace and Justice Institute", Karachi , where they separated Muslims from the Christians, and then murdered seven Christians by shooting them in the head. Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil said the victims had their hands tied and their mouths had been covered with tape. In December , three young girls were killed when a hand grenade was thrown into a church near Lahore on Christmas Day. The attack was over allegations of violation of blasphemy laws by a Pakistani Christian named Yousaf Masih.
The attacks were widely condemned by some political parties in Pakistan. On 5 June , a Pakistani Christian, Nasir Ashraf, was assaulted for the "sin" of using public drinking water facilities near Lahore. One year later, in August , a Christian missionary couple, Rev. Arif and Kathleen Khan, were gunned down by Muslim terrorists in Islamabad. Pakistani police believed that the murders was committed by a member of Khan's parish over alleged sexual harassment by Khan.
This assertion is widely doubted by Khan's family as well as by Pakistani Christians. In August , six Christians, including four women and a child, were burnt alive by Muslim militants and a church set ablaze in Gojra , Pakistan when violence broke out after alleged desecration of a Qur'an in a wedding ceremony by Christians. On 8 November , a Christian woman from Punjab Province , Asia Noreen Bibi , was sentenced to death by hanging for violating Pakistan's blasphemy law. The accusation stemmed from a incident in which Bibi became involved in a religious argument after offering water to thirsty Muslim farm workers.
The workers later claimed that she had blasphemed the Muhammed. As of 8 April , Bibi is in solitary confinement. Her family has fled. No one in Pakistan convicted of blasphemy has ever been executed. On 2 March , the only Christian minister in the Pakistan government was shot dead. Shahbaz Bhatti , Minister for Minorities , was in his car along with his niece. Around 50 bullets struck the car. Over 10 bullets hit Bhatti. Before his death, he had publicly stated that he was not afraid of the Taliban's threats and was willing to die for his faith and beliefs.
He was targeted for opposing the anti-free speech "blasphemy" law , which punishes insulting Islam or its Prophet. On 27 March , a suicide bomber from a Pakistani Taliban faction killed at least 60 people and injured others in an attack at Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in Lahore , Pakistan , and the group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it intentionally targeted Christians celebrating Easter Sunday. Saudi Arabia is an Islamic state that practices Wahhabism and restricts all other religions, including the possession of religious items such as the Bible, crucifixes, and Stars of David.
Muslims are forbidden to convert to another religion. If one does so and does not recant, they can be executed. During government protests, some crowds turned their violence against Christian churches. Some of the infrastructure was destroyed. Christians in Somalia face persecution associated with the ongoing civil war in that country. In September militants sworn to eradicate Christianity from Somalia beheaded two Christian converts. A third Christian convert was beheaded in Mogadishu in early During the Second Sudanese Civil War people were taken into slavery; estimates of abductions range from 14, to , Abduction of Dinka women and children was common.
In there were mass arrests and torture of local priests. These were subsequently wiped out by Janjaweed militias.
Syria has been home to Christianity from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE onwards. The majority of Syrian Christians are once Western Aramaic speaking but now largely Arabic speaking Arameans-Syriacs , with smaller minorities of Eastern Aramaic speaking Assyrians and Armenians also extant.
While religious persecution has been relatively low level compared to other Middle Eastern nations, many of the Christians have been pressured into identifying as Arab Christians, with the Assyrian and Armenian groups retaining their native languages. On 17 October the Muslim majority began rioting against the Uniate Catholics - a minority that lived in the communities of Judayda, in the city of Aleppo.
Some 13 nuns and three workers from a Greek Orthodox monastery in the Christian village of Maaloula were also kidnapped. In FY , when the US dramatically increased the number of refugees admitted from Syria, the US let in 12, refugees from the country. In recent years, several incidents of violence and discrimination against the Christian minority have been reported. These included the bombing of a Christian church in Dushanbe in , [] killing 10 and wounding many more.
Since the Tunisian revolution of , there has been religious violence consisting of Muslim attacks on Christians in Tunisia. The Christian population of Turkey was substantially reduced as a result of the Greek genocide , Armenian genocide and Assyrian genocide preceding and during World War I. Additionally, the vast majority of Greek Orthodox Christians were forced to leave the territory of Turkey in a population swap following the Treaty of Lausanne Included among that transfer were many Turkish speaking Christians, who were nonetheless sent to Greece.
After years of persecution e. However, those who suffered most severely were non-Muslims like the Jews , Greeks , Armenians , Assyrians and Levantines Catholic , who controlled a large portion of the economy. The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is still in a difficult position. Turkey requires by law that the Ecumenical Patriarch must be an ethnic Greek , holding Turkish citizenship by birth, although most of the Greek minority has been expelled. The state's expropriation of church property and the closing of the Orthodox Theological School of Halki are also difficulties faced by the Church of Constantinople.
Early controversies and the growth of Christianity
Despite appeals from the United States, the European Union and various governmental and non-governmental organizations, the School remains closed since In November , a 17th-century chapel of Our Lord's Transfiguration at the Halki seminary was almost totally demolished by the Turkish forestry authority. The difficulties currently experienced by the Assyrians and Armenian Orthodox minority in Turkey are a result of an anti-Armenian and anti-Christian attitude by ultra-nationalist groups such as the Grey Wolves. According to Minority Rights Group , while the government recognizes Armenians and Assyrians as minorities but as used in Turkey, this term denotes second-class status.
The patriarchal seat was then transferred to Homs temporarily. He called the Apostolic Vicar of Southern Arabia to pray for all the oppressed and tortured, expelled from their homes, and killed unjustly. One Indian priest named Tom Ozhonaniel was kidnapped. Bhutan is a conservative Buddhist country. Article 7 of the constitution guarantees religious freedom, but also forbids conversion "by means of coercion or inducement".
In addition, " Marxist-Leninist atheism has been widely publicized". Churches which are not controlled by the government are shut down, and their members are imprisoned. Gong Shengliang , head of the South China Church, was sentenced to death in Although his sentence was commuted to a jail sentence, Amnesty International reports that he has been tortured. In January , a prominent Christian church leader Rev Gu Yuese who criticised the mass removal of church crucifixes by the government was arrested for "embezzling funds".
Chinese authorities have taken down hundreds of crosses in Zhejiang Province known as "China's bible belt". Gu led China's largest authorised church with capacity of 5, in Hangzhou , capital of Zhejiang. Muslims in India who convert to Christianity have been subjected to harassment, intimidation, and attacks by Muslims.
In Jammu and Kashmir , a Christian convert and missionary, Bashir Tantray, was killed, allegedly by Islamic militants in Alavi, a convert from Islam, [] thereby raised the ire of his former Muslim community and received many death threats. Joseph due to allegation of blasphemy of prophet. The organisations involved in persecution of Christians have stated that the violence is an expression of "spontaneous anger" of "vanvasis" against " forcible conversion " activities undertaken by missionaries.
These claims have been disputed by Christians [] a belief described as mythical [] and propaganda by Sangh Parivar; [] the opposing organisations objects in any case to all conversions as a "threat to national unity". Hinduism as a religion could well be one of the most accommodating in the world. Rather than confront and destroy, it has a tendency to welcome and assimilate. Gandhi opposed the Christian missionaries calling them as the remnants of colonial Western culture.
In its controversial annual human rights reports for , the United States Department of State criticised India for "increasing societal violence against Christians. The Westgate shopping mall attack occurred in September , with gunman killing 67 people and wounding more than others. The attackers asked Muslim civilians to recite the Shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith, then proceeded to shoot and kill the rest. The Mpeketoni attacks by Al-Shabaab killed 60 Christians. They told the Muslims and Christians passengers to split up, that they were going to kill the Christian passengers.
However, the Muslim passengers refused it, shielding the Christians. At least two people were killed in the attack and three others were injured. On 19 January , Salah Farah, a Muslim teacher who was among the passengers, died of his injuries in hospital. North Korea is an atheist state where public religion is discouraged. North Korea leads the list of 50 countries in which Christians are persecuted the most at current time according to a watchlist by Open Doors.
North Korea has earned the top spot 12 years in a row. Christianity is a minority religion in Sri Lanka, many Christians receive discrimination and violence by Islamic nationals, and Buddhist nationalists. The establishment of French Indochina once led to a high Christian population. Regime changes throughout the 19th and 20th centuries led to increased persecutions of minority religious groups. Killings, torture or imprisonment and forced starvation of local groups are common in parts of Vietnam and Laos , especially in more recent years.
Christians from the Middle East living in Copenhagen have been attacked and threatened by Muslim migrant gangs. The Danish police force in Copenhagen fears that the problem is more prevalent than reports of the crime to police suggest since victims fear further reprisals for contacting authorities. During the European migrant crisis in , 12 Christian migrants from Nigeria and Ghana , among migrants travelling in an inflatable boat from Libya , were drowned after being pushed overboard by 15 other passengers from the Ivory Coast , Senegal , Mali and Guinea Bissau.
The motive was that the victims "professed the Christian faith while the aggressors were Muslim. The 15 suspects were arrested in Palermo , Sicily , and charged with "multiple aggravated murders motivated by religious hate" by the Italian authorities. A quarter of the cases concerned attacks on churches and Christian symbols. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It has been suggested that Christian persecution complex be merged into this article.
Discuss Proposed since November This article is about acts that were historically committed against Christians because of their faith. For acts in the modern era, see Persecution of Christians in the modern era. Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Persecution of Christians in the New Testament. Great Fire of Rome. Sasanian conquest and occupation of Jerusalem. Captivity of Mangalorean Catholics at Seringapatam. Persecution of Christians in the modern era. Persecution of Christians in Mexico. Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem. European wars of religion. Miguel Obando y Bravo. Religious violence in Nigeria. Anti-Christian sentiment in the Middle East and Conversion of non-Muslim places of worship into mosques. Sidhom Bishay Master Malati. Mark Gabriel Zakaria Botros. Christianity in Iraq and Assyrian exodus from Iraq. Christianity in Malaysia and Freedom of religion in Malaysia. Christianity in Nigeria and Boko Haram insurgency. Persecution of Christians in Sudan. Meriam Ibrahim and Freedom of religion in Sudan. Christianity in Turkey and Bible publishing firm murders in Malatya, Turkey.
Freedom of religion in China and Christianity in China. Anti-Christian violence in India. Christianity portal Human Rights portal Discrimination portal. Jewish Responses to Early Christians: History and Polemics, C. The Changing Face of Antisemitism: The reading Christianos , Christians, is therefore doubtful. Book 6, Chapter Retrieved 25 April Reading the Early Church Fathers: From the Didache to Nicaea. Bowman; Peter Garnsey; Averil Cameron.
The Crisis of Empire, A. The Evolution of Psyche and Society. The Emotional Life of Nations. Both Christians and Jews "engaged in a contest and reflection about the new-fangled practice of martyrdom," even unto suicide Droge and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Ide, Martyrdom of Women: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Stanford University Press, , p. Misquoted as Groge and Tabor Terrorism and the Politics of Response. Oxon and New York: From One Identity to Another: Making Sense of Bible Prophecy.
The Rise of Christianity. A Brief History of Humankind. The Cambridge Ancient History: The Legend of Mar Qardagh: University of California Press. The Cambridge History of Iran: Brock, Fire from Heaven: Studies in Syriac Theology and Liturgy , Ashgate, , Potts, The Archaeology of Elam: History of the Jews in Babylonia.
A Historical Encyclopedia [2 volumes]: The History of Iran. A State of Mixture: Retrieved 30 March The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam. The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos. Historical commentary by James Howard-Johnston. Assistance from Tim Greenwood. Retrieved 17 January Retrieved 11 March History of the Byzantine Jews: A Microcosmos in the Thousand Year Empire.
University Press of America. Retrieved 7 January Retrieved 8 January Jews, Pagans and Christians in the Galilee: Hellenistic to Byzantine Periods. Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book. The Jewish Publication Society. Retrieved 24 March Part One With Raymond Ibrahim". Archived from the original on 2 April The fire, the star and the cross: Rethinking the Debate p. A Comprehensive Introduction p. Retrieved 29 June The New York Times. A traveller's history of China.
Retrieved 28 June The modern history of China. China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost. Burdened Past, Hopeful Future. Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: A Political History of Republican Sinkiang Retrieved 14 October Daijiworld Media Pvt Ltd Mangalore. Archived from the original on 29 January Retrieved 29 February Archived from the original on 22 June Retrieved 30 July Silva of Gangolim Letter of a Mr. Silva to his sister, a copy of which was given by an advocate, M.
Shanbhag, to the author, Severino da Silva, and reproduced as Appendix No. Bernard, Kerala History , pp. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. Eastern Christianity, Cambridge University Press, p. A History of the Modern Middle East 2nd ed. Hovannisian and Simon Payaslian. Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces, 7. Mazda Publishers, , pp. Retrieved 28 August Historical Dictionary of Armenia. The Armenian massacre that inspired Hitler". September , New Rochelle, NY: Armenia, the Survival of a Nation. The Great Famine of —18". Retrieved 24 January Can Religious Pluralism Survive?
Archived from the original on 16 July Suppression, Survival, and Revival, by Christopher Marsh, page Continuum International Publishing Group, Religion and the Cultural Crisis in India and the West. Retrieved 14 July Forced Conversion under Atheistic Regimes: It might be added that the most modern example of forced "conversions" came not from any theocratic state, but from a professedly atheist government — that of the Soviet Union under the Communists. Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia: Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol.
Studies in Representation of the Past The Soviet League of the Militant Godless. Created in , the League of the Militant Godless was the nominally independent organization established by the Communist Party to promote atheism. Vseslavianskoe izdatel'stvo, pp , and London: Islam, communism, and ideological competition.
Religion and the State in Russia and China: Suppression, Survival, and Revival. Sklyansky , President of the Revolutionary War Soviet: There will be an award of , rubles for each one hanged. The A to Z of Moldova. Official doctrine of the Soviet regime, also called "scientific atheism.
National Identity in Russian Culture. Churches, when not destroyed, might find themselves converted into museums of atheism. The Destruction of Memory: You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen [College, Oxford], night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. After his conversion to theism in , Lewis converted to Christianity in , following a long discussion and late-night walk with his close friends Tolkien and Hugo Dyson.
He records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. Lewis was a committed Anglican who upheld a largely orthodox Anglican theology, though in his apologetic writings, he made an effort to avoid espousing any one denomination. In his later writings, some believe that he proposed ideas such as purification of venial sins after death in purgatory The Great Divorce and Letters to Malcolm and mortal sin The Screwtape Letters , which are generally considered to be Roman Catholic teachings, although they are also widely held in Anglicanism particularly in high church Anglo-Catholic circles.
Regardless, Lewis considered himself an entirely orthodox Anglican to the end of his life, reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receive communion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns. He rejected the recruiting office's suggestion of writing columns for the Ministry of Information in the press, as he did not want to "write lies" [49] to deceive the enemy.
He later served in the local Home Guard in Oxford. From to , Lewis spoke on religious programmes broadcast by the BBC from London while the city was under periodic air raids. The broadcasts were anthologised in Mere Christianity. From , he was occupied at his summer holiday weekends visiting R. It was also during the same wartime period that Lewis was invited to become first President of the Oxford Socratic Club in January , [53] a position that he enthusiastically held until he resigned on appointment to Cambridge University in In , Lewis accepted the newly founded chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge , where he finished his career.
He maintained a strong attachment to the city of Oxford , keeping a home there and returning on weekends until his death in In later life, Lewis corresponded with Joy Davidman Gresham , an American writer of Jewish background, a former Communist, and a convert from atheism to Christianity. Gresham , and came to England with her two sons, David and Douglas. Joy was the only woman whom he had met Since she was divorced, this was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, but a friend, the Rev.
Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at her bed in the Churchill Hospital on 21 March Gresham's cancer soon went into remission, and the couple lived together as a family with Warren Lewis until , when recurrence of the cancer caused her death on 13 July. Earlier that year, the couple took a brief holiday in Greece and the Aegean ; Lewis was fond of walking but not of travel, and this marked his only crossing of the English Channel after Lewis's book A Grief Observed describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that he originally released it under the pseudonym N.
Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. Ironically, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief. After Lewis's death, his authorship was made public by Faber's, with the permission of the executors. Lewis continued to raise Gresham's two sons after her death. Douglas Gresham is a Christian like Lewis and his mother, [64] while David Gresham turned to his mother's ancestral faith, becoming Orthodox Jewish in his beliefs.
His mother's writings had featured the Jews in an unsympathetic manner, particularly one " shohet " ritual slaughterer. David informed Lewis that he was going to become a ritual slaughterer to present this type of Jewish religious functionary to the world in a more favourable light. In a interview, Douglas Gresham acknowledged that he and his brother were not close, but he did say that they are in email contact. In early June , Lewis began suffering from nephritis , which resulted in blood poisoning.
His illness caused him to miss the autumn term at Cambridge, though his health gradually began improving in and he returned that April. His health continued to improve and, according to his friend George Sayer, Lewis was fully himself by early On 15 July that year, he fell ill and was admitted to the hospital; he suffered a heart attack at 5: After he was discharged from the hospital, Lewis returned to the Kilns, though he was too ill to return to work. As a result, he resigned from his post at Cambridge in August.
Lewis's condition continued to decline, and he was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure in mid-November. He collapsed in his bedroom at 5: Media coverage of Lewis's death was almost completely overshadowed by news of the assassination of US President John F.
Kennedy , which occurred on the same day approximately 55 minutes following Lewis's collapse , as did the death of English writer Aldous Huxley , author of Brave New World. Lewis began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford University , where he won a triple first, the highest honours in three areas of study. Much of his scholarly work concentrated on the later Middle Ages , especially its use of allegory.
His The Allegory of Love helped reinvigorate the serious study of late medieval narratives such as the Roman de la Rose. Lewis was commissioned to write the volume English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama for the Oxford History of English Literature, as well as several prefaces to works of literature and poetry, such as Layamon's Brut.
His book "A Preface to Paradise Lost " is still one of the most valuable criticisms of that work. His last academic work , The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature , is a summary of the medieval world view, a reference to the "discarded image" of the cosmos. Lewis was a prolific writer, and his circle of literary friends became an informal discussion society known as the " Inklings ", including J. Glyer points to December as the Inklings' beginning date. Curiously, the religious and conservative Betjeman detested Lewis, whereas the anti-establishment Tynan retained a lifelong admiration for him.
Of Tolkien, Lewis writes in Surprised by Joy:. When I began teaching for the English Faculty, I made two other friends, both Christians these queer people seemed now to pop up on every side who were later to give me much help in getting over the last stile.
Praeger Series on the Ancient World by Kirk Ormand
They were HVV Dyson Friendship with the latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been implicitly warned never to trust a Papist, and at my first coming into the English Faculty explicitly never to trust a philologist. In addition to his scholarly work, Lewis wrote several popular novels, including the science fiction Space Trilogy for adults and the Narnia fantasies for children.
Most deal implicitly with Christian themes such as sin, humanity's fall from grace , and redemption. The book was poorly received by critics at the time, [23] although David Martyn Lloyd-Jones , one of Lewis's contemporaries at Oxford, gave him much-valued encouragement. Asked by Lloyd-Jones when he would write another book, Lewis replied, "When I understand the meaning of prayer. The Space Trilogy also called the Cosmic Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy dealt with what Lewis saw as the dehumanising trends in contemporary science fiction.
The first book, Out of the Silent Planet , was apparently written following a conversation with his friend J. Tolkien about these trends. Lewis agreed to write a "space travel" story and Tolkien a "time travel" one, but Tolkien never completed " The Lost Road ", linking his Middle-earth to the modern world. Lewis's main character Elwin Ransom is based in part on Tolkien, a fact to which Tolkien alludes in his letters. The second novel, Perelandra , depicts a new Garden of Eden on the planet Venus, a new Adam and Eve , and a new "serpent figure" to tempt Eve.
The story can be seen as an account of what might have happened if the terrestrial Adam had defeated the serpent and avoided the Fall of Man , with Ransom intervening in the novel to "ransom" the new Adam and Eve from the deceptions of the enemy. The third novel, That Hideous Strength , develops the theme of nihilistic science threatening traditional human values, embodied in Arthurian legend.
Many ideas in the trilogy, particularly opposition to dehumanization as portrayed in the third book, are presented more formally in The Abolition of Man , based on a series of lectures by Lewis at Durham University in Lewis stayed in Durham, where he says he was overwhelmed by the magnificence of the cathedral. That Hideous Strength is in fact set in the environs of "Edgestow" university, a small English university like Durham, though Lewis disclaims any other resemblance between the two.
Walter Hooper , Lewis's literary executor, discovered a fragment of another science-fiction novel apparently written by Lewis called The Dark Tower. Ransom appears in the story but it is not clear whether the book was intended as part of the same series of novels. The manuscript was eventually published in , though Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog doubts its authenticity.
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children and is considered a classic of children's literature. Written between and and illustrated by Pauline Baynes , the series is Lewis's most popular work, having sold over million copies in 41 languages Kelly Guthmann It has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage and cinema.
The books contain Christian ideas intended to be easily accessible to young readers. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology , as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales. Lewis wrote several works on Heaven and Hell. One of these, The Great Divorce , is a short novella in which a few residents of Hell take a bus ride to Heaven, where they are met by people who dwell there. The proposition is that they can stay if they choose, in which case they can call the place where they had come from " Purgatory ", instead of "Hell", but many find it not to their taste.
This work deliberately echoes two other more famous works with a similar theme: Another short work, The Screwtape Letters , consists of letters of advice from senior demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood on the best ways to tempt a particular human and secure his damnation.
Lewis's last novel was Till We Have Faces , which he thought of as his most mature and masterly work of fiction but which was never a popular success. It is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the unusual perspective of Psyche's sister. It is deeply concerned with religious ideas, but the setting is entirely pagan , and the connections with specific Christian beliefs are left implicit. Before Lewis's conversion to Christianity, he published two books: Spirits in Bondage , a collection of poems, and Dymer , a single narrative poem.
Both were published under the pen name Clive Hamilton. He also wrote The Four Loves , which rhetorically explains four categories of love: In , a partial draft was discovered of Language and Human Nature , which Lewis had begun co-writing with J. Tolkien, but which was never completed. Lewis is also regarded by many as one of the most influential Christian apologists of his time, in addition to his career as an English professor and an author of fiction.
Mere Christianity was voted best book of the twentieth century by Christianity Today in Lewis was very interested in presenting a reasonable case for Christianity. Mere Christianity , The Problem of Pain , and Miracles were all concerned, to one degree or another, with refuting popular objections to Christianity, such as the question, "How could a good God allow pain to exist in the world?
According to George Sayer, losing a debate with Elizabeth Anscombe , also a Christian, led Lewis to re-evaluate his role as an apologist, and his future works concentrated on devotional literature and children's books. Lewis also wrote an autobiography titled Surprised by Joy , which places special emphasis on his own conversion. It was written before he met his wife, Joy Gresham; the title of the book came from the first line of a poem by William Wordsworth.
His essays and public speeches on Christian belief, many of which were collected in God in the Dock and The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses , remain popular today. His most famous works, the Chronicles of Narnia , contain many strong Christian messages and are often considered allegory. Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them " suppositional ". As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs. Hook in December If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress ] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure.
In reality, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours? In a much-cited passage from Mere Christianity , Lewis challenged the view that Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. He argued that Jesus made several implicit claims to divinity, which would logically exclude that claim:.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.
He did not intend to. Although this argument is sometimes called "Lewis's trilemma", Lewis did not invent it but rather developed and popularized it. Lewis's Christian apologetics, and this argument in particular, have been criticised. Philosopher John Beversluis described Lewis's arguments as "textually careless and theologically unreliable", [94] and this particular argument as logically unsound and an example of false dilemma. Lewis used a similar argument in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , when the old Professor advises the young heroes that their sister's claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth.
One of the main theses in Lewis's apologia is that there is a common morality known throughout humanity, which he calls " natural law ". In the first five chapters of Mere Christianity Lewis discusses the idea that people have a standard of behaviour to which they expect people to adhere. Lewis claims that people all over the earth know what this law is and when they break it. He goes on to claim that there must be someone or something behind such a universal set of principles. These then are the two points that I wanted to make.
First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. Lewis also portrays Universal Morality in his works of fiction. In the second chapter of Mere Christianity Lewis recognises that "many people find it difficult to understand what this Law of Human Nature In responding to the second idea Lewis notes that people often complain that one set of moral ideas is better than another, but that this actually argues for there existing some "Real Morality" to which they are comparing other moralities.
Finally he notes that sometimes differences in moral codes are exaggerated by people who confuse differences in beliefs about morality with differences in beliefs about facts:. I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death.
There is no difference of moral principle here: It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house. Lewis also had fairly progressive views on the topic of "animal morality", in particular the suffering of animals, as is evidenced by several of his essays: Lewis continues to attract a wide readership. In , The Times ranked him eleventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since ". His Christian apologetics are read and quoted by members of many Christian denominations.
Flowers were laid by Walter Hooper , trustee and literary advisor to the Lewis Estate. An address was delivered by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else. Lewis has been the subject of several biographies, a few of which were written by close friends, such as Roger Lancelyn Green and George Sayer. This was also staged as a theatre play starring Nigel Hawthorne in , and made into the feature film Shadowlands starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
In , a one-hour television movie entitled C. Beyond Narnia provided a general synopsis of Lewis's life, starring Anton Rodgers. The Chronicles of Narnia has been particularly influential. Rowling 's Harry Potter Hilliard Pullman is an atheist and so fierce a critic of Lewis's work as to be dubbed "the anti-Lewis". Lewis a negative influence and has accused Lewis of featuring religious propaganda, misogyny, racism, and emotional sadism [] in his books. Authors of adult fantasy literature such as Tim Powers have also testified to being influenced by Lewis's work.
In A Sword Between the Sexes? Lewis and the Gender Debates , Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen finds in Lewis's work "a hierarchical and essentialist view of class and gender" corresponding to an Edwardian upbringing. Most of Lewis's posthumous work has been edited by his literary executor Walter Hooper. Kathryn Lindskoog , an independent Lewis scholar, argued that Hooper's scholarship is not reliable and that he has made false statements and attributed forged works to Lewis.
Lewis's stepson Douglas Gresham denies the forgery claims, saying, "The whole controversy thing was engineered for very personal reasons Her fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited. Lewis Societies exist around the world, including one which was founded in Oxford in to discuss papers on the life and works of Lewis and the other Inklings, and generally appreciate all things Lewisian.
Film adaptations have been made of three of The Chronicles of Narnia: He is one of two characters in Mark St. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier.
My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend and I have good ones has ever been to me. John Beversluis , C. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. Bresland , The Backward Glance: Devin Brown , A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. Ostling , C. Kent State University Press, n. The Geniuses of C. Spence James Como , Remembering C. Lewis at the Breakfast Table. The Story of C. Lewis and the Church of Rome: A Study in Proto-Ecumenism.
Downing , Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C. University of Massachusetts Press. Downing , The Most Reluctant Convert: Lewis's Journey to Faith. Downing , Into the Region of Awe: Downing , Into the Wardrobe: Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. The Gift of Friendship. Lewis, Tolkien and the Shadow of Evil. The Lives, Thought and Writings of C. Edwards , Not a Tame Lion: The Spiritual World of Narnia. Edwards , Further Up and Further In: Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Life, Works, and Legacy. Alastair Fowler , "C. Supervisor" , Yale Review ; Vol. Biographical memoir, in Proceedings of the British Academy 51 , — Images of His World. The Company They Keep: Tolkien as Writers in Community. Kent State University Press. Hooper, Walter; Green, Roger Lancelyn []. Douglas Gresham , Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C. A Memory of C. The Authentic Voice formerly C. A New Look at C. University of Alabama Press. Heck , Irrigating Deserts: Lewis Themes and Threads. Kilby , The Christian World of C.
King , C. The Legacy of His Poetic Impulse. Protecting the Real C. A Reference Guide, — Lewis and the Art of Witness. Lewis and the Catholic Church. HarperCollins, ; then Ignatius Press, Peters , Simply C. Lewis at the BBC: Messages of Hope in the Darkness of War. In Defense of the Argument from Reason. Lewis and His Times. Schakel , Reason and Imagination in C. Schakel , Imagination and the Arts in C. Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds. University of Missouri Press. Essays on the Fiction of C. Lewis on the Final Frontier: Science and the Supernatural in the Space Trilogy.
Lewis and Narnia for Dummies. Essays in Celebration of C.