Controversial missionary activities by fundamentalist Christian sects in Sri Lanka have inflamed passions among the predominantly Buddhist population to an extent that could rebound against older, established Christian groups such as the Catholics.
New evangelicals, often flush with American funding and eager to spread the fundamentalist gospel in the island, have been targeting the poorer sections of Sri Lankan society. Jehovah's Witnesses, the Assembly of God, Southern Baptists and several others sects have established churches in remote rural areas that have remained Buddhist through the centuries. They distribute food, clothes and other basic essentials and even cash to the deprived people, encouraging them to attend prayer sessions.
This has antagonized Buddhists, who have launched attacks on some of these churches and preachers. Many have called for a law prohibiting "unethical" religious conversion and demanded that evangelists set up shop in predominantly Christian, rather than Buddhist, areas.
The zeal of the fundamentalists has also affected Sri Lanka's established churches, especially the Roman Catholic community, the largest and oldest Christian church, introduced by Portuguese colonizers in 1505.
Matters came to a head last August when Sri Lanka's Supreme Court ruled in a landmark judgement that the constitution's guarantee of freedom of worship did not extend to the right to propagate religion.
The judgment also noted the constitution's acknowledgement of Buddhism as the country's foremost religion and the state's duty to protect and foster it.
The court was responding to a petition by Buddhists against the legal incorporation of a Roman Catholic order of missionary nuns seeking to carry out teaching, vocational youth training, nursing and care of the elderly, together with missionary work. It ruled that "the spread of knowledge to youth" by a Christian missionary order was inconsistent with the constitutional requirement to protect and foster Buddhism, the religion of 69 percent of the population.
Hindus (15 percent) are the next biggest group, followed by Christians (8 percent), Muslims (7 percent) and others (1 percent).
The Supreme Court also held that Christian institutions should not couple religious instruction with charitable deeds and agreed with the petitioners that young, inexperienced and elderly people could be lured to other religions by charitable activities.
Although fundamentalist Christians number less than 1 percent of the population, their activities are highly visible among the urban middle class and are spreading increasingly to the rural poor. More than 10 attacks on new evangelist churches have been recorded this year compared with five last year.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
RSS