Tag Archives: Cross

Christians In China Put Crosses Back On Churches

The atheist government of China has been removing crosses from church buildings throughout the country for the last few years.

Now, the Christians are pushing back.

A group of protestant churches are putting their crosses back on the buildings in an act of civil disobedience to the government.  Sixteen churches in the cities of Lishui and Fuyang are replacing the crosses.  In some cases, elderly church members are replacing the churches three times a day after the government comes back to take the crosses back down.

Last month, government officials said all crosses in the nation need to come down.  The move is believed to be in response to the exponential growth of the church despite the government’s efforts.

“The central goal of this campaign is to minimize Christianity and to limit its access to ordinary people,” says Bob Fu, director of ChinaAid.

“There’s an enormous struggle across China brought by the rise of worshipers that seem to really believe,” says Terence Halliday, a director of the Center for Law and Globalization in Chicago who has worked in China. “Christianity now makes up the largest single civil society grouping in China. The party sees that.”

A new survey shows that protestant Christians in the country number between 50 and 100 million with about 6 million Catholics.  The ruling party has 70 million members.

Pakistani Businessman Building 140 Foot High Cross

A Pakistani businessman is taking a bold, dangerous stance for Christ by building a 140-foot tall cross in Karachi.

Parvez Henry Gill wants to encourage his fellow Christians not to flee the country in the wake of intense persecution at the hands of Muslims.

Gill, a native of Karachi, describes himself as a property developer and owner of farmland.  He said that God came to him in a dream and told him to do “something good” for the people.

“I said, ‘I am going to build a big cross, higher than any in the world, in a Muslim country,’ ” said Gill, 58. “It will be a symbol of God, and everybody who sees this will be worry-free.”

Gill believes the cross carries a message to the Christians of his city.

“God will protect you. Stay in your country. Don’t be afraid,” the businessman said, according to CBS.

While many religious leaders in Pakistan believe the cross will be seen as a way to encourage interfaith cooperation, former Pakistani ambassador to the U.K. Akbar Ahmed said some radicals will see the cross as a provocation.

“They will say this a challenge to Islam and that it can only be met by destruction,” Ahmed told HuffPost. “It’s a smaller group, but it’s the smaller groups that can inflict a lot of damage.”

While the cross is not the biggest in the world as the Great Cross in St. Augustine, Florida is 208 feet tall, it is still the biggest in a Muslim dominated country.

Arkansas State University Allows Players To Wear Crosses

In a victory for the religious freedom of Christians, Arkansas State University has announced they will allow players to continue to have cross shaped stickers on their helmets to pay tribute to fallen classmates.

The only condition from the school is that the players pay for the stickers themselves and that they personally place them on the helmets.

The stickers, which bare the initials of classmates Markel Owens and Barry Weyer who died in the last year, had been placed on all the helmets as a way for the team to pay tribute.  An anti-Christian attorney in Jonesboro, Louis Nisenbaum, saw one of the players on TV with a cross on his helmet and sent a threatening letter to the school.

After initially saying they would remove the crosses in response to the anti-Christianist, the school relented after student athletes contacted various religious freedom organizations to defend their religious freedom.

“In the interest of allowing our student-athletes to memorialize their fallen colleagues, Markel Owens and Barry Weyer, it is the university’s position that any player who wishes to voluntarily place an NCAA-compliant sticker on their helmet to memorialize these individuals will be able to do so,” University attorney Linda McDaniel wrote.

“This is a great victory for the players of Arkansas State University,” Liberty Institute litigation director Hiram Sasser remarked following the decision. “The university officials and the Arkansas attorney general did the right thing restoring the religious liberty and free speech rights of the players to have the original cross sticker design if they so choose and we commend them for doing so.”

Anti-Christianists Target Indiana Veterans Memorial

A virulent anti-Christian organization is targeting a veteran’s memorial at an Indiana park because it contains a 14-inch tall cross.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources demanding the removal of the cross from the 8-foot-tall statue located in Whitewater Memorial State Park.

“No secular purpose, no matter how sincere, will detract from the overall message that the Latin cross stands for Christianity and the overall display promotes Christianity,” attorney Rebecca Markert wrote on behalf of the anti-Christian group.  “[The cross means] the government only cares about the deaths of Christian soldiers.”

The cross is part of a wooden chainsaw-carved statue that reads “all gave some; some gave all.”

A man who is an Army veteran initially complained about the cross being a part of the tribute.

“I just thought that a memorial to veterans in a veterans’ park didn’t need to be turned into a religious shrine,” Wendell Bias told a local newspaper, despite the fact no worship services have been held at the site.

China Removes More Crosses From Churches

The crackdown on churches in China is ramping up again.

Chinese police in Wenzhou forcibly removed the cross from the top of a local church building.  The members of the church gathered around the fallen cross, weeping and praying for the men who conducted the removal.

The congregants had tried to protect the cross atop Longgang Huai En Church but hundreds of police descended on the building and overwhelmed the church members.  The government said the cross on top violated the city’s ordinance on the height of buildings within the city.

The government workers did make an unusual step in allowing the church members to keep the cross inside their building.

The Chinese government is cracking down on churches in Wenzhou, called the “Jerusalem of China” by local Christians because of the revival of faith in the city.  The International Chrsitian Concern says that the government has not only encouraged local officials to remove crosses from buildings but are offering political promotions to those who succeed in shutting down churches.

Court Rules Against Anti-Christianists Over 9/11 Cross

A federal appeals court has told a group of anti-Christianists that “the cross at Ground Zero” is not an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

The group American Atheists had demanded the cross be removed because it violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

“American Atheists contend that the Port Authority and the foundation impermissibly promote Christianity in violation of the Establishment Clause and deny atheists equal protection of the laws by displaying the cross at Ground Zero in the museum unaccompanied by some item acknowledging that atheists were among the victims and rescuers on September 11,” read the opinion.

“American Atheists acknowledge that there is no historic artifact that speaks particularly to the loss of atheists’ lives or to atheists’ rescue efforts … we conclude that American Atheists’ challenge fails on the merits. Accordingly, we hereby affirm the judgment in favor of appellees.”

The president of American Atheists says it’s not fair that a cross is in the 9/11 Museum and his group can’t put up some kind of tribute to atheists, even though the “cross” wasn’t given by any Christian group but rather discovered as part of the debris of the Twin Towers.

“They’re trying to Christianize 9/11 with this cross and it’s not American and it’s not fair,” said David Silverman.

The anti-Christianist group will likely appeal the decision.

Court Tells Atheists To Explain Why 9/11 Cross Is Offensive

A federal court is telling a group of anti-Christianists to explain why the ground Zero cross is “offensive”, “repugnant” and a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.

American Atheists has been filing suit to have the Ground Zero Cross removed from the National 9/11 Museum in New York.  The court has taken a surprisingly skeptical view of the plaintiffs and their claims of being harmed by the mere existence and display of the cross formed when two beams fell on each other during the collapse of the Twin Towers.

“Plaintiffs’ brief should, at a minimum, clarify both the injuries alleged and legal theories relied on to support standing,” the Second Circuit Court of Appeals asked.  “Further, to the extent plaintiffs allege that they have been ‘injured in consequence of having a religious tradition that is not their own imposed upon them through the power of the state,’ First Am. Compl. because individual plaintiffs view use of the challenged ‘cross, a Christian symbol, to represent all victims of the 9/11 Attacks’ as ‘offensive,’ ‘repugnant,’ and ‘insult[ing]’ to them as atheists, plaintiffs should explain how such offense states a cognizable constitutional injury.”

The anti-Christian group had claimed in their filing that the cross’s existence alienates anyone who wishes to learn about events at the museum.  They also state because the cross is bigger than any other religious artifact at the memorial, it means the government is endorsing Christianity over all other religions.

Historic Christian Church To Be Stripped Of Crosses; Turned Into Mosque

A church in upstate New York that once held designation as a historical landmark will now be stripped of that designation and have the crosses on the building ripped down so that a Muslim group can turn the building into a mosque.

The Syracuse History Preservation Board has given permission to the Muslim-driven North Side Learning Center to destroy six crosses that were placed at the top of the century-old building.

German immigrants seeking freedom of worship built the church.

The Catholic Church closed the church in 2010 because of decreasing attendance, merging the congregation with another parish.  The building still had been designated as a historic landmark by the city after the closure.

A spokesman for the city said that the city did not have an opinion on the loss of the historic status for the building, saying that they wouldn’t stop the destruction of the crosses because it would inhibit the worship of the Muslims.

Atheists Seek To Remove Cross From 9/11 Museum

A group of atheists is trying to force the 9/11 Museum to remove the “Miracle Cross” because they say its existence in the museum violates the Constitution. 

The “Miracle Cross” is a 17-foot cross-shaped beam that was found in the rubble of 9/11.  The cross was displayed at Ground Zero and many workers on the site considered it a source of comfort and hope in the midst of the death and destruction.

The anti-Christian group American Atheists says the cross is part of religious history, not American history, and says that its existence in the 9/11 Museum that opens in May violates the separation of church and state.

The Museum is on land owned by the Port Authority and financed by taxpayers.

The atheist group says that if the cross is displayed, that his group wants a similar item such as a plaque that reads, “atheists died here too.”

Federal Judge Reena Raggi appeared to be skeptical of the claims by the atheists.

“There are countless cases of museums including religious artifacts in their exhibits and it’s going to be described in a way that talks about the history of the object,” Judge Raggi said.  “What is the problem here?  An argument has been made that you’re trying to censor history.”

A ruling is expected in several months.

Anti-Christian Group Threatens Grieving Mother

An anti-Christian group threatened to sue the grieving mother of a young man killed in an accident because she placed a cross at the accident site.

AnnMarie Devaney set up the cross after her son, a Christian, was killed when a car struck him as he crossed a street in Lake Elsinore.  The memorial included a 5 foot tall cross because her son was a devoted Christian.

The anti-Christian American Humanist Association threatened to sue unless the cross was removed.  The letter from the anti-Christianists was sent to the grieving mother a week after a judge backed the group’s suit to stop a veterans memorial in the city that would have a cross on it.

Community members rallied around the family and wanted to deliver a message to the anti-Christianists that their bigotry and intolerance would not be tolerated in their town.  Residents created crosses of their own and placed them at the site of the accident saying that the only cross the anti-Christianists demanded removed was the cross of the dead man’s family.

“We did it like a homeschool project to teach (our children) about tolerance and not to be afraid of expressing what you believe,” Holly Alteneder said to the local Press-Enterprise newspaper.