It has become yet another heralding of “the most wonderful time of the year.” Along with the temporary inclusion of Bing Crosby and Burl Ives into light rock radio formats, holiday sales, and cheerful family photographs wishing “Season’s Greetings” from the mailbox, every December I have come to expect stories of the ACLU’s persecution of the Christian part of Christmas. So effective has the secular left’s legal onslaught been that now the mere whisper of a threat is enough to pull down the Christmas trees in Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport. And elementary school principles no longer wait for the stray Wiccan parent to complain before they scurry around banning red and green construction paper from decoration activities and “Away in a Manger” from Christmas pageant programs.

So, like clockwork, with the arrival of colder weather also arrives my wounded sense of injustice as one of the majority who worships the Jesus the city of Chicago deemed unfit to portray on film. This year, however, while the stories of the ACLU’s grinchiness remain as ridiculous as ever, I’m having a little trouble mustering up my traditional holiday outrage—and not just because the clerks at Wal-Mart have resumed wishing me “Feliz Navidad” (I live in a Southwestern city.) After a close encounter with believers who daily live Christ’s prediction, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also,” I can’t help but blush a bit at my previous, very vocal indignation.

For almost two-weeks in October, the organization Gospel for Asia (GFA) hosted a small collection of journalists for an informational tour of India . With 54 Bible colleges, 400 Bridge of Hope centers (elementary-level programs for children of Dalits, India’s lowest caste), a radio ministry broadcasting in 102 languages, and a network of over 16,000 native missionaries throughout the country, GFA is in a unique position to provide insight on the state of the Church in Asia.

The common challenge they say all workers in Indian ministry face is violent opposition. These are but a few reports out of the country from the last month alone:

¨ On November 14, villagers in the northeast state of Assam , India forced nine families from their homes for converting to Christianity.

¨ On November 17, students of a GFA Bible School were beaten and threatened with being burned alive by a mob on a road in Uttar Pradesh. All their Gospel literature was burned.

Simon John, a GFA regional director, acknowledges that such incidents are common throughout the Northern region.

¨ On November 21, Bashir Ahmad Tantray was killed by unidentified gunmen for attempting to evangelize in the northern district of Jammu and Kashmir.

¨ On November 30 more than 50 members of an extremist Hindu group stormed a Catholic girls’ school in Karnataka, assaulting several teachers for teaching the Bible to children. Later the same group attacked a Carmelite seminary, desecrating the statue of Our Lady in Karnataka.

¨ On December 7, a 23-year old Anglican charity worker was stoned to death, his body found underneath a pile of rocks in the cemetery of a church in the Dharamasala region of India .

Of course, I am annoyed when I hear that liberal atheists are once again protesting a courthouse crèche—but I likely would be more annoyed to be on the Christian end of any of the above incidents.

Only a handful of such stories even make the news. Meeting with GFA missionaries, pastors, and Bible college students, I heard numerous first-person accounts of sacrifices made to become followers of Christ. Disowned by families, driven from homes, jailed, beaten, and sometimes killed, America ’s version of anti-Jesus hatred seems like petulant child’s play in comparison.

While state-side secularists stir up trouble in the public square, few have shown the temerity to enter our very churches. Not so in India . Gospel for Asia’s church service in Karnataka last Easter was interrupted by masked men who waited for the husbands and fathers in attendance to leave the building before descending on the women and children, beating some to the point of collapse. Earlier in the year, i nsurgents burned to the ground a GFA Believers Church building that was under construction. The fire also destroyed the nearby temporary shelters of GFA missionaries. During another attack on the same building site, Hindu extremists fired 40 rounds of ammunition into the construction area. Miraculously, no one was killed. Continued...