This week in persecuted church history (July 26 - August 1)

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

July 26, 1869: England's Disestablishment Bill is passed, officially dissolving the Church of Ireland. It is from this act that we get the English language’s longest word "antidisestablishmentarianism," which was the organized opposition to the legislation.

July 27, 1681: During a bitter struggle between Scottish Episcopalians and Presbyterians, five Presbyterian preachers, Donald Cargill, Walter Smith, James, Boig, William Thomson, William Cuthill, are hanged in Edinburgh. The Church of Scotland became Presbyterian permanently in 1690.

On July 27, 2005: The village head of Bandung, Indonesia gives notice to six house church congregations that, effective on July 31, the houses can no longer be used for worship. On the morning of July 31, a mob of forty to fifty Muslims, armed with machetes, clubs and sickles, march to each house church and paint on the door, "Forbidden to Use for Christian Sanctuary."  The pastors all managed to flee before the mob arrived.

July 28, 2006: A church planter in Kara Kuldza, Kyrgyzstan and his son are surrounded by a large mob opposed to their ministry in the predominantly Muslim community. The church planter suffers broken fingers and severe head injuries in the attack. Both his home and the building where the church meets are ransacked and all of the Christian literature was taken out and burned in the street.

July 29, 2005: Two Christian men are hacked to death by a Muslim mob armed with knives and other sharp weapons after showing the "Jesus Film" in Dhopapara village, Faridpur district, about 150 kilometres southwest of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The two men, Tapan Kumar Roy, 27, and Liplal Marandi, 21, worked for Christian Life Bangladesh, a partner agency of Campus Crusade for Christ International.

July 29, 2006: A large house church building in Che Lu Wan Village, Dangshan Town, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province is destroyed and many Christians arrested and wounded during the confrontation. According to eyewitness reports, the destruction of the church building started at 2:30 PM. Several thousand anti-riot police, military police and government workers along with three hundred military vehicles arrived and surrounded the church building while 10,000 House Church Christians were praying in the building. The police used electric shock batons and anti-riot shields to disperse thousands of Christians. Several hundred Christians were observed to be beaten and some were arrested and taken away by police while they attempted to protect their church building. The church building had been under construction since July 17, 2006 and was almost complete when it was destroyed.

July 29, 2007: A Christian named Amos is killed in the Hosu District, Tamil Nadu, India when two men arrive at his house and interrogate him and his family about his brother, Pastor Paul Chinnaswamy. Amos' wife and mother-in-law tell the men that Amos is a Christian and confirm that he is Pastor Chinnasamy's elder brother. The men then beat Amos with a club and threaten to kill the three small children present if the women do not throw stones at him. Fearing the men, the woman comply.

July 29, 2008: Armed communist rebels stop a mini-bus and murder four Christian male passengers execution-style in Mindanao, Philippines.

July 30, 1718: William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania as a colony for Quakers to enjoy religious liberty, dies.

July 30, 1956: In God We Trust becomes the official motto of the United States by an act of Congress signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

July 30, 2008: Abbas Amiri dies in hospital in the city of Isfahan, Iran as the result of injuries suffered when he was attacked and beaten up by plain clothes security officers on July 17 during a raid on the church meeting in his home. His wife succumbs to her injuries four days later and also dies.

July 31, 2007: The body of hostage, Shim Sung-min, is found, murdered by his Taliban kidnappers in Afghanistan. He was one of the 23 hostages taken hostage on July 19, 2007.

August 1, 1714: The "Schism Bill," which was intended to re-establish Roman Catholicism in England, dies with its chief supporter, Queen Anne. For years, Dissenters regarded the date as a day of deliverance, the "Protestant Passover.”

August 1, 1834: The first Protestant missionary to China, Robert Morrison, dies at age 52. His translation of the Bible, completed in 1823, filled 23 volumes.

August 1, 1897: Pope Leo XIII issues the encyclical Militantis Ecclesiae, which describes Protestantism as the "Lutheran rebellion, whose evil virus goes wandering about in almost all nations.

August 1, 2004: Eleven people were killed in the coordinated bombings of five churches in Baghdad and Mosul, Iraq.

(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)