To Endure Trial

Last week, two nuns in India were arrested on charges of human trafficking and religious conversion, having been surrounded at a train station while meeting three young women whom they’d recently, and legally, agreed to employ. They were accused of “seeking to take the young women away for the purpose of religious conversion,” even though the women (all over 18) had letters of parental consent with them. The nuns have since been released, but not before sparking a national public debate over the state of “religious freedom” in India, the event seeming to be a gross, and blatant, offense against what is technically a constitutional right in the country.

It’s a right that seems only to go so far. While it’s not strictly illegal to be a Christian in India, conversions to the faith, and evangelizing others into it, are banned in many parts of the country. That’s in addition to the persecution carried out by extremist and militant groups, such as the Bajrang Dal, who were responsible for the arrest of these two nuns, and whose activity often comes with the backing or indifference of higher levels of government. The problem is that Christians are such a small minority in the country – making up just 2% of the population – that their persecution often goes unnoticed, or uncared for.

But with India coming in at a population of 1.4 billion people, 2% still amounts to 28 million Christians. The only other country that comes close to that overall population size is China – nation that also restricts freedom of religion in practice, even if not in constitutional principle.

Religious persecution, of course, should not come as a surprise or an indication that something has gone especially off course in the practice or teaching of Christianity. It’s often the other way round – a mark of the truth being witnessed to, of the genuineness of the faith being lived by those who have embraced it.

But it’s important to remember, still, and to pray for the plight of those around the world who suffer for Christ, often under the scourge of violence, imprisonment, and humiliation. “We always pray for you,” Saint Paul writes to the early Christians, undergoing their own forms of persecution, “that our God may make you worthy of his calling and powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose and every effort of faith, that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, in accord with the grace of our God and Lord Jesus Christ.” May it be so for these two Sisters, who suffered quietly and heroically for Jesus, too, and for all those who endure trial for the sake of the Name.

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