China makes everything - except progress on religious liberty.

Happy New Year?  48 Christians Arrested On New Year's Day.

Landlords are forbidden to rent meeting space to Churches.

Beijing authorities detained 48 members of a large persecuted house church on New Year's Day, marking a total of more than 1,000 church members who have been taken into police custody during the church's 38 weeks of attempting to hold outdoor worship services.
 
"By arbitrarily detaining peaceful religious believers in the capital city on the first day of 2012, Beijing authorities show that they are determined to continue their crackdown on independent religious groups in the coming year," Bob Fu, president of China Aid, said.

"In defiance of universal values and in violation of its own laws and constitution, which guarantees religious freedom, China's communist leaders are walking further down the road of the wrong side of history," said Fu, a former Beijing house pastor who was imprisoned for his beliefs.

Among those taken into custody Jan. 1, 30 were believed to have been released by 10 p.m. and the remainder were held overnight at various police stations across the city, China Aid said. Many other church members had been kept under house arrest beginning Friday, the watchdog group said.

Shouwang Church began meeting outdoors in April after being evicted from its rented meeting space and after authorities prevented the church from gathering in a portion of an office building it had purchased.
The church tried three times to rent three different venues, but Beijing authorities have ordered landlords not to rent to them, China Aid said. 

Police arrest the Christians before the services even start and typically free them within 24 hours. China's Domestic Security Protection Squad has maintained constant surveillance outside the homes of senior church leaders, while police have camped outside the doors of other church members from Saturday night until noon Sunday, when service times technically are over, according to China Aid.

Compass Direct News Service reported that early on Christmas morning church members arrived at a public square only to find it heavily guarded with industrial-strength rails blocking access. Police arrested 41 believers who attempted to worship at the site that day, Compass said.

On the church's Facebook page, one church member said Christians who were detained indoors usually felt sorry for those waiting outside in the cold as they were able to "read books and have fellowship in a warm room," Compass reported.

The Facebook post explained that the believer was interrogated on Christmas Day with an officer taunting him for being afraid to give his home address and threatening to hold him long enough for the man to lose his job, Compass said.

Despite the ongoing persecution and winter weather, Shouwang Church leaders say they plan to continue meeting outdoors until a solution is reached.

God's Justice May Not Be Swift, But It IS Perfect.

Court rules black Baptist Church is the rightful owner of a KKK store.

After a 15-year legal battle:  God = 1, Hate = 0

The Redneck Shop, Laurens, SC

I believe the true definition of irony has to be "God making things right, in His time, as only He knows how."

I also believe in a sense of Divine Justice that, while never quick or apparent enough for my limited tastes, always works out better than I could have ever planned it myself.

Case in point:  after a 15-year legal battle between a church and a white supremacist hate group, the church wins.  To add honey to the victory, the hate group must pay all expenses (and go broke), and then be evicted.

As reported in the Associated Press, A circuit judge ruled last month that New Beginnings Baptist Church is the rightful owner of the building that houses the Redneck Shop, which operates a so-called Klan museum and sells Klan robes and T-shirts emblazoned with racial slurs. The judge ordered the shop's proprietor to pay the church's legal bills of more than $3,300.

But the irony doesn't end there.  Consider the namesake of the South Carolina city in which this battle actually took place.

Since 1996, the Redneck Shop has operated in an old movie theater in Laurens, SC, a city about 70 miles northwest from Columbia that was named after 18th century slave trader Henry Laurens.  Laurens had earned part of his wealth by operating the largest slave-trading house in North America. In the 1750s alone, his Charleston firm oversaw the sale of more than 8,000 enslaved Africans.

Priceless.  As I stated above, God's justice may not be swift but it is perfect.

Ownership of the building was transferred in 1997 to the Rev. David Kennedy and his church, New Beginnings, by a Klansman fighting with others inside the hate group, according to court records. That man, according to Kennedy, was feuding with store proprietor John Howard over a woman and "developed a spiritual relationship" with Kennedy's church, the judge wrote.

But a clause in the deed entitles Howard, formerly KKK grand dragon for the Carolinas, to operate his business in the building until he dies.

Pastor Gerald A. Tucker
New Beginnings Baptist Church, SC

After years of trying to have the property inspected, Kennedy and New Beginnings sued Howard and others in 2008. On Dec. 9, a judge ruled in Kennedy's favor.

It wasn't immediately clear if the judge's ruling would mean Howard must close the shop. Howard hung up on a reporter when asked about the shop's status, but an outgoing message on the shop's answering machine said it's only open one morning a week.

Howard has defended his business in the past.

"If anything turns people off, they shouldn't come in here," Howard told The Associated Press in 2008. "It's not a thing in here that's against the law."

The Redneck Shop has been the target of protests and attacks from the start. A few days after it opened, a Columbia man crashed his van through the front windows and was charged with malicious damage to property. High profile black activists have staged several protests outside the store, and Kennedy has regularly picketed there as well.

Kennedy has a long history of fighting racial injustice. He protested when a South Carolina county refused to observe the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and he helped lobby to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome.

Kennedy said Tuesday his congregation was elated by the judge's decision, which he said he had already discussed with local police in hopes of being able to visit and inspect the property this week.

"It has been a long time coming," said Kennedy, who learned of the ruling this week. "We knew we had done everything right. ... The court knows that we have suffered."

Kennedy said his congregation's numbers have decreased in recent years as some of its 200 members became fearful of reprisals from Klan members. Nazi and Confederate symbols have been tacked to the door of the double-wide mobile home where New Beginnings now meets, Kennedy said, and dead animals have been left at the building.

"A lot of people became so afraid," Kennedy said. "I just told them that it is part of our faith to endure."

Amen, Pastor.  Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  So we may boldly say: “ The LORD is my helper; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?”  (Hebrews 13:5-6)

Every time I encounter a story like this, I am reminded that God's justice is perfect.  I am reassured that God is always present in everything we do.  And I am humbly reminded that whatever "justice" I could have thought to visit on such a vile business as The Redneck Shop, nothing I could have done could have ever come close to this end result.

I truly believe 2012 is going to be an awesome year for all God's children.  With your help, our combined efforts can, and will, be successful for our Lord.  Thank you, and God Bless you!