Mennonite Weekly Review

DELHI, India — Simon Philip had grown up in a Christian family among the substantial Christian population in the state of Kerala in south India. Yet, he felt a call from God to move north.

Student prayer and discussion groups were an integral part of the two-week India World Missions Institute co-sponsored by Eastern Mennonite Missions and the Fellowship of Christian Assemblies, a new Anabaptist group in India. — Photo provided by EMM

A church planter with the Fellowship of Christian Assemblies, he was training for cross-cultural missions and learning about Anabaptist history and theology Sept. 15-29 at the World Missions Institute co-sponsored by Eastern Mennonite Missions and FCA.

Then, disturbing phone calls from home added a somber note to his time at the institute.

Philip has spent 16 years planting house churches in Hindu and Sikh towns and villages in north India. He had been looking forward to baptizing 16 new believers shortly after the institute. They had been hosting a house church in their village.

Interest in Christ began growing in the village one day when Philip offered to pray for a woman who had not been able to sleep properly for 35 years. After prayer, her sleep disorder disappeared. Her vibrant testimony brought 15 people to Christ.

All that changed quickly when a mob of radical Hindu militants stormed into the village, threatening the new believers unless they reconverted to Hinduism.

Fearing for their lives and under severe communal pressure, the 15 believers agreed to turn back, burned their Bibles and went through Hindu initiation rites. Philip was heartbroken when he got the news at WMI.

While he was at WMI, police stopped by to investigate his activities. They accused his wife of forcing people to convert. She said to them, “People just come to us. We don’t even have to go out.”

Philip explained that India is going through an unusual time of anti-Christian violence. Since Hindu militants began raiding Christian villages in Orissa in mid-August, more than 100 pastors and other Christians have been killed by ax-wielding mobs. Fifty thousand homes of Christians have been looted and burned, along with 500 churches. The problems that began in Orissa have now spread to eight other provinces.

“I believe God is using this persecution to grow the church,” Philip said. “Even now in the midst of this trouble, new families keep showing up in our services.”