The Evangelical Church of India has several churches, seminaries, and health centers throughout the country. Broadwell Christian Hospital in Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, has cared for the people in the region for 114 years. But when its annual convention in February 2023 drew huge crowds, a local official reported an illegal mass conversion event to the authorities. Doctors, pastors, and other hospital staff came under scrutiny and several were arrested. Officials at an unaffiliated Christian university fifty miles away faced harassment from government officials. The hard evidence? Gideon Bibles had been placed in the hospital wards. According to local police, these are a clear sign of proselytizing, which is illegal under Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion laws. Although some of the Christian doctors and hospital staff were acquitted by India’s Supreme Court in September 2023, others remain in custody.
India is a secular, socialist, democratic republic with a parliamentary system of government. It is also the land of Gautama Buddha, who taught self-denial, and Mahatma Gandhi, who taught nonviolence, and a land where the gospel of Jesus Christ, who taught love of neighbor and enemy, has been preached for two thousand years. For more than seven decades its people have found ways to share a land that today is roughly 80 percent Hindu, 14 percent Muslim, and 2 percent Christian, with Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and others making up the remaining 4 percent.
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