This week in persecuted church history (June 14-20)

Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
Hebrews 13:7b (ESV)

June 14, 2007: As Hamas and Fatah factions battle for control of Gaza, a Catholic convent and the adjacent Rosary Sisters School near a major security headquarters are ransacked, burned and looted. Furniture is destroyed, images and books burned and computers stolen.

June 15, 1215: King John signs the Magna Carta, which begins, “The Church of England shall be free.”

June 15, 1520: In the papal encyclical "Exsurge Domine," Leo X condemns Martin Luther on 41 of counts of heresy, branding him an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. After the encyclical, Luther's works were burned in Rome.

June 17, 1963: The U.S. Supreme Court rules 8-1 that states cannot require the recitation of the Lord's Prayer or Bible verses in public schools.

June 17, 2002: Stephen Boissoin, a youth pastor in Red Deer, Alberta acting on his religious beliefs, publishes a letter to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate expressing his concerns over homosexual activism in public school.  This results in a complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission which eventually bans him from ever making a public statement on homosexuality again.

June 17, 2007: Approximately forty Muslim men armed with guns, axes and wooden  sticks attack believers while they are preparing for an evangelistic meeting at a Salvation Army church in the village of Bismillahlpur Kanthan, 20 miles from Faisalabad, Pakistan.

June 19, 1987: The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Louisiana law requiring public schools to teach creationism if they taught evolution.

(sources: Christianity Today, The Voice of the Martyrs)

Prayer: “Grant that we, who now remember these before thee, may likewise so bear witness unto thee in this world, that we may receive with them the crown of glory that fadeth not away; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” – taken from The Book of Common Prayer, Canada (1962)