Thugs said to be doing the bidding of local authorities attacked a pastor and his family with iron bars and wooden clubs in central Vietnam recently, seriously injuring the heads and arms of the church leader’s father and other relatives, sources said.

Twice on the same Sunday that local authorities disrupted a house church service in Phu Quy village near Tam Ky, Quang Nam Province, a gang of about 20 men attacked the father, brother and other family members of pastor Thien An, who was locked in a secure room as his family believed the gang sought to kill him, sources said.

Police had visited his home the week prior to “investigate” the house church, whose application for registration authorities have twice denied, according to the pastor. Church members echoed the sentiment of one Christian that “even a child” could figure out the connection between the gang and the public security police who disrupted their service that morning.

Pastor Thien told the officers he would meet with them after the service, but they barged into the meeting and pulled the plug on the sound system, according to a letter distributed on the Internet from Pastor Thien addressed to “all in the world with a conscience.” When church members protested, one officer yelled and threatened to hit the pastor’s father, according to his report.

After some time, the “angry police officers, full of threats, left our house of prayer,” according to the pastor.

The report said that at 1 p.m. the same day, some 20 gang members, many of them large and sporting tattoos, came to the house church when only the pastor and his extended family were home. Believing the gang had come to murder the pastor, his family urged him to retreat into a secure, locked interior room.

As the gang members struck his father, brother and others trying to defend the pastor and his family, which included a 1-week-old infant boy, the family prayed hard even as they vigorously resisted. Finally the gang left on their motorcycles threatening to return to “bring this house of God to the ground, and kill all of you,” the pastor reported.

During the attack, Pastor Thien called four levels of police and security officials, but, strangely, no one answered. After the gang left, he called the chief of the provincial police department and secured a promise to investigate.

Alerted by cell phone, church members rushed to the house to support the pastor and his family and prayed with them. Assuming things had settled down, they left in the early evening. But at 8:30 p.m., as the family was locked into their home, they were alarmed at the sound of shouting and breaking glass.

Pastor Thien was anxious to defend his family, but they restrained him from going out to confront the gang, saying he was their main target. As the gang wielding iron bars and wooden clubs viciously attacked Pastor Thien’s father and several others outside the secure room in which the pastor and his family were locked, gang members stationed outside prevented anyone from coming to help.

The gang managed to smash the glass of the door to the secure room, but Pastor Thien’s father, younger brother and an uncle miraculously managed to fend off the attackers, who finally retreated with their weapons, according to the report. Calls to various police offices during this attack also went unanswered, the pastor added.

Photos taken after this attack and posted on YouTube show head wounds on the defenders, blood on the floor and smashed windows. They also record the loud, anguished prayers for justice. Pastor Thien’s younger brother collapsed when the gang retreated and announced he was about to die, but the pastor prayed for him, and some five minutes later he was revived.

The house church, part of the Vietnam Baptist Church (VBC), is the larger of two legally registered denominations related to the U.S. Southern Baptist Church. Though the denomination is fully and nationally registered, local officials apparently consider the well-established congregation in Phu Quy village to be illegal.

The pastor, who reported that local authorities had refused two attempts to register his church, stated that police have summoned some of his members, especially young women, and strongly pressured them to stop worshipping there; some succumbed to serious threats and signed documents pledging to do so.

Police also recently summoned the pastor and warned that if he continued convening worship, they would not take responsibility if someone attacked it, he reported.

The Quang Nam provincial leader of the VBC contacted by Compass did not visit the affected church until the following Sunday (Oct. 30). He confirmed the incident had taken place and said the church met without incident that day.

Pastor Thien’s superior said he would try again to help the church to register with local authorities.

Several days after the attack, top officials of the VBC in Ho Chi Minh City reported that they had not received Pastor Thien’s appeal and seemed oddly reluctant to publicly support their beleaguered congregation in Tam Ky. Reliable sources told Compass that the leaders’ reluctance stemmed from fear of confronting authorities and putting at risk what they consider a good relationship with the government.

The pastor’s appeal and the subsequent YouTube clips, however, were widely distributed by other church leaders in Vietnam who were incensed and sickened by the blatant attack on fellow Christian worshippers.

“Even if there were irregularities on the church side in the registration process, it could in no way justify such a brutal attack in which government authorities are complicit,” one house church leader in Vietnam told Compass. “But this is still our country’s version of rule-of-law.”

Damien McGinty and Samuel Larson each won The Glee Project prize of seven episode Glee arcs, while Lindsay Pearce and Alex Newell will get two episodes each. But Christian favorite Cameron Mitchell came away with a great prize too – $10,000 as the Fan Favorite.

A popular side story in The Glee Project has been the close friendship of Damien, Cameron and Hanna Mclalwain (the girl with lots of heart who was eliminated on the episode after Mitchell left). Their story gained even more breadth as Mitchell chose to resign from the show because of his Christian faith, saving Damien. As he said his goodbyes, Hannah cried copiously.

Even Ryan Murphy couldn’t convince Mitchell to stay for at least one more week. In the last episode, the friendship continued to touch many hearts as McGinty dedicated his final song to Hannah and Mitchell.

But all’s well that ends well. McGinty, who in Ireland sang with the group, Celtic Thunder, told Belfast Telegraph that when he found out he won, “It was like I had just drunk 15 Red Bulls and 10 coffees.”

McGinty told Irish Central, “I talked to my Dad and he was in disbelief … he was on the phone crying this morning and apparently media were lined up outside my house, cameras were in my house. In Ireland, a little town called Derry, this does not happen.”

Mitchell left the program strong, too. He walked away from The Glee Project, but by doing so he actually generated a lot more media interest. In the final episode he clearly got a lot of close ups and some lines. His YouTube channel has gotten over 2.3 million views, and his five-song LP, Love Can Wait, hit iTunes top 25.

Now Mitchell and Damian McGinty have done a YouTube video together, singing Michael Buble’s “Just Haven’t Met You Yet,” that’s catching fire. Watch it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vivvcw0LlFw.

Bloggerland has not yet had enough of Mitchell. We Love Soaps, in trying to guess who the winner of The Glee Project would be, (it was half right, McGinty did win), described Mitchell as a “living, breathing WWJD bracelet: earnestly dorky-hip and undeniably all-about-Jesus.”

In fact, We Love Soaps said it is still hoping that Mitchell ends up somehow, somewhere, in Glee. It pointed out that Glee is Ryan’s baby and added, “Who wouldn’t bend the rules for their baby?”

Some facts about Cameron that we got from his interview with Ology:

• He likes shopping in New York, and in his own nerdy way, is a clotheshorse.
• When he was in Middle School tight jeans weren’t in style, so he wore girl pants that he bought from Hollister.
• He likes to come prepared and brought almost all his clothes to the Glee Project including winter coats.
• He has a tendency to over think.
• He has a rosary that he always likes to wear. (Seen it in Glee Project, right?)
• He doesn’t like it when girls wear clothes that are too tight, or too short.
• He still has a girlfriend, and she’s not jealous over his bromance with Damian.
• He says Damian honestly doesn’t stand a chance against her.

KHARTOUM, Sudan, August 3 (Compass Direct News) – Hiba Abdelfadil Anglo, 16, has escaped from a gang of Muslims who kidnapped her last year, but it may be a long time before she recovers from the trauma.

For the eighth consecutive week, authorities of Beijing arrested members of the Christian Shouwang church for showing up for Sunday service in an open air venue last May 29.

Authorities in Beijing arrested 22 members of Shouwang church, which has been trying to hold worship services outdoors after it was evicted from a facility it was renting and not allowed to inhabit a building that it paid for, according to the Baptist Press.

The number of arrests would probably have been much higher, but most of the 1,000-strong members of the church had been placed under house arrest. Of those arrested, 21 were set free at midnight, and the last one was released the following day, BP
said.

In a statement, the church said, “After eight outdoor worship services, we may feel tired and may sometimes unconsciously become lax in our spirits and actions. Therefore, in this continuing fight, we need all the more to pray for our alertness, support each other, encourage each other and press forward with the extra strength and power given by the Lord,” BP reported.

The arrests of Shouwang church members is as follows: “More than 160 were arrested the first week…about 50 were arrested the second week, approximately 40 on the third week, about 30 on the fourth week, 13 the fifth week, 20 the sixth week and 25 the seventh week,” the BP said.

Petition

A petition that was submitted on May 10 and signed by 17 pastors of house churches in different cities in China aired its support for Shouwang and asked the National People’s Congress to act on the issue, the China Aid Association website said.

The petition requested the NPC to investigate the Shouwang incidents, review the Regulations on Religious Affairs and enact a law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Freedom of Religious Beliefs, the CAA website reported.

Defamation campaign

The Chinese government has responded by implementing a defamation campaign against Shouwang church. Rev. Bob Fu, CAA president said on its website, “Last week, the director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs of the State Council convened a nationwide meeting of leaders of Three-Self churches from 15 provinces and municipalities.”

Fu said on the CAA website that the government was telling the Three-Self churches “not to heed Shouwang Church’s own statement of faith and [was] repeatedly slandering Shouwang Church. One can see that the authorities are getting ready for a  large-scale defamation campaign against Shouwang Church.”

After the May 10 petition was submitted by house churches, authorities began to use words such as “anti-cult” in reference to its actions against Shouwang. Fu added that detained church members, when interrogated, were told that Shouwang is a cult and that they were brainwashed, the CAA website said.

Fu believes this indicates the Chinese government will try to destroy Shouwang’s reputation to isolate it from other house churches. The government will say Shouwang is not representative of Christianity, the CAA website reported.

Mainstream Catholic church

However, the Chinese government may have a difficult time doing this. Recently, a joint declaration signed by 500 international church leaders was signed in support of Shouwang, the CAA website said. Signatories included Chuck Colson and the president of Advocates International, which is the largest Christian lawyers organization in the world.

It will also be difficult to misrepresent Shouwang because the church is part of the mainstream Catholic church with Shouwang members in mainstream churches in Canada and the U.S., the CAA website said.

For the sixth Sunday in a row, China’s Christian Shouwang Church members went to service in the open air. And for the sixth time, Chinese authorities arrested a number of parishioners for doing so.

Some 20 church members were arrested this time. Boxun.com, a Chinese-language website, posted a video last Sunday which showed Shouwang congregants being shuttled into two buses that parked near the open air venue where they were supposed to worship, Baptist Press said.

The video also showed marked and unmarked police cars parked around the open air site, according to Baptist Press.

So far, hundreds of church members have been picked up, while others have been placed under house arrest. Church members and leaders’ movements are restricted and confined, Baptist Press reported.

A statement from Shouwang said, “Many more believers and church leaders have lost their personal freedom because of being restricted to their homes on Sundays or the other days of the week by local police, neighborhood committee workers or residential security guards.”

Furthermore, some 30 Christian families from Shouwang were evicted from their homes. The Shouwang statement said they “were given just a few days to move out of their rental homes for no other reason than that they were members of Shouwang Church; in the short-term, they have no fixed abode, and they are getting by, by shuttling among the homes of various brothers and sisters in the church.”

More than 10 church members lost their jobs when the Chinese government exerted pressure on their employers to do so, according to Baptist Press.

Standoff

The standoff began earlier this year when the Chinese government, dismayed by the growth of the church in Beijing, exerted pressure so that the church would not be able to continue to worship in its usual indoor facility, Baptist Press said.

The reason given: Shouwang is not registered with the government. Despite this, for the last six weeks church members have congregated outdoors to pray in a public square in Beijing, according to Baptist Press.

The first week that they did this, some 160 church members were arrested. More arrests have been made with each succeeding Sunday. Last Sunday, the sixth week of the standoff, 20 more church members were detained, Baptist Press said.

Must be registered

In China, churches are required to register with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement in order to be legal. However, registered legal churches are not allowed to evangelize, cannot baptize children and teenagers, and cannot have a Sunday School among other restrictions, Baptist Press said.

Shouwang, which was founded in the 1990s, filed an application for registration in 2006, but in 2009 the application was rejected and since then the church has been continually harassed by the government, Assist News Service said.

More harm than good

Gordon C. Chang, an author and lawyer, wrote in World Affairs Journal that China may be doing more harm than good in its latest crackdown on Christian house churches, according to ANS.

Chang, author of The Coming Collapse in China, told ANS, “The Communist Party is, once again, creating determined foes from ordinary folk who previously had no reason to oppose it.”

He compared the situation to that of Jiang Zemin, a former supremo in China, who 10 years ago drove the Falun Gong (a sect of the qi gong) underground. Chang told ANS, “The roundup comes in the midst of a national campaign against Christianity and the regime’s latest crackdown against dissent, its most comprehensive in years.”

Chang told ANS, “The most important aspect of the Shouwang story is that, despite repeated prosecution, its congregants have continued to defy Beijing’s officials. In fact, few have given up their church or their faith in the face of persistent harassment. Official persecution of Shouwang has, if anything, appeared to stiffen the will of its believers.”

Petition

Recently, 15 pastors of other house churches sent a petition on behalf of Shouwang to China’s leading legislator, Wu Bangguo, saying that the actions against the church conflict with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which China is a cosignatory, Baptist Press said.

The statement also said the actions go against China’s Constitution which guarantees, “the rights to liberty of religious faith,” adding that the case of Shouwang is “not an individual, isolated episode that happens to a single church, but rather a typical phenomenon in respect of the conflict between state and church,” Baptist Press reported.

Chang told ANS, “Estimates put the number of Protestants in underground Chinese churches at 40 million. Add in the number of Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, and others praying surreptitiously, and the one-party state may have taken on too many adversaries at one time. But communists always overreach. They are doing that now.”

A prominent house church leader and three other church members were stopped recently in an airport in China, from boarding a plane to head to Hong Kong, where they were slated to attend an evangelical conference.

Wang Yi, a church organizer and rights campaigner, was prevented along with three others by airport police from boarding a plane in Chengdu, Sichuan province, Asia News said.

Instead, the three were brought to a police station in Jiangxi street. The flight they were supposed to take was headed for Shenzhen, a mainland city that is near Hong Kong, Asia News reported.

They church members were supposed to attend a training conference on evangelical development and organization in Hong Kong. Wang, who leads an unofficial Christian church, was supposed to speak at the conference, Asia News said.

Wang told Radio Free Asia via cell phone, “As soon as we arrived at the Shuangliu Airport around 6 a.m. this morning, plainclothes police officers stopped us, taking us to the nearby station on Jiangxi Street.”

Wang added, “Police said to me, ‘You cannot go to Hong Kong.’ But I said they didn’t have any reason to block me from traveling, so ‘If you release me I will definitely [try to] go to Hong Kong again because the conference will last until Saturday,” Radio Free Asia reported.

The other three church members were released soon after and they proceeded to the airport and went to Hong Kong.  However Wang was kept for several hours more, Asia News said.

When Wang was finally released he traveled back to the airport, but at 3 p.m. the police picked him up again and brought him to the same police station, where he was kept until 8 p.m., Asia News said.

A police officer from the police station denied to Radio Free Asia that Wang was detained saying, “No, we didn’t put him under house arrest and he is free.” However, no explanation was given for why Wang was not allowed to attend the evangelical conference. The officer on the phone just said, “I don’t know this particular case, but he is definitely free.”

According to Asia News, tens of millions of China’s Christians prefer underground churches, despite being targeted by the Communist Party. Recently, the number of house churches in China has risen dramatically.

Christianity has spread immensely amid a changing social climate that has been spurred by economic uncertainty due to reforms in the economy that were introduced 30 years back, Radio Free Asia said.

Officially, some 23 million Chinese go to Protestant churches. However, the actual number is believed to exceed 100 million including underground house churches, Asia News said.

The U.S. State Department placed China on its blacklist for international religious freedom violations, especially in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where repression has increased, and in the Tibet Autonomous Region, where it continues to be severe, Radio Free Asia said.

Sources:

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/travel-01182011164243.html

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Christian-clergymen-arrested-to-stop-him-from-attending-conference-in-Hong-Kong-20542.html

“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” says Mark Horvarth, founder of InvisiblePeople.tv.

And to Horvath, homelessness in the United States is a crisis.

Having been homeless, no less than twice in his 49 years, he should know.

The first time he was homeless was 16 years ago, when Hollywood Boulevard became his nest after losing a good TV job. A Filipino couple from a Los Angeles church called the Dream Center took him in and helped him back on his feet.

Eventually, he got another television job and had a three-bedroom house with a two-car garage, plus a 780 credit score. He was living the American Dream. Then the economy crashed. “I lost my job, and then I lost another. I went through 19 months of unemployment, with temp jobs now and then,” he said.

When his house was foreclosed he took stock and saw that he still had his car, a laptop, an iPhone and a camera.

He went on a road trip and along the way, founded InvisiblePeople.tv, a vlog with interviews of homeless people he met along the way.

He used social media, including Twitter, to broadcast stories like Angela’s to the world because it was a free means of promotion. He shared stories of people living under a bridge, in a tent city or in cardboard boxes.

Of the lives that he has chronicled, Horvarth says the story of Angela hit him the most.

On video, Angela has very little to say, but her eyes, her accent, her vocal tone, the mat she sits on in the grass within a tent city, a few belongings in a bag, are all very articulate.

When asked how life goes she says, “not good.” When asked what she would wish for, she has nothing to say at all. However, she says that she prays. Angela led Horvarth to see that he was on track with InvisiblePeople.tv.

Horvath’s brand of citizen journalism covering the plight of the homeless touched a nerve with those who hang out online, so much so that a few months ago InvisiblePeople.tv’s Youtube channel ended up on the front page of YouTube having attracted two million hits.

According to Horvath, those two million viewers weren’t just gawking at homeless people. Some of them got out and became change makers.

“Housing and feeding programs were started; 50 homeless kids who could not go to school because they didn’t have shoes suddenly had brand new shoes within an hour of my visit, thanks to social media,” he says.

Perhaps among the most generous donations was some 40 acres of land that a farmer gave to help poor families in an area school. And this, H would like to think, is just the beginning, because ironically, Horvarth himself is still homeless.

He says even if he were steadily employed he would still document homelessness, and dreams about filming homelessness in different countries, particularly in the Philippines because of the help he got from Pastor Gus (now deceased) and Lily of Dream Center, the couple that put his life back on track when he was first homeless 16 years before.

Horvarth says everybody should work together if homelessness is to be resolved. “The church has a good heart, they give food, food stamps, but they have no impact. They should not work as lone rangers,” he says.

Instead, he says they have to work together with the nongovernmental organizations, and with government. Everybody has to cooperate. He says if every person took in one homeless person, homelessness in America could be eliminated.

When one reviews the fruit of Horvarth’s crisis, one is amazed. Aside from the homeless who benefited from his vlog he has also, on a budget of near zero, made perhaps the most comprehensive, authentic and viewer-friendly study on homelessness today with popular appeal, and with no shortfall on emotion.

He has also documented model programs that have successfully addressed chronic homelessness in the U.S. and he is well qualified when he tells us what works and what needs to be done to put an end to this problem.

He is also in a credible position when he poses this warning, “We have a perfect storm of homelessness coming,” he says. That is, unless the current economic crisis is effectively addressed.

Horvarth’s crisis—including unsophisticated equipment, has provided a greater understanding of the new media’s possibilities. A vlog, with many different videos on a single subject, takes the shape of a “video book.” When well done, it is succinct yet comprehensive.

Perhaps he has also stumbled onto a new genre of visual media art. Many years ago cinema verite came into being by D.A. Pennebaker. Horvarth notes that reality TV is edited, but he has to edit while he is filming. The stark absence of graphics and music ironically works well with his subject matter.

Horvarth has the skill to understand pacing, timing, the strength of the close up, and the drama when panning out at the right moment. He has a sixth sense for the art of the interview and he can draw the story out of the subject very well. He knows pictures far outdo words.

If Horvarth had a scriptwriter, a production team, a director,  a cameraman, an editor, InvisiblePeople.tv would lose its authenticity. It might not have had two million viewers nor generated as many benefits as it has for homeless Americans.