ATROCITIES IN THE NAME OF RELIGION
Unspeakable atrocities are taking place in various countries: This photo from the CNN article "Eleven killed in Manipur as new bout of ethnic violence grips India’s northeast" shows Indian soldiers calmly patrolling in Manipur, northwest India. But the intro "Eleven people have been shot dead and 14 injured in a fresh outbreak of ethnic violence that has gripped the northeast Indian state of Manipur" does not convey the horrors that Indian Christians are experiencing. Nor does the article "Manipur Christians: ‘The Violence Has Shattered Us’" from Christianity Today shake us from our complacent neutrality.
An Indian pastor in our "Morning Prayers and Readings" Skype group posted some videos about the anti-Christian violence in Manipur, asked for prayers, for spreading this info, and any support if possible. After searching online to verify these reports and and finding the above articles, it turns out this anti-Christian violence has been ongoing for a few months now: I hadn't heard a peep about it in the news and the few articles I found don't convey the awfulness of these persecutions. So I downloaded these videos and saved them on my Google Drive. But Google notified me that 2 of these videos "may violate Google Drive's Violence and Gore policy." So I moved them from my Google Drive and uploaded them to my server. They are terrible to watch, but just reading about these atrocities doesn't make much of an impression: we can walk away and forget about it. Here are 5 of the videos:
www.agape-biblia.org/Christians-houses-destroyed.mp4
www.agape-biblia.org/Christians-beaten-with-slippers.mp4
www.agape-biblia.org/Christians-murdered-along-the-road.mp4
www.agape-biblia.org/Christian-woman-tortured-and-executed.mp4
www.agape-biblia.org/Christians-march-for-108-victims.mp4
The news media do not want us to see the actual "Violence and Gore" that's taking place in the world: they want us believe that we can all get along if we just go along, feeling "warm fuzzies" by being insulated from the truth. We can also allow ourselves to be lulled into complacency by the latest news about Russia's invasion of Ukraine: our eyes glaze over and our attention drifts away to the next news report about the weather or a warm-fuzzy, feel-good story. On February 18, 2023, Reuters reported that the "U.S. declares Russia committed 'crimes against humanity' in Ukraine" – why did it take 12 months to come to that official announcement, after the genocide in Bucha?
It is finally being covered in major news outlets: the BBC reported on June 27 – "Ukraine war: Russia executed 77 civilians detained by its forces, UN says" and showed a photo of an apartment building that was demolished by a Russian missile. It mentioned that "the UN documented 864 individual cases of arbitrary detention by Russia since it launched its invasion last February. Ukraine also violated international law by detaining civilians, though on a much smaller scale." We should be careful not to adopt a "moral equivalency" or "but Ukraine is as bad as Russia" view out of this: 91% of all atrocities in the UN report were by Russia.
The Guardian reported on June 27, 2023 – "UN says Russian forces have tortured and executed civilians in Ukraine" saying – "the UN human rights office... interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses for a report detailing more than 900 cases of civilians, including children and elderly people, being arbitrarily detained in the conflict, most of them by Russia." It also stated – "Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, had implicated Vladimir Putin in war crimes by admitting the original invasion had not been justified by any provocative actions by Ukraine."
And Deutsche Welle also reported on June 26, 2023 – "Ukraine: German judiciary takes on Russian war criminals" describing how "hundreds of people in Ukraine have been sexually assaulted by Russian soldiers since the invasion of their country began. Now, for the first time, four alleged perpetrators are in the sights of Germany's justice system." Human rights lawyers in Europe are preparing cases against these perpetrators and their superiors, two high-ranking commanders.
Even before and especially since this war flared up on February 24, 2022, we learned that it has had a religious dimension: acccording to "How the Ukraine war is dividing Orthodox Christians" from over a year ago, March 7, 2022, "both sides of the conflict are not merely Christian, they are members of the same church, sharing a thousand years of religious history. Today, 71% of Russians and 78% of Ukrainians identify as Orthodox Christians. In fact, until 2019, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) was part of the Moscow Patriarchate (MP), and many parishes remain there (UOC-MP), in conflict with a self-governing Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU)," At the war's flare-up in 2022, Metr. Onufriy of the UOC-MP denounced it as a "fratricidal war" and many of his parishes refrained from commemorating their mother church's head, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, just like Kirill and his subordinates stopped commemorating the Ecumenical Patriarch. This signaled a break in communion: schism. Since then, hundreds of UOC-MP parishes have switched to the OCU.
See also the article – "The Russian-Ukrainian War is Now a Theological Crisis" of April 30, 2023. It explains that "symfonia" – the ideal of a harmonious relationship betwee church and state – has become the theological justification for the Russian state using its captive Orthodox Church to provide the theological-ideological basis for Russia's invasion. Ukraine, on the other hand, although it has a higher percentage of Orthodox believers than Russia, doesn't exercise such tight bonds between church and state: all religious confessions can freely practice their faith.
"Russian Invasion Reveals Fissures Among Orthodox Christians," a March 3, 2022 article on "Religion Unplugged," tells how this war has provoked schism in Eastern Orthodoxy worldwide: "Statements from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Church of Antioch and the Church of Jerusalem have asked for prayers for peace without naming Russia as an aggressor. On the other hand, statements from the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church and, of course, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine have more directly criticized Russia or President Vladimir Putin."
Our last issue of ARC-News closed with the quip – "Taking a middle of the road position is dangerous. You can get knocked down by the traffic from both ways." Some issues require a decision: "Not to decide is to decide." If we do not speak out and take action against atrocities that use religion as a justification, we are tacitly supporting these atrocities. Mouthing meaningless aphorisms such as "thoughts and prayers" or "prayers for peace and harmony" is nothing less than meaningless religious mouthwash that you gargle, spit out, and rinse down the drain. War crimes are being committed in the name of religion. It is time to take a stand against this anti-Christian violence!
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This picture aptly illustrates the issue at hand: can every cowherd and every milkmaid correctly understand and interpret the Scriptures? Or does the King James Version's wording give us a hint of what can happen? "Dividing" can mean causing division: many illustrations I looked at showed a vertical sword stabbed into a Bible and one picture actually showed the mathematical symbol for division! Staking one's own position on a mistaken interpretation can cause division. What does the Bible really say about this, why have we come to the point where many insist that their personal view is the only right one and if you disagree they disown you?
