Christianity flourishes in India despite attacks

BANGALORE, India — Anyone wanting a seat at the Full Gospel Assembly of God Church here must show up early Sunday morning to get past the milling crowds and beggars outside the front entrance.

Full Gospel symbolizes what is schizophrenic about Christianity in India: It is prosperous in some places and persecuted in some states. High-tech Bangalore is in Christianized southern India, which may be why Full Gospel is one of the country’s fastest-growing congregations.

It is impressive even by American megachurch standards. It has 12,000 members, a dozen assistant pastors and 15 services each weekend in several languages. Its Sri Lankan pastor, Paul Thangiah, 47, copies the mannerisms and accouterments of American preachers — even to the plexiglass pulpit and potted plants.

“Let India be washed by the blood of Jesus Christ,” he prays as a boisterous English-language service gets under way in sweltering heat.

Many church programs

Full Gospel, located in the well-to-do Indiranagar suburb in India’s third-largest city, has a feeding program for widows and street children; driving classes for unemployed boys hoping to be taxi drivers and a women-only prayer group on Wednesday mornings.

The latter, the pastor explained in an interview, was established so non-Christian women can sneak out of the house on a weekday when their husbands are at work. “Hindu women don’t want their husbands to know,” he said.

Converts make up 50 percent of the church’s members, and the pastor is proud he receives no money from abroad. He likes to relate how, when he wanted to build a home for the aged, he raised 50,000 rupees (about $1,100) on a single Sunday morning.

Not only are the poor joining the church, so are the well-to-do, and Mr. Thangiah is not above introducing several of Bangalore’s more influential businessmen to foreign visitors. His church has expanded by 2,000 members since last year, a 20 percent growth.

“We cannot stop from preaching the Gospel,” he said before dashing out the door to preach. “Hindus are looking for the supernatural to happen.”

Officially, Christians comprise 2.3 percent of India’s more than 1 billion population. Unofficially, he insists, the number is closer to 8 percent.

Site lists attacks

But Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), also based in Bangalore, paints a picture far from rosy. He oversees a Web site (http://persecution.in) that lists hundreds of reported attacks around the country against Christians, many from Dalit (untouchable) and tribal backgrounds, who have been murdered, raped and had their homes and churches destroyed. Rarely are the perpetrators caught, much less punished, the Web site claims.

Featured on the Internet site is an account of the Nov. 21 gunning down by Islamist militants of GCIC’s Kashmir coordinator, Bashir Tantray, in front of his parents’ home in Baramulla, Kashmir. The father of four children, he was a social worker who had received several death threats from Muslims because of his work with local churches.

Claims made on the Web site could not be independently verified.

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