How much do Americans know about the faiths around them?

And what helps us most to understand our neighbors’ faiths?

Ryan Burge
Religion News Service
February 15, 2023

(RNS) — One of the truly unique features of the United States is its incredibly diverse religious landscape. A county or region dominated by a single religious group is the exception, not the rule. Scholars have pointed to this religious competition as one of the reasons religion is still relatively robust in the U.S. compared with other industrialized societies, such as Western Europe.

It would behoove those of us living in the United States, then, to have a decent working knowledge of faith traditions beyond our own. But our religious diversity often comes at a cost: intolerance and infighting, often driven by mutual ignorance. As the writer Andrew Smith once wrote, “People fear what they don’t understand.”

There is also a gap between Americans’ confidence in their grasp of the nuances of other religious traditions and their actual religious literacy, according to data from the Pew Research Center posted by the Association of Religion Data Archives.

Pew asked individuals to assess their level of knowledge about a variety of faith traditions, from different types of Christians (evangelical and mainline Protestants, Catholics and Mormons) to faith groups that make up a smaller portion of the population, such as Jews, Muslims and Buddhists.

 

Americans, it turns out, feel they have a good idea of their neighbors’ faiths.

“How much do you personally know about each of the following?” Graphic by Ryan Burge

Given the ubiquitousness of Catholicism in the United States, it should come as no surprise that 82% of respondents said that they knew “some” or “a lot” about the Catholic Church. Respondents also expressed familiarity with Protestantism. It’s notable that 68% expressed a strong familiarity with atheism, given that atheists make up less than 10% of the United States.

The faith groups that were less understood are, unsurprisingly, ones that comprise the smallest parts of American religion today. More than half of respondents said that they knew “nothing” or “not much” about the practices or beliefs of Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, and fewer than 1 in 10 said they knew a lot about those faith traditions.

Familiarity, then, seems to be related to exposure to the faith in question.

But perception of knowledge and actual knowledge are two different concepts, entirely. The Pew American Trends Panel also included a religious literacy battery that consisted of eight questions about different faith traditions found in the United States. These questions were offered in multiple-choice format — with three potential answers listed. But they also allowed respondents to say they were unsure of the correct answer.

“Can Americans Answer Basic Religious Literacy Questions Correctly?” Graphic by Ryan Burge

The one question that the overwhelming number of respondents knew the correct answer to is “What is an atheist?” Nearly 9 in 10 respondents correctly indicated that atheists are “someone who does not believe in God.” But strong majorities were also able to associate Moses with the Exodus and knew that David killed Goliath, both stories from the Old Testament.

Religious literacy rates dropped significantly from that point. Just 62% of people knew that Mecca is the holiest city in Islam; nearly the same number could accurately describe the beliefs of agnostics. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on Mount also seemed to stump many respondents, even though large majorities are aware of who Moses was.

When given a list of three possible commandments, a third of people incorrectly believed that “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” was part of the Decalogue. A bare majority correctly answered the question “According to the Christian Gospels, who delivered the Sermon on the Mount?”

The question that clearly caused the most trouble concerned Rosh Hashanah and its meaning for people of the Jewish faith. Nearly half of the sample refused to answer the question.

Given these blind spots, it’s worth asking which factors increased religious literacy among the respondents. To test that, an additive scale was constructed, taking in all answers to the questions in the battery, with scores ranging from zero questions correct to all eight questions answered correctly. The survey also asked respondents about their level of educational attainment and whether they had taken a world religions class in high school or college.

“More Educated Individuals Have Higher Levels of Religious Literacy” Graphic by Ryan Burge

Those with higher levels of educational attainment answered more of the questions correctly — little surprise there. Among those with a high school diploma or less, the mean score was about four questions out of eight. Among those who had completed a four-year college degree, the mean score was about six questions correctly answered.

What’s noteworthy, however, is how much taking a world religions class helped with religious literacy. At each level of educational attainment, a person who took world religions classes scored about half a point better than those who did not take a world religions class. This is clear and measurable evidence that these courses have a long-term impact on knowledge about faith traditions.

An average score of four out of eight questions answered correctly is commendable for someone who has had few encounters with other faiths, as many Americans have not. But the country is if anything becoming more religiously diverse — and, famously, more politically polarized. Zeenat Rahman, executive director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, has argued that increased religious literacy could lead to a decrease in polarization. It is sure to come in handy for those of us who imagine we know and welcome our neighbors.

https://religionnews.com/2023/02/15/how-much-do-americans-know-about-the-faiths-around-them/

ICSA Annual Conference: Religious Legitimacy

ICSA Annual Conference: Religious Legitimacy

Phil Lord
Saturday, June 25, 2022
3:00 PM-3:50 PM

This article seeks to demonstrate both the importance of expertise and scholarship in framing a religion’s claim of legitimacy in law, and how expertise can be harnessed by a religious group to gain this legitimacy. From a broad overview of the consequences of religious status in law, the article analyses the tests used to attribute the status, to show the crucial role that their application affords to experts and scholarship. It then argues that new religious movements, and Scientology, are ideal case studies to illustrate the importance of scholars and scholarship. Scientology is indeed the only major religion to have emerged in the twentieth century and is unique in that it has, over this period, gained, lost, re-gained, and grappled with ongoing challenges to its status in law. The article then illustrates these issues with an analysis of two key periods from Scientology’s history: its ultimately successful fight to gain tax-exempt status in the United States in the 1980s, and its response to modern-day challenges to this status. Both periods illustrate, in different ways, how Scientology has recognised the power of expertise and scholarship, and sought to harness it to frame its claim of legitimacy in law.

The article can be accessed at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3798780

• Conference Information
• Agenda
• Conference Registration

Phil Lord

Assistant Professor

Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, Lakehead University

Phil Lord is an Assistant Professor at Lakehead University’s Bora Laskin Faculty of Law. He was appointed (at age 24) and remains the youngest law professor in Canada. Phil previously served as an instructor at Carleton University's Department of Law and a law clerk at the Federal Court of Canada. Prior to that, he started a few companies, worked in the financial services industry, and practiced civil and commercial litigation in Montreal. Phil graduated from the McGill Faculty of Law with degrees in civil and common law, on the Dean’s Honor List and with the highest standing in property law and constitutional law. He subsequently pursued an LL.M. as a Bombardier scholar. Phil is called to the bar in New York, Massachusetts, and Quebec. He is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and holds three financial services designations. Phil has authored over twenty academic articles, most peer-reviewed. His research focuses on public law (principally employment and taxation law), behavioral economics, and new religious movements. Phil also writes on other things, such as Quebec’s Bill 21, children’s literature, and the porn industry. A free version of each of his articles can be accessed at https://ssrn.com/author=2790633 Phil has also failed at a lot of things. His first three grades in law school were B-s, and his final law school transcript lists two B-s and a C — the latter being a particularly unusual grade at McGill. Although the selection rate seems to hover around 75%, Phil wasn’t selected as an editor of the McGill Law Journal. With four manuscripts, he spent almost two years trying to get his first publication. It would be another year before he published in a law review. Phil welcomes discussions about his failures, as he thinks law professors too often lack humility. (He even wrote an article on that: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3726628.) 

Over the past two years, Phil has given interviews to or briefed journalists from six media outlets. He welcomes media inquiries in his areas of expertise. French Bio: Phil Lord est professeur adjoint à la Faculté de droit Bora Laskin de l'Université Lakehead. Il était au moment de sa nomination (à l'âge de 24 ans) et demeure le plus jeune professeur de droit au Canada. Phil était précédemment chargé de cours à la Faculté de droit de l'Université Carleton et auxiliaire juridique à la Cour fédérale du Canada. Avant cela, il a fondé quelques entreprises, travaillé dans le secteur des services financiers et pratiqué en litige civil et commercial à Montréal. Phil a obtenu ses diplômes en droit civil et en common law de la Faculté de droit de l'Université McGill. Il figure sur la liste d’honneur du doyen et a reçu des prix pour avoir obtenu les meilleurs résultats en droit des

Kremlin Behind Moscow Patriarchate's Crackdown On Dissident Churchmen And Movement - OpEd

Paul Goble
Eurasia Review
February 6, 2022

The Kremlin is behind the Moscow Patriarchate’s crackdown on dissidents among the clergy and among Orthodox social movements, Aleksey Makarkin says; but the Russian church in some cases has gone ever further than the state because it fears that the state will begin to use its organs against the church and undermine popular support for the faith.

The Russian church was enthusiastic about the state’s intervention against Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups, the leader of the Moscow Center for Political Technologies says; and it welcomes the state’s help against Orthodox clergy and activists who step out of line but also fears where that could lead (ng.ru/ng_religii/2021-12-14/9_521_exile.html).

What this has meant, Makarkin says, is that now “church structures try to be careful even on those issues where earlier they displayed great activity.” They are uncertain just where the red lines for church behavior are as far as the Kremlin is concerned; and the most subservient are simply avoiding doing anything that might cause a problem for them.

“The government starts from the proposition that the church must control itself and not allow declarations which contradict the policies of the powers,” he continues. “If these things arise, then the church itself is required to address them. And when that doesn’t happen, then the state is forced to intervene and advance demands on the church leadership.”

One aspect of the situation is becoming especially fraught, Makarkin says. That concerns the role of elders to whom “many people from the government and force structures go,” a behavior the powers had accepted but are now seeing as a threat given the increasing outspokenness of these prominent features of the Orthodox landscape.

“Elders have become persons whom it is difficult for anyone to control,” he continues. “They aspire to the role of the highest spiritual authority.” If siloviki listen to them, that could be a problem; and so the government is moving against them and forcing the Patriarchate to provide assistance.

Given how important elders are in the religious life of the Orthodox, that sets the stage for a new wave of court cases almost certain to reduce the authority of the church and also spark more controversy between the traditionally subservient Patriarchate and the increasingly assertive Kremlin, the Moscow analyst suggests.

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. He has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Goble maintains the Window on Eurasia blog and can be contacted directly at paul.goble@gmail.com .

https://www.eurasiareview.com/06022022-kremlin-behind-moscow-patriarchates-crackdown-on-dissident-churchmen-and-movement-oped/

SEPARATION OF HINDUISM FROM OUR SCHOOLS

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS EASTERN DIVISION


SEPARATION OF HINDUISM FROM OUR SCHOOLS, an unincorporated association; CIVIL LIBERTIES FOR
URBAN BELIEVERS, an unincorporated association; AMONTAE WILLIAMS, individually and as a representative for all similarly situated persons; DASIA SKINNER, individually and as a
representative for all similarly situated persons; and DARRYL WILLIAMS, individually and as a representative for all similarly situated persons,


Plaintiffs,

vs.

CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS,
City of Chicago School District #299; THE DAVID LYNCH FOUNDATION; and the UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO,

Defendants.

Case No. 20 C 4540

Via TM-Free Blog


The David Lynch Foundation and the University of Chicago have been reinstated as defendants in the Federal case seeking damages for the attempt to offer the Transcendental Meditation program in Chicago public schools.

The court ruled that the student who was involved in the so-called "Quiet Time" program, and who witnessed the TM initiation 'puja' in a public school building, has standing to bring a complaint against all three defendants, the DLF, the U of Chicago, and the Board of Education.


This ruling confirms that the student may make claims against all three defendants under the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act (IRFRA).
Today's opinion and order from District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly, at the link.
https://t.co/GQ3zBkkdUp

There's a religious revival going on in China - under the constant watch of the Communist Party

Mario Poceski, University of Florida

The Conversation

August 6, 2021

The Chinese Communist Party is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding in 1921. For most of those decades, the party sought to restrict or obliterate traditional religious practices, which it considered part of China’s “feudal” past.

But since the late 1970s, the party has slowly permitted a multifaceted and far-reaching revival of religion in China to take place. More recently, current Chinese president and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has endorsed continued party tolerance for religion as filling a moral void that has developed amid China’s fast-paced economic growth.

This support does come with caveats and restrictions, however, including the demand that religious leaders support the Communist Party.

As a scholar of Chinese religions, these considerable changes are of special interest to me.

A revival of religion

Atheism remains the official party ideology, with members banned from professing religious faith. The party’s aggressive efforts to obliterate all religious beliefs and practices reached a high point during the tumultuous decade of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976. All temples and churches were shut down or destroyed. Any form of religious activity was prohibited, even as there was forceful promotion of the cult of Mao (Zedong), which assumed the role of an officially sanctioned religion.

As part of major reforms and a loosening of social controls, initiated in the late 1970s, the party has slowly accepted a range of behaviors and traditions that fulfill religious needs or provide spiritual outlets. Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Islam and Protestantism – the five officially recognized religions – have staged comebacks, albeit with varying success.

There are increasing numbers of local temples, associations, pilgrimages and festivals, and growing numbers of Buddhist, Christian and Taoist clergy. Many religious sites are open for private worship and communal service and frequented by people from all walks of life.

Local governments are often keen to restore and promote religious establishments, largely to stimulate tourism and local economic development.

Consequently, a major metropolis such as Shanghai has become home to religious establishments large and small, official and underground. They range from local shrines to Buddhist and Taoist temples, churches and mosques. There are also new entrants to the religious scene, exemplified by the yoga centers that have sprung up in many Chinese cities.

It seems that people have welcomed these policy shifts. A 2020 study by the Pew Research Center found that 48.2% of China’s population had some form of religious affiliation.

The exact data is debatable, and it is difficult to conduct reliable research in China. But these results suggest that many Chinese participate in various activities that can be labeled religious.

A mix of religious practices

Traditionally, most Chinese people don’t subscribe to a single faith or construct a narrow religious identity. They engage with varied beliefs and practices, a pattern of religious piety dating back centuries to ancient imperial China.

That encompasses aspects of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, as well as many practices termed “popular religion.” These range from visiting temples, attending pilgrimages and festivals, praying and offering incense, ancestor worship, and veneration of various celestial divinities. There are also the popular practices of geomancy or feng shui, an ancient art of harmonizing humans with their surroundings, and divination or fortunetelling.

These rich traditions often have regional variations, such as the veneration of Mazu, a sea goddess, which is especially prevalent in southeast China and Taiwan. Originally a patron goddess of seafarers, Mazu is widely worshiped by people from all walks of life and promoted as an important symbol of local culture.

Confucian rapprochement

The Communist Party has also stopped criticizing the teachings of Confucius, the famous philosopher and educator of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. For much of the 20th century, Confucian teachings were rejected as discredited relics of an imperial past. But that changed over recent decades, as the party sought to reposition itself as the guardian of Chinese traditions.

This contributed to a significant revival of Confucianism.

Confucianism’s time-honored ethical framework offers guideposts to navigating the often-harsh realities of life in a highly competitive society. But the party has also found it useful to harness aspects of Confucianism that resonate with its core interests, such as obedience to authority and respect for the leader.

Accordingly, the government has supported reestablishment of Confucian temples and institutes. It has also sponsored conferences on Confucianism and even organized lectures on Confucian teachings for party officials.

Control and curation of religion

Adopting attitudes and methods with long-established precedents in the dynastic history of imperial China, the communist government positions itself as the ultimate arbiter of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, or proper and improper religious practices. Religious leaders must support the party and follow its directives.

Authorities keep firm administrative control over all forms of religious expressions and organizations, by whatever means they deem prudent or necessary. As we know from the reports of Western scholars and journalists, that control ranges from subtle forms of domination and co-option of religious groups to outright bans or repressions.

In 2015, the government removed 1,200 crosses from church buildings across Zhejiang province. In 2016, a Zhejiang court sentenced a Protestant pastor to 14 years in prison for resisting a government order to take down his church’s cross. In 2018, the government demolished the Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi province.

In response, most religious groups tread carefully and engage in self-censorship, as I and others have observed during research trips in China.

Muslim Uighur communities in Turkey and other nations have protested the Chinese government’s oppression of Uighurs in far-western Xinjiang province. Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

China tends to treat religions perceived as potentially threatening to the established order harshly, especially if suspected of foreign ties or secessionist tendencies. For instance, for decades China has strictly regulated Buddhism in Tibet, as it has pursued policies aimed at suppressing the cultural and national identities of the Tibetans. That contrasts with more relaxed attitudes towards the form of Buddhism practiced by the Han majority.

The party has explained its recent, ruthless campaign to repress the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in Xinjiang – a nominally autonomous region in Northwest China – as intended to counteract terrorism and separatism. According to leaked documents, since 2014 up to a million Uighurs have been interned in “re-education camps.” It’s part of a hardline policy of secularization and “Sinicization,” which implies assimilating the Uighurs into the majority Han culture, at a loss of their religious and ethnic identities.

Balancing act

As it celebrates its 100th anniversary, the Chinese Communist Party seeks to project the image of a unified nation returning to global political and economic dominance.

But at home it faces manifold problems and is engaged in a balancing act: affirming its dual role as a guardian and curator of traditional Chinese culture and religion, but in a manner that enhances rather than undermines its power and authority.

[Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture. Sign up for This Week in Religion.]

Mario Poceski, Professor of Buddhist Studies and Chinese Religions, University of Florida

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

https://theconversation.com/theres-a-religious-revival-going-on-in-china-under-the-constant-watch-of-the-communist-party-164211

EXCLUSIVE: WHY DID CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS JUST QUIETLY DROP TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION?

ARYEH SIEGEL
Religion Dispatches
June 24, 2020

Three years ago, as a part of its mission to teach Transcendental Meditation to a million at-risk kids, the David Lynch Foundation partnered with the University of Chicago’s Urban Labs and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to test whether Transcendental Meditation (TM) could reduce crime and improve school performance. Two thousand students in five high schools located in high crime Chicago neighborhoods participated in the $3 million study through its “Quiet Time” (QT) program.

Earlier this month, in response to a direct email inquiry, RD was notified by a CPS official that “CPS is no longer allowing for the official Quiet Time Program through David Lynch Foundation to be offered in CPS schools.” But why would CPS quietly drop such a high-profile program? 

Though CPS decline to elaborate further, a July 26, 2019 article in the Chicago Tribune provides a clue. Hannah Leone’s article includes some disturbing information about the program based on the harrowing recollections, before the Chicago Board of Education, of Dasia Skinner, a substitute teacher, and Jade Thomas, a fourteen-year-old high school student. 

After hearing their testimony, the CPS chief education officer noted that while she personally visited the QT program at Bogan High School, none of the information reported in the presentations was shared with her. So what didn’t they tell her about this “simple… non-religious technique,” as the David Lynch Foundation’s brochure describes TM?  

According to Skinner, the 60 students she spoke with shared a similar experience, Jade Thomas among them. Thomas told the Chicago Board of Education that her experience began with a mandatory “initiation into the meditation program” (elsewhere in TM materials referred to as a puja, a ceremony performed by Hindus, as well as many Buddhists and Jains). Students are taken by a QT “facilitator,” two at a time, to a dark, incense-filled room with all the windows covered. 

According to Thomas, they were made to hold flowers in their hands while the instructors “chanted in a foreign language, threw rice, seasonings, [and] oranges on a pan in front of a picture of a man,” after which they were to place the flowers on the pan. Following the ritual, they were given their mantras and were told “don’t tell anyone else your word.” (Keeping one’s mantra a secret, it should be noted, is common in some sects of Hinduism.) Thomas also notes that students were told they would be sent to the dean’s office if they declined to participate and that they would be threatened with reduced grades if they talked during the twice-daily QT sessions. She describes feeling uncomfortable about her participation because the ceremony went against the Christian religion she practiced in her home. 

Unless this ceremony departed from the standard TM puja, as described by Business Insider, the man in the picture was likely Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, or ‘Guru Dev,’ with whom the founder of TM, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, “studied the Upanishads, the segments of the four ancient Sanskrit books of scripture known as the Vedas that focus on the self and its relationship to God.” And yet this is “an act that the Maharishi did not consider to be compromising to his practice’s secularity.”

TM’s spotty record in public schools 

According to Professor Candy Gunther Brown, author of Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools, the federal appellate case of Malnak v. Yogi (1979) ruled that teaching TM in public schools constitutes an impermissible “establishment of religion.” Indeed, the court’s ruling against TM left little room for debate:

Although defendants have submitted well over 1500 pages of briefs, affidavits, and deposition testimony…defendants have failed to raise the slightest doubt as to the facts or as to the religious nature of the teachings of the Science of Creative Intelligence [TM’s Hindu underpinnings] and the puja. The teaching of the SCI/TM course in New Jersey public high schools violates the establishment clause of the first amendment, and its teaching must be enjoined.  

TM appealed the decision to a higher court and lost again. According to Dr. Brown, it’s “remarkable” that TM is still being taught in public schools given how little public-school TM practices (e.g. assignment of mantras associated with personal gods, initiation through pūjās that invoke divine aid with chants, bowing, and offerings) have changed since Malnak.”

TM proponents argue that the case is over 40 years old and no longer relevant. In an exchange in the Wall Street Journal 3 years ago, Lynch Foundation CEO Bob Roth wrote, 

“TM is not a religion. Over 8 million people of all religions practice TM. It is taught in public schools, on military bases, and in large and small businesses. In each case, a team of legal experts has done due diligence and researched the accusations and claims and found them to have no basis.” 

When I pointed out in response that the puja ceremony is exactly the same today as it was in 1977, and that the establishment clause has not changed, Roth responded, “In the nearly 40 years since the 1979 court case you cite, tens of thousands of students have learned to meditate as part of voluntary Quiet Time programs with the full support of school boards and parents.” 

That may be strictly true, but given what we’re learning about the Chicago case, that support may be largely due to the fact that TM isn’t entirely forthcoming in what it shares with school boards and parents regarding the explicitly religious content that permeates the program.         

But not all is bliss in the TM world. For example, TM teachers created “checking notes,” as a guide to handle pain and discomfort that might arise even within the first days of TM instruction. The existence and use of the checking notes document that the TM organization is well aware of these potential problems. Shaking and body movements, as well as overpowering thoughts, are frequent enough even during the first few meditations that an entire section of the checking procedure is devoted to these severe symptoms. 

More generally, a non-profit called Cheetah House, which is affiliated with Brown University, Harvard, and a number of other prestigious institutions, exists to provide “information and resources about meditation-related difficulties to meditators-in-distress.” And this is a major part of the mission of a proponent of meditation. In addition, while the UK’s National Health Service notes that meditation can be very helpful in many cases, “The serious, long-lasting nature of some of the negative experiences reported [in a recent study], however, are cause for concern.” These potential issues may be perfectly acceptable for adults voluntarily participating in TM workshops, but for children and adolescents required or even urged to participate it hardly seems appropriate.   

It took three years for CPS to conclude that TM is more than a secular relaxation method to reduce stress. And while it’s still unclear whether they dropped the program due to issues with the establishment clause, potential risks to students’ health, or both, one thing that is clear is that TM proponents will not be deterred from approaching other school systems and institutions. You might say that their belief in the benefits of TM is… religious. 

https://religiondispatches.org/exclusive-why-did-chicago-public-schools-just-quietly-drop-transcendental-meditation/

California Middle Schools Promote Hindu Religious Practice of Transcendental Meditation

Laurie Higgins
Illinois Family Institute
January 8, 2015

TM Related Articles

Next time you hear about some arch-defender of the a-constitutional “wall” of separation between church and state whose knickers are in a twist because a school allows ten seconds of silence during which students may pray, remember this story:

NBC News reported that for four years, four San Francisco middle schools have been using the Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education’s Quiet Time program which teaches Transcendental Meditation (TM) to 11-14-year-olds. Students spend 15 minutes twice a day meditating, with at least one school even extending the school day to accommodate TM.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, disciple of Guru Dev (aka Swami Brahmananda Saraswati), repackaged Hinduism in a form more acceptable to Western minds and brought it to American hippies in the 1960s and 1970s. Disciples of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi publicly and deceitfully claim that TM is solely a scientific method of relieving stress, conveniently omitting any mention of the religious dimensions of the program and practice.

Decades ago when I became a TMer and my husband a TM teacher, mantras—the word repeated soundlessly during meditation—were  assigned during an “initiation” ceremony called a puja. Initiates were asked to bring a piece of fruit, a new handkerchief, and flowers to the ceremony which was conducted in a darkened, incense-infused room in front of a de facto altar. The TM teacher would them begin the ceremony which was conducted in Sanskrit, which meant the initiate had no idea what was being spoken.  After becoming a TM teacher, my husband learned the Sanskrit words spoken during the ceremony:

To LORD NARAYANA, to lotus-born BRAHMA the Creator to…GOVINDA, ruler among the yogis…to SHANKARACHARYA the redeemer, hailed as KRISHNA and BADARAYANA, to the commentator of the BRAHMA SUTRAS I bow down. To the glory of the LORD I bow down again and again, at whose door the whole galaxy of gods pray for perfection day and night…GURU [Dev] in the glory of BRAHMA, GURU in the glory of the great LORD SHIVA, GURU in the glory of the personified transcendental fullness of BRAHMAN, to Him, to SHRI GURU DEV adorned with glory, I bow down…with Brahman ever dwelling in the lotus of my heart…to That [Brahman], in the form of Guru Dev, I bow down.

At various points during the ceremony, the teacher would pause and ask the initiate for one of the gifts they were asked to bring which the teacher would then place on the altar. At the end of the ceremony, initiates were given their mantras, which, as it turns out, are the names of Hindu gods.

Initiates were ordered not to tell their secret mantras to anyone. Eveventually I learned that mantras were assigned according to the initiate’s age. Mine was “aing” which is a mantra intended to honor the Hindu goddess of Saraswati.

Administrators in the four California middle schools, which are located in violence-prone communities, claim that all sorts of positive effects have resulted since students began meditating, obviously suggesting that TM is the cause of such effects. These claims raise important questions:

1. Is TM the cause of these positive effects, or is it simply being quiet for 15 minutes twice a day that accounts for the reduction in student misbehavior?
2. Would resting or napping for 15 minutes twice a day have the same effects?
3. If it is legal and appropriate for public schools to promote and teach Hindu meditative/prayer practices, is it legal and appropriate for schools to promote and teach Muslim prayer practices, Kabbalistic meditative practices, and Christian prayer practices?
4. If the possibility of a reduction of problematic behaviors justifies the formal implementation of Hindu religious practice in public schools, will public schools permit the implementation of other religious practices in order to determine their efficacy in positively affecting school climate?

For years, the TM organization has been plagued by criticism for deception like its failure to acknowledge its religious nature or promises of superpowers (siddhis) like Yogic flying. Over 35 years ago, Maharishi told his disciples that by attending longer residential courses during which attendees would meditate for extended periods of time and receive additional magic words (i.e., sutras), they would start levitating and shortly thereafter flying. Of course, the TM organization profited from these longer courses.

Well, here we are decades later and to my knowledge, no TMer is flying. You can find amusing videos online of TMers still “hopping.” Well, you can find videos of hale and hearty men “hopping” whilst huffing and puffing. I’ve yet to see a video of an elderly woman “hopping.”

There are also criticisms of the studies the TM organization touts regarding its efficacy as well as more serious concerns about potential risks to mental health. For more information about TM from a former meditator, click HERE.

In the interest of parental rights, I hope the administrators in these California middle schools will reveal to every parent the criticisms of Transcendental Meditation leveled by many.

In the interest of intellectual consistency, I hope those virulent opponents of 10 seconds of silence in public schools during which students may pray (but are not taught prayer practices) will direct their virulence to schools that teach repackaged Hinduism to students.

And in the interest of fiscal transparency and accountability, I hope some public watch dogs will find out how much local, state, and/or federal money is lining the pockets of the Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education.


https://illinoisfamily.org/education/california-middle-schools-promote-hindu-religious-practice-of-transcendental-meditation/

Government restrictions on religion increasing worldwide

DAVID CRARY
AP
July 15, 2019

NEW YORK (AP) — Government restrictions on religion have increased markedly in many places around the world, not only in authoritarian countries, but also in many of Europe’s democracies, according to a report surveying 198 countries that was released Monday.

The report released by the Pew Research Center, covering developments through 2017, also seeks to document the scope of religion-based harassment and violence. Regarding the world’s two largest religions, it said Christians were harassed in 143 countries and Muslims in 140.

This was Pew’s 10th annual Report on Global Restrictions on Religion. It said 52 governments, including those in Russia and China, impose high levels of restrictions on religion, up from 40 governments in 2007. It said 56 countries in 2017 were experiencing social hostilities involving religion, up from 39 in 2007.

Pew said the Middle East and North Africa, of the five major regions it studied, had the highest level of government restrictions on religion, followed by the Asia-Pacific region. However, it said the biggest increase during the 2007-2017 period was in Europe, where the number of countries placing restrictions on religious dress — including burqas and face veils worn by some Muslim women — rose from five to 20.

Among other measures in 2017, Austria enacted a ban on full-face veils in public spaces, and Germany banned face veils for anyone driving a motor vehicle or working in the civil service. In Switzerland, voters in two regions have approved bans on face veils, and voters nationwide backed a ban on the construction of new minarets.

In Spain, according to the report, some municipal governors have introduced bans on burqas and face-covering veils, and have also restricted public preaching and proselytizing by such groups as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Circumcision of boys also has been an issue in Europe. Muslim and Jewish groups in Germany and Slovenia have complained of government officials interfering in their religious traditions by trying to criminalize circumcision for nonmedical reasons.

Globally, among the 25 most populous countries, those with the highest level of government restrictions were China, Iran, Russia, Egypt and Indonesia, the report said. The lowest levels of restriction were in South Africa, Japan, the Philippines, Brazil and South Korea.

In terms of government harassment of religious groups, Pew said the phenomenon was most pronounced in the Middle East-North Africa region, but two examples from Asia were highlighted. The report noted that hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims were sent to reeducation camps in China, while in Myanmar there were large-scale abuses against the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority, leading to massive displacement.

Another category in the report was religious harassment by individuals and social groups. The United States ranked among the worst-scoring countries in this category in 2017, in part because of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacist protesters displayed swastika flags and chanted anti-Semitic slogans.

Pew said the biggest increase in religious hostility by individuals occurred in Europe. Victims of violence, in incidents cited in the report, include Jehovah’s Witnesses in Ukraine and a rabbi and a Muslim woman in Belgium.

In Germany, Pew said, there were reports that thousands of refugees were pressured to convert to Christianity after being warned they might otherwise be deported.

Jocelyne Cesari, a professor of religion and politics at the University of Birmingham in Britain, views governmental and societal discrimination against Muslims in Europe as a threat to the broader principles of religious freedom.

She also suggested that headscarf bans and similar laws play into the hands of radical Islamist groups “that build their legitimacy among some segments of the Muslim youth in Europe by presenting the West as the enemy of the Islamic religion.”

Jonathan Laurence, a political science professor at Boston College who has written about Europe’s Muslims, said the continent’s debate over headscarf bans has strengthened the hand of populist parties while failing to bridge social divisions.

“Ironically, headscarf laws that were intended to force integration have instead accelerated the creation of publicly subsidized religious schools where children may wear what they like,” he said in an email.

Religious discrimination and persecution will be the topic of a three-day meeting hosted by the U.S. State Department starting Tuesday in Washington, attended by hundreds of government officials, religious leaders and other participants from all regions of the world.

Previewing the event, Sam Brownback, the U.S. government’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, noted that religions of all sorts are vulnerable to persecution.

“Almost every faith that’s a majority somewhere is a minority somewhere else and often gets persecuted where they’re a minority,” Brownback said at a State Department briefing. “So that’s why a big part of our effort is to get the faiths to come together and to stand for each other.”

“We’re not talking common theology here — nobody agrees on theology,” he added. “We’re talking about a common human right.”

Pew’s annual reports are compiled by researchers who annually comb through numerous sources of information, including annual reports on international religious freedom by the State Department and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as publications by European, U.N. bodies and nongovernmental organizations.

https://www.apnews.com/3f554ea6fe6a42c08c0618745eee8c2b

Don't talk (too much) about religion at work

A British judgment on preaching to colleagues and clients

ERASMUS
The Economist
May 19th 2019

BY HER own lights, Sarah Kuteh was evidently convinced that she was doing the right thing. But some of the patients who were interviewed by this devoutly Christian nurse, as they were being prepared for big operations, felt disturbed by her insistence on bringing up her beliefs. One man, facing cancer treatment, said she offered him a Bible and induced him to sing part of a Biblical Psalm with her. It felt like a scene out of Monty Python, an old British comedy show, he complained later.

This week a British employment-law judge reaffirmed that a hospital in the south-east of England had been acting within its rights when it dismissed Ms Kuteh after she persisted, despite warnings, in having rather assertive religious conversations with patients. (It was sometimes part of her job to ask patients what religion, if any, they professed, but she had been told to keep such enquiries very brief.) The verdict was a nuanced one, though, which made clear that its aim was not to ban all talk of religion from the workplace.

In Britain and most other democracies, law and jurisprudence have tried to achieve a careful balance between two things: first, upholding freedom of speech, and the freedom to practise and indeed advocate one’s beliefs; and second, people’s desire to be protected from unwanted or even bullying proselytism, especially when they are in vulnerable situations. Also part of the mix is the natural concern, and indeed duty, of employers to avoid religious discord in the workplace.

In Europe, a conditional right to proselytise (in the sense of advocating the truth of one’s religion) was affirmed by a famous judgment of the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, the so-called Kokkinakis case, adjudicated in 1993. As was to be expected, lawyers for Ms Kuteh brought up that case, which vindicated a Greek Jehovah’s Witness. (He had been convicted of illegal proselytising, a criminal offence in Greece, after engaging a woman neighbour in a religious discussion which she found confusing; her husband, an Orthodox church chanter, went to the police.)

But as this week’s British ruling observed, the Kokkinakis verdict had made an important distinction between “bearing Christian witness” and “improper proselytism”. As the Strasbourg verdict specified, the latter might take the form of “offering material or social advantages with a view to gaining new members for a church or exerting improper pressure on people in distress or in need; it may even entail the use of violence or brainwashing.” And on the face of things, “exerting improper pressure on people in distress or in need” is a rather accurate description of the activities that were at issue in Ms Kuteh’s case.

In the United States, where religious faith and the sanctity of free speech are generally held in higher regard than in some parts of Europe, there is a similar struggle to achieve a balance. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that upholds anti-discrimination law, warns employers that if one worker is allowed to preach aggressively to another, that can give the targeted worker grounds to sue the bosses for allowing a hostile work environment. But in practice that doesn’t preclude a bit of casual chat about matters of belief over the water-cooler.

Apart from the constitution, the key legislation in America is the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which tells bosses to give “reasonable accommodation” to their workers’ religious needs as long as doing so does not bring about “undue hardship” for the firm or organisation. A worker who creates an atmosphere of sectarian strife, or falsely implies to the world that an employer is associated with a particular faith, could certainly be accused of causing “undue hardship”, the case law suggests. This implies that a discreet religious sign at a workstation deep inside a building is okay, but a receptionist putting the same sign above the desk seen by everybody entering the premises would be out of line.

A landmark case in 1996 upheld the dismissal of a devoutly Christian worker at a firm in Richmond, Virginia, after she told her supervisor to “get right with God” and warned a subordinate that she was sinning gravely by conceiving a child out of wedlock. But gentler religious language, such as wishing fellow workers a “blessed day”, has been found to be permissible.

In American cases where the employer is the government, another consideration comes into play: the constitutional ban on the state establishment of any particular faith. In recent times this has been interpreted quite broadly to bar any overt identification by any agency of the state, whether administrative or judicial, with a particular metaphysical viewpoint. So in a case from 2001, when a nursing consultant in Connecticut was dismissed for her habit of preaching on the job, the state’s Health Department successfully used the argument that its employees had to present a religiously neutral face to the world.

But bosses looking for a simple rule of thumb to handle religious issues in the work-place won’t find one. International human-rights norms, including the European Convention on Human Rights, affirm the right to manifest one’s beliefs, in public and private. Given the harsh persecution which rages in many parts of the word, that is not a trivial entitlement. But as is noted by Tom Heys, an employment laywer with the London firm of Lewis Silkin, “There is often a fine line between…the manifestation of a belief and its inappropriate promotion.”

https://www.economist.com/erasmus/2019/05/19/dont-talk-too-much-about-religion-at-work

Are yoga and mindfulness in schools religious?

Candy Gunther Brown

The Conversation - Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University
May 13, 2019

Disclosure statement

Candy Gunther Brown has received research funding from organizations that include the Lilly Endowment, Packard Foundation, Louisville Institute, Mellon Foundation, and John Templeton Foundation, and compensation from law firms representing school districts for expert witness service.

Indiana University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

The number of U.S. children age 4 to 17 practicing yoga rose from 2.3% to 8.4% – or from 1.3 million to 4.9 million – between 2007 and 2017, federal data show. The number of children meditating rose to 3.1 million during the same period.

The rise is due in part to more yoga and mindfulness programs being established in America’s schools. A 2015 study found three dozen different yoga organizations offering yoga programs in 940 K-12 schools.

Yoga and mindfulness could become the fourth “R” of public education. But up for debate is whether the “R” in this case stands for relaxation or religion.

As a professor of religious studies, I have served as an expert witness in four public-school yoga and meditation legal challenges. I testified that school yoga and meditation programs fit legal criteria of religion.

In one case, the court agreed that yoga “may be religious in some contexts,” but ultimately concluded that the school district’s yoga classes were “devoid of any religious, mystical, or spiritual trappings.” In two other cases in which I testified, yoga and meditation based charter schools were found to violate a state law prohibiting public schools from providing “any religious instruction.”

My research and experience leads me to believe that there are problems with how yoga is being implemented in schools. My goal is not to ban yoga or mindfulness from school settings. But I believe there are legal and ethical reasons to work toward greater transparency and voluntary participation in yoga.
A question of religion

Although many Americans believe that yoga and mindfulness aren’t religious, not everyone accepts that the practices are completely secular.

My new book, “Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?” examines these issues. The book argues that integrating yoga and mindfulness into public schools could violate laws against government establishment of religion.

The Yoga Alliance, an organization that purports to be the the “largest nonprofit association representing the yoga community,” argued in 2014 that DC yoga studios should be exempt from sales tax because the purpose of yoga is “spiritual rather than fitness.” However, when parents sued a California school district in 2013 alleging that its yoga program violates the prohibition against the state establishment of religion, the Yoga Alliance rebutted that yoga is exercise and “not religious.” Thus, the Yoga Alliance seems to take the position that yoga is spiritual but not religious. Courts have not, however, made this distinction.

In some legal cases the courts have concluded that yoga and meditation are religious practices. A 1988 Arkansas case known as Powell v. Perry, for instance, concluded that “yoga is a method of practicing Hinduism.” The 1995 Self-Realization Fellowship Church v. Ananda Church of Self Realization case classified the “Hindu-Yoga spiritual tradition” as a “religious tradition.”

The 1979 Malnak v. Yogi case defined Transcendental Meditation as a “religion” and therefore ruled that an elective high school Transcendental Meditation class was unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that public schools may not endorse religious practices such as prayer and Bible reading, even if kids are allowed to “opt out.” The Court ruled that practicing religion in the classroom is coercive because of mandatory attendance, teacher authority and peer pressure.
Mindfulness = Buddhism?

“Mindfulness” likewise does “double duty.” It sounds like merely “paying attention.” However, promoters of mindfulness, such as Jon Kabat-Zinn, say they use it as an “umbrella term” as a “skillful” way to introduce Buddhist meditation into the mainstream.

In a Buddhist Geeks podcast, Trudy Goodman, founder of Insight LA and a mindfulness teacher, speaks of mindfulness as “stealth Buddhism,” noting that secularly framed classes “aren’t that different from our Buddhist classes. They just use a different vocabulary.”

Founder of Yoga Ed. Tara Guber has admitted to making semantic changes to get her program into a school district where some parents and school board members objected to it, arguing that it was teaching religion. Guber spoke of how yoga can “shift consciousness and alter beliefs.”

Some research shows that yoga and mindfulness have spiritual effects even when they are presented secularly.

One study found that over 62 percent of students in “secular” yoga changed their primary reason for practicing. “Most initiate yoga practice for exercise and stress relief, but for many, spirituality becomes their primary reason for maintaining practice,” the study states.

I propose that respect for cultural and religious diversity can best be achieved through an opt-in model of informed consent. That is to say, it may be constitutional for yoga and mindfulness to be available on school grounds, but students should be able to choose to get into the programs, not – as I point out in various cases in my book – be forced to take extra steps just to get out.

Students and their parents must be given enough information about offered programs – including risks, benefits, alternatives, and potential effects – to make an informed choice about whether to participate.

https://theconversation.com/are-yoga-and-mindfulness-in-schools-religious-115620

Potential draftees turning to Jehovah's Witnesses

Kim Hyun-bin
The Korea Times
November 6, 2018

The Supreme Court's ruling on conscientious objection to military service last week is bringing an "unexpected" side effect ― a growing interest in the Jehovah's Witnesses, a religion whose adherents refuse to perform the mandatory commitment.

Since the top court acquitted Oh Seung-hun, a Jehovah's Witness who refused to serve in the military, Thursday, questions on how to join the religion have been flooding internet portal sites.

In South Korea, all able-bodied men are required to serve in the military for at least 21 months as the country is technically at war with North Korea, but the ruling is believed to have paved the way for conscientious objectors, mostly Jehovah's Witnesses, to legally avoid military service. 

Many people are asking questions to beat the system by using the ruling.

"I am asking in a hurry because I can be exempt from military service. How can I register myself as a Jehovah's Witness?" a person wrote on a website. "Will I be exempt when I show a certificate showing I am a Jehovah's Witness at my military physical exam?"

Another online user also said he welcomed the Supreme Court ruling, hoping he could legitimately avoid military service by joining Jehovah's Witnesses. He later replied that the religion often stations recruiters near subway stations.

A woman also said she wants to raise her future son as a Jehovah's Witness.

In response, some university students who have not yet completed their military duty raise their voices against those trying to exploit the ruling.

"They are selling their conscience and religion to evade their mandatory military service. This is nonsense," a Yonsei University student surnamed Lim said.

On the other hand, Jehovah's Witnesses say there are obligations that need to be fulfilled to be part of the religion including spending 50 hours a week doing missionary work and not celebrating Christmas and other anniversaries. Someone caught violating the terms will have their religious status revoked. 

"There are other countries including Taiwan, where there are no cases of people registering as Jehovah's Witnesses to evade military service," said Park Jun-young, director of public relations for Jehovah's Witnesses. "The thought of more people joining the religion to evade military service is absurd."

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=258119

Bitter Winter

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China

"In 2018, China was due to appear before the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in Geneva for the Universal Periodic Review, an assessment of the human rights situation all UN member states should submit to every five year. In the same year 2018, XI Jinping moved to consolidate his position as potential president for life in China, and new and more restrictive laws on religion came into force. 2018 is also the year when Bitter Winter starts being published as an online magazine devoted to religious liberty and human rights in China."

"Bitter Winter plans to report on how religions are allowed, or not allowed, to operate in China and how some are severely persecuted after they are labeled as “xie jiao,” or heterodox teachings. We plan to publish news difficult to find elsewhere, analyses, and debates."

"Placed under the editorship of Massimo Introvigne, one of the most well-known scholars of religion internationally, “Bitter Winter” is a cooperative enterprise by scholars, human rights activists, and members of religious organizations persecuted in China (some of them have elected, for obvious reasons, to remain anonymous). It is independent from any religious or political organization, serving an international audience, although gladly welcoming the cooperation of many, and the fruit of volunteer work by those who work on it , although donations are gladly accepted."

https://bitterwinter.org/

EU court says Jehovah's Witnesses must comply with data privacy laws in door-to-door preaching

Foo Yun Chee

REUTERS
July 10, 2018

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Jehovah’s Witnesses must obtain consent from people before they take down their personal details during door-to-door preaching in order to comply with EU data privacy rules, Europe’s top court ruled on ... [July 10th].

The case arose after Finland in 2013 banned Jehovah’s Witnesses from collecting personal data during door-to-door visits.

The U.S.-based Christian denomination, which says it has more than 8 million followers worldwide, challenged the decision, saying that its preaching should be considered a personal religious activity and as such the notes taken down during such visits are also personal.

A Finnish court subsequently asked the Luxembourg-based Court of the Justice of the European Union (ECJ) for advice, which said on Tuesday that such religious activity is not covered by exemptions granted to personal activity.

“A religious community, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, is a controller, jointly with its members who engage in preaching, for the processing of personal data carried out by the latter in the context of door-to-door preaching,” judges said.

“The processing of personal data carried out in the context of such activity must respect the rules of EU law on the protection of personal data.”

Under EU data protection rules, a controller determines how and why the personal data is processed.

Jehovah’s Witnesses differ from mainstream Christianity in a number of their beliefs, including rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity and opposing blood transfusions and military conscription.

(Additional reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

http://www.euronews.com/2018/07/10/eu-court-says-jehovahs-witnesses-must-comply-with-data-privacy-laws-in-door-to-door-preaching

China Jails Six Protestants in Yunnan Amid Massive Crackdown on 'Evil Cult'

Radio Free Asia
January 18, 2018

Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan have jailed a group of Protestant Christians for for up to 13 years for involvement in an “evil cult,” their lawyer said on Thursday.

The Yun County People’s Court near Yunnan’s Lincang city handed down a 13-year jail term to Ju Dianhong, 12 years to Liang Qin, and four years to Yang Shunxiang, defense attorney Xiao Yunyang told RFA.

Shorter jail terms were also handed down to Zhang Hongyan, Zi Huimei and Zhang Shaocai, the lawyer said.

The six Protestant church followers had been found guilty of “using an evil cult to organize to undermine law enforcement,” he said.

“The judges in Yunnan were really evil,” Xiao said. “They didn’t pay any attention to the arguments that no illegal acts had been committed, and that there was no harm of any kind to society.”

He said the defendants, who have denied being part of a controversial house church group called the Three Grades of Servants, have said they will appeal the sentences.

The sentences come amid a crackdown in Yunnan on the Three Grades of Servants group, which has been designated an a dangerous cult by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Some 200 Christians have been detained in the province and falsely accused of being members, according to the U.S.-based Christian rights group ChinaAid.

'Do good deeds'

Ju told the the court during her trial that she has nothing to do with the Three Grades of Servants church.

“I am a Protestant Christian believer, and I believe in Jesus,” Ju said. “None of my evangelism has contravened any of the principles in the Bible, and my beliefs do not constitute an evil cult.”

“I never preached about the Day of Judgement, and all of my books are available in the Three Self Patriotic Association [of government-backed churches bookstore.],” Ju said. “All I ever wanted to do was resolve conflict and do good deeds.”

Defendant Liang Qin meanwhile denied taking part in the Three Grades of Servants cult, saying she has never committed a crime, nor caused any harm to society.

She also denied following the teachings of sect founder Xu Shuangfu’s group, which has been targeted by Beijing as an evil cult second only to the Buddhism and qigong-based Falungong.

Xu has been arrested more than 20 times and has spent more than 20 years in prison. His group claims millions of followers.

Lawyers threatened

Yunnan authorities also notified the detainees’ defense lawyers that they are suspected of "illegally" defending their clients and that their licenses to practice will be subject to review, they said.

Defense attorney Li Guisheng told RFA in a recent interview that lawyers representing a similar group of Christians in Yunnan’s Fengqing county had had their status as defense lawyers revoked by the court ahead of their clients’ trial.

“Yun county and Fengqing county are acting together on this,” Li said. “The families went and hired another six lawyers, but the court revoked their status too, just before the trial.”

“There are two rights at stake here, the right of the clients to a legal defense, and the right of the lawyers to carry out their profession,” he said.

One of the revoked attorneys, Fan Shiwen, confirm the report.

“According to my knowledge, there aren’t any lawyers involved in the case now,” Fan said. “The authorities are doing this because they know that the lawyers will be able to prove in court that their clients have done nothing illegal.”

Meanwhile, the Yunnan High People’s Court rejected appeals from Li Shudong, Li Meihua, and Peng Zhenghua, who were sentenced last June in Yunnan’s Shaotong on charges related to participation in an “evil cult.”

“We have had a decision in the appeals in the Shaotong case. They were rejected,” Xiao said.

Religious persecution

ChinaAid president Bob Fu meanwhile said the crackdown in Yunnan is a form of religious discrimination and persecution.

"This is a historical, massive case of pure religious persecution against peaceful, independent house church Christians," Fu said in a statement on his group’s website.

"The large number of arbitrary arrests and extremely harsh, long sentences imposed on these young church leaders under the guise of being 'anti-evil cult' shows that [Chinese President] Xi's regime has no interest in respecting its citizens' freedom of religion or belief.”

“We call upon the Chinese leaders to immediately release these leaders and make proper amends to those who have been arbitrarily detained and tortured,” Fu said.

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA’s Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/protestants-01182018110902.html