Six nuns and three priests from Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity were attacked by a group of people carrying iron rods on Sunday while the missionaries were delivering food. Police have arrested 15 people in connection with the attacks in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
In a slum outside the city of Kozhikode, two nuns were pulled from their jeep as they delivered food to Dalits, members of the group formerly known as untouchables. Locals helped them escape to a police station where they called their mission, according to UPI. An hour later, others from the mission arrived on the scene, and they were also attacked. All nine injured were sent to the hospital with head injuries.
According to the BBC, “The national convenor of the Bangalore-based Global Council for Indian Christians, Sajan K. George, said members of the right-wing Hindu parties Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were behind the attack.” According to the Pakistan Times the attackers shouted “Long Live the BJP” and “Long live the RSS.” The BJP and its parent organization, the RSS, are Hindu nationalist groups, often opposed to foreign and non-Hindu influence in the country.
More on Indian attacks:
- Hindu hardliners attack Christian missionaries in India | Suspected Hindu hardliners used iron rods to attack a group of Christian missionaries distributing food to poor lower-caste villagers in southern India, injuring all seven and their two drivers, police said Sunday. (Pakistan Times)
- Attack on nuns: police search on | The police have stepped up the investigation into the attack on nuns and brothers attached to the Missionaries of Charity by a gang of miscreants at a Dalit colony in Pantherankkavu, near here, on Saturday. (Sun Network, India)
- Christian body condemns attack on missionaries in Kerala |A Christian body Sunday condemned the attack on three nuns of the Missionaries of Charity in Kerala Saturday and demanded deployment of armed forces to protect members of the minority community. (Indo-Asian News Service)
- Nine missionaries injured in India violence, left wing parties condemn attacks | Left wing parties of India’s southern state of Kerala have condemned anti Christian attacks which injured a team of nuns and priests of the Missionaries of Charity, saying the government has “failed” to protect minorities, The Times of India newspaper reported (BosNewsLife, Hungary)
- Missionaries attacked in India | Indian police have arrested 15 people after three priests and six nuns were attacked in two separate incidents in the southern state of Kerala. (UPI)
Episcopal strife writ small
Episcopal strife writ smallTime magazine’s current article about two Anglican congregations in Georgia reflects the difficulties at many Episcopal congregations following the consecration of New Hampshire’s gay bishop. Last January, Rector Foley Beach led the congregation at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Monroe, Georgia. But Beach felt he could no longer pastor within the Episcopal Church and announced one January Sunday that he would be starting a new church affiliated with the Anglican bishop of Bolivia.
Though the congregation knew of Beach’s opposition to the Episcopal Church’s stand on homosexuality, they were still shocked when he decided to form a new church, Holy Cross, within a month.
This split does not involve the fight over church assets and property that occur in other disputes. When Beach left, he took about half the congregation with him. Holy Cross now meets in a school cafeteria, while the remaining members of St. Alban’s continue worshiping in their old facilities.
Holy Cross has grown to a 200-member congregation, write David Van Biema, Time‘s religion writer, and Marguerite Michaels. Members include
not just St. Alban’s refugees but also ex-Episcopalians from all over north central Georgia. “I’m conservative,” says Ken Lander, St. Alban’s former praise and worship leader. “Foley took a stand, and I went with him. I couldn’t raise my children in the Episcopal Church.” Eight Bible-study classes and a baby-sitting service suggest that others feel similarly.
At the same time, the still-conservative St. Alban’s faces the difficulty of running a church without a rector, organist, and half of everything else.
It is a heartbreaking look at the divisions currently in the Episcopal Church and the choices facing conservative congregations and individuals around the country. To stay and fight, or to break and start over?
Baylor regents vote again to keep President Sloan
Baylor University President Robert B. Sloan Jr. survived another challenge by the university’s Faculty Senate. The Board of Regents voted unanimously to decline a request from the Faculty Senate to conduct a campus-wide referendum on Sloan’s leadership. They also declined to ask Sloan to resign.
“There was a motion made to ask for Dr. Sloan’s resignation and a secondary motion was made to postpone the decision indefinitely,” Will Davis, chairman of the board of regents, told the Houston Chronicle. “The vote was taken on the secondary motion and it passed.”
This was the fourth attempt in the last year to remove Sloan. He narrowly survived a vote in May, but in July, after predictions that he would be fired, the Regents voted instead to affirm Baylor 2012, the university’s ten-year plan to create a top-tier Christian University.
More Baylor articles:
- Baylor’s Sloan survives another call for ouster | Baylor University’s embattled president survived more calls for his ouster Friday. (Associated Press)
- Sloan survives another battle | Baylor regents reject a motion to ask university’s leader to resign (Houston Chronicle)
- Baylor regents postpone call for Sloan’s resignation, reject call for faculty referendum | Baylor University regents voted to postpone indefinitely a call for President Robert Sloan’s resignation, and they unanimously rejected a request by the university’s Faculty Senate to hold a faculty-wide referendum on Sloan’s administration. (Baptist Standard)
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