Dear editor,
I wonder if it’s possible to put aside, for two weeks, our discussion of gayness in the church.
I’m curious as to why no comment has been made on the continuing murder of Christians in the Indian state of Orissa where more than 100 chapels, schools, orphanages and medical facilities have been damaged or razed in the last while, thousands of Christians in hiding, the state government still refusing to call upon the Indian Armed Forces where order cannot be restored by inadequate, often partisan police.
I wish we could turn from the environment, from the ever-spiritual topic of Anglican Church of Canada pensions, and all mention of “healing” for just a moment, and think of Bishop B.K. Nayak of the Church of North India, whose diocese of Phulbarni, faces continuing, violence.
Perhaps members of our high-minded, fully literate church could manage one celestial e-mail to the Indian High Commissioner, to the prime minister of India and to the office of the president demanding that the armed forces be dispatched to Orissa forthwith. Amid our tame discussion of ecumenical this, and interfaith that, the thugs have whipped up anti-Christian violence after Maoists assassinated an anti-Christian Swami responsible, the region’s often tribal Christians made scapegoats.
If an e-mail should prove impossible, I feel certain that the subject of Orissa will make suitable fodder for a future conference, symposium or other wingding whose possibly pricey venue can be decided by one committee or another of the godly.
Megan S. Mills
Toronto, Ont.