Evangelical Plan for Nepal

[Guest guest]

Nepal's New Peacemakers - Christianity Today,A Magazine of Evangelical

Conviction

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/37.114.html

- Anto Akkara in Katmandu, Nepal

Posted 2/09/2007

 

When Jyoti Adhikari became a Christian, her husband, who came from a

traditional Hindu family, could not stomach the thought. But Adhikari

didn't flinch, even though her husband divorced her.

 

"I have no regrets. I am rejoicing in the Lord," said Adhikari, who

looks after her teenage son now. Since her conversion, Adhikari has

become a local evangelist, bringing 90 people to faith in this

Hindu-majority nation of 27 million sandwiched between India and China

along the Tibetan border. In other cases, new Christians wait years

before they are reaccepted into their families. In 1984, Jit Ghale, now

a senior pastor, told his parents he wanted to become a Christian. His

parents disowned him. He waited four long years before being welcomed

back. In 1999, Uttam Kumar Pariyar, a member of Nepal's now-abolished

royal privy council, stunned national leaders when he made public his

conversion to Christianity. "They started looking at me like an

outcast," said Pariyar. Hostile council members launched a public

campaign to oust him. "I was determined not to give up my faith in the

Lord," recalled 64-year-old Pariyar. "But King Birendra did not bother

about my conversion and never asked me why I gave up Hindu faith." (The

current king is Gyanendraâ€"brother of Birendra, who was

assassinated in 2001.)

 

Last April, Nepal faced a national crisis with growing protests for

restoration of democracy. One day, Pariyar handed a personal note to the

king, quoting from 1 Peter 5:7â€"11: "Cast all your anxiety on him

because he cares for you." Eventually, the king gave up all political

power. Maoist rebels and the so-called Seven Party Alliance stopped

fighting. Political leaders declared Nepal a secular state - it had

been a Hindu state - and began peace talks. Christian leaders believe

these huge changes will increase religious freedom. Now numbering

250,000, Christians have the opportunity to become voting citizens, not

just subjects of a king. In June this year, a national election will

take place. Seeking Equality and Freedom For All For decades, Nepalese

Christians focused on planting churches and ending religious

discrimination. But they now have an unusual chance to play a growing

national role. "Although the declaration of a secular state did not come

with sympathy to Christians, we consider this a God-given privilege,"

said Simon Pandey, general secretary of National Churches Fellowship

Nepal. "We organized an open-air evangelistic meeting in a public place

for the first time on July 1," he said. "There were over 10,000 people.

It was a big celebration." Previously, it had been impossible for

Christians to convene large public gatherings. Pandey said Christians

are still eagerly waiting for the day "when all religions will be

treated equally," giving Christians and other minority groups the right

to register religious organizations, build churches, and preach freely.

 

Before 1960, Nepal had officially banned Christians from living inside

the country. But reformers changed the legal code. The first Christian

group began in 1959 with 29 members. During the next five decades,

Christianity grew by 10 to 20 percent annually, especially among Dalits

at the bottom of Hindu society, making Nepal one of Asia's most

stunning church growth stories.

Leaders admit this young church faces major challenges, because

seasoned local leaders are rare. Purushotam Lal Manandhar, president of

the National Christian Council of Nepal (NCCN), told CT, "Most of our

members are first-generation Christians and have faced opposition and

even harassment for their conversion from their dear ones."

 

Simon Gurung, a pastor and president of (Katmandu) Valley Christian

Council, said, "I had to face social boycott when I became a

Christian." After he became a pastor, Gurung went around preaching the

Good News in all the ways he could. He was arrested in 1982 and 1990

and kept behind bars for months. Christian growth in rural areas began

in the 1970s. Some years later, Nepal

introduced a parliamentary system, replacing Hindu-dominated village

councils. This liberalizing move also supported religious freedom and

the number of Christians kept shooting upward.

 

Pastor Yam Bahadur Tamang became a Christian as democracy took deeper

root in 1990. "The Hindu people in my village used to stone me when I

passed through their areas," recalled the 32-year-old pastor living in

11th KM Village of Gorkha, 90 miles south of Katmandu. During the last

15 years, Tamang said, the attitude toward Christians in his area has

utterly transformed. Today, the majority of the 350 families in his

village are Christians. The region has become a Christian stronghold

with 20,000 believers.

"Many come to us for healing. Others are impressed by our lifestyle

change," said Tamang. Christians, he said, become a public witness,

leading "exemplary" lives by giving up drinking, smoking, and gambling.

Churches are also becoming visible and attractive examples of equality

and freedom at work within a nation struggling toward political

democracy.

 

In late January, for the second year in a row, a handful of Christian

leaders nationwide prayed together for "lasting peace and democracy" in

their country. Ramesh Khatry, executive secretary of the Association for

Theological Education, a new seminary in Katmandu, organized the event.

But the effort will probably involve fewer than 20 percent of all

Nepali pastors. "The desire for social and political influence is

something that the wider Christian community has been rather slow in

developing," said scholar

Mark Pickett via e-mail. Pickett teaches at the Evangelical Theological

College of Wales and served in missions for 20 years in Nepal.Hindu and

Buddhist.

 

Backlash

Many Christian leaders are still charting their way through a thicket

of cultural and social issues, leaving little time for national- level

engagement. These issues range from scheduling worship on Saturdays,

since Sunday is a workday, to confronting fundamentalist Hindus and

Buddhists who harass Christians. However, there have been cases of

unethical Christian leaders exploiting religious tensions. K. B.

Rokaya, general secretary of the NCCN, told CT that several religious

leaders have been "selling Jesus and getting huge sums from evangelical

groups for real and imaginary conversions." He said some unethical

leaders send photos of village meetings, passing them off as

congregations of new converts. "This is a betrayal of harmony and

tolerance," lamented Rokaya. He cautioned that such activity would only

strengthen fundamentalists.

 

Hindu fundamentalist organizations, including the extremist World Hindu

Council, have held rallies in small towns, demanding that Nepal reassert

its identity as a Hindu nation. Though the campaign has so far evoked

only muted response from the masses,

Hindu extremists have already succeeded in spreading religious unrest in

remote villages. In Gorkha district, pastor Ghale visited rural churches

in late October and told CT that Christian villagers have been given

ultimatums to leave Hindu- and Buddhist-majority villages or forsake

their faith. In Laprak and Gumda villages, churches and Christian homes

have been destroyed.

 

In late December, Maoist rebels staged a one-day strike to demand more

influence over the interim national government. Church leaders worry

that political tensions may worsen in coming months. But a new

organization, Christian Efforts for Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation,

recently announced plans to set up local reconciliation groups, Rokaya

said. They hope to bring villagers together to talk about "peace

building, reconciliation, healing, trauma counseling, and the

inter-religious living together."

 

-------------------Anto Akkara is a journalist based in New Delhi,

India.---------

New Life for Nepal - Hindu monarchy abolished

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/august/1.17.html

Posted 8/01/2006

Christians in Nepal are exulting over the national parliament's

dramatic

decision on May 18 to abolish the monarchy and declare the state

secular, wiping

out its tag as a Hindu kingdom.

"Our joy is beyond words," Simon Pandey, general secretary of National

Churches Fellowship of Nepal (NCFN), told CT. The House of

Representatives'

unanimous vote, he said, will have "far-reaching impact on the life of

the church."

Most notably, Christians can now register their congregations and build

church buildings.

The parliament has also made the king a taxpayer, abolished his privy

council, and stripped him of all executive powers, including command of

the armed

forces.

Massive pro-democracy protests forced King Gyanendra to give up

absolute

power on April 24. He reinstated the parliament he had dissolved four

years ago

and swore in a popular government led by a coalition of opposition

parties.

More than 1 million protesters choked Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, for

three

weeks in April. The king yielded only after 18 democracy protesters

died and

more than 5,000 suffered injuries in clashes with the police and army.

"Things have moved much faster than anyone could dream of," said Kalai

Bahadur Rokaya, general secretary of the National Christian Council of

Nepal

(NCCN). NCCN and NCFN between them account for most of the 1,500 tiny

congregations scattered in the Hindu-majority nation in the foothills of

the Himalayas.

Christians number little more than 700,000 among Nepal's population of

at

least 25 million.

"For the last 10 years, there has been no prayer meeting or worship

service

in our churches without specific prayer for the nation," said Narayan

Sharma,

Gospel for Asia's national leader for Nepal.

Under the Hindu monarchy's constitution, "religious freedom" meant just

the

opposite: "No person shall be entitled to convert another person from

one

religion to another." The constitution also said that "every person

shall have

the freedom to profess and practice his own religion as handed down to

him

from ancient times having due regard to traditional practices." This

effectively

ruled out conversions.

Royal officials strictly enforced this "religious freedom" under the

panchayat (village council) system, in place until 1990. Pastors and

evangelists

risked their lives to preach, with dozens arrested and tortured. The

new

constitution of 1990, which introduced multi-party democracy, reiterated

the ban on

conversions. But officials hardly enforced the measure, and since 1990

churches have flourished.

Amid such freedom, church leaders are cautious about the "religious

anarchy"

the new religious freedom could invite. "Mercenary evangelists will now

go

all-out in their bid to swell their numbers," NCCN's Rokaya cautioned.

"That

could lead to opposition."

Hence, the NCCN has already appealed to the government and Nepal's

political

parties to provide for a "Religious Coordination Ministry" when a

constitution is drafted to suit the new Nepal.