'Save our soldiers from religion'

Religion is spreading 'like a cancer' among the armed forces of North Korea, according to this story from AsiaNews. Don't delude yourself that it couldn't happen here. Carol Sarler, writing in today's Times, is by no means a lone voice in bewailing the manifold sins and wickedness of religion in the UK. Sarler and Dawkins should take note of the apparent truth that nothing propels a religion, in particular Christianity, to success like persecution. North Korea is just one example. It is a 'closed' country and Open Doors has been running a three-year prayer campaign. 'The goal is to have at least 1,008 prayer warriors, who each pray for ten minutes a week,' the website says. The cancer warning reads like a sign the campaign is working just a little bit too effectively. Earlier this week, we reported a British Library Mori poll that showed how death inspires faith.

According to AsiaNews' Joseph Yun Li-sun, a booklet prepared by the Propaganda Department of the North Korean Army titled Saving Our Soldiers from the Threat of Religion acknowledges that religion is spreading among soldiers and orders that it be eradicated without delay.

He writes: 'Religion 'is spreading like a cancer inside North Koreaâ's armed forces, whose mission is to defend Socialism;' for this reason it must be eradicated without delay since it comes from our enemies from around the world, this according to a booklet prepared by the Propaganda Department of the North Korean Army titled Saving Our Soldiers from the Threat of Religion. A copy reached a member of the Committee for the Democratisation of North Korea, a group of political exiles and refugees that had it translated and released.

We should not look, listen, read the documents, broadcastings and video or audio materials made by the enemy. The enemy is using radio and TV to launch false propaganda through well-made, strategic news and intrigue,' the booklet warned.

'They are placing spies within international delegations entering our borders to spread their religions and superstitious beliefs and win our citizens over to their side. [. . .]

'Religion and superstition are like poison that corrupts socialism and paralyses class consciousness. Our soldiers must, more than ever, instigate a revolutionary awakening to defy the enemies' manoeuvres.'

Religious worship is allowed in North Korea as long as it is the personality cult of Kim Jong-Il and his father, the late Kim Il-Sung.

Followers of traditional religions have obstacles to surmount, especially Buddhists and Christians, such as joining Communist Party-controlled organisations.

Those who do not join are persecuted, often brutally and violently. Anyone engaged in any kind of missionary activity is the recipient of a similar treatment.

Since the end of the Korean War in 1953 about 300,000 Christians have disappeared in North Korea - any priest or nun who was alive then has disappeared, most likely persecuted to death.

About 100,000 are surviving in labour camps with hunger and torture as their main companions and, for some, with death just around the corner.

This is corroborated by former North Korean officials and ex prisoners who have said that Christians in the camps are singled out for especially harsh treatment.'

North Korea is a true humanitarian tragedy on a massive scale. It is little known about because the Stalinist state is so closed. So much easier, isn't it, to persecute nice, open, honest, Catholic, middle-class people like the McCanns than address more complex human rights abuses elsewhere in the world. I'll be praying for them and for the suffering masses in North Korea tonight.

See more on North Korea from AsiaPundit, from which the sweet tourist pic of two North Korean children is taken.

Meanwhile, in South Korea, where Christianity is burgeoning to be Christian and from where missionaries have been targeting Muslims for evangelisation, Catholics have seen fit to pelt the car of their Cardinal Archbishop with eggs and rubbish. Catholic Online has the reason why.

Comments

[Geoffrey Smith]

To paraphrase something written by Robin Bather: Their spirituality will out; it's in their nature.

[John]

Speaking of soldiers and religion.
There is an ongoing religious war within the all layers of the USA military too.

A war being conducted by fundamentalist Christian "true believers" with their binary "certainties" against quite literaaly, everyone else. Those who arent religious, those who are religious but not Christian, and those who are Christian but much more liberal and ecumenical in their outlook on things altogether.

This war has its approval, and even backing, from within high levels of the Bush administration--perhaps even the prez himself. It is also very much related to the end-time (armageddon) cultural script that mis-informs USA politics in the Middle East and USA politics altogether. The politics (or rather psychosis) of the coming "rapture".

[Barry Henderson]

Ruth Gledhill says "Sarler and Dawkins should take note of the apparent truth that nothing propels a religion, in particular Christianity, to success like persecution." with the implication that religion is somehow being persecuted in Britain. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, Christians and Muslims love to cry 'persecution' - and they are increasingly doing so when even the mildest criticism is aimed at them and their activities. Dawkins and Hitchens may be portrayed as "fundamentalists" by their enemies, but they have produced reasoned arguments that in no way advocate force or aggression towards religious people. It seems to me that the believers protest too much. But, as Ruth points out, there may be method in their apparent madness.

[Nathan Dale]

When groups of people attack and try to close faith schools, which predate "Governmental Schools;" (even though parents try passionately to get their children into them - parental choice) or ban successful prison rehabilitation schemes because they are Christian; or pass laws which criminalise strong, peaceful beliefs which predate British law and which promote the sanctity of life; or when groups of Christians successfully go out on to the streets to rescue prostitutes and are criticised because they are Christian; or when the leading media outlets promote a general atheistic thinking "Dawkins, Hitchins et al.." and ignore the gentler more thoughtful and philosophically persuasive Christian scholars (could the average man in the street name one?)can you not see why Christians feel... at least a little oppressed?
Read the news columns and the comments without bias, do you not see posting after posting of people aggressively criticising faith, calling Christians foolish, lambasting belief in God as childish? Do you not hear it when Dawkins says: To describe religions as mind viruses is sometimes interpreted as contemptuous or even hostile. It is both.
Would you be happy for us to call you: naive or stupid?
Then people equate our belief in the bible with pink unicorns when the bible has been proven accurate time and again by objective secular historians of the period and modern archaeological evidence. Now add deliberate reinterpretations of the bible and dates of writing of certain books by skeptical scholars because fulfilled biblical prophecies pose something of a problem when attempting discredit Christianity.
If you were to take a more objective perspective of the situation you would see that it is NOT Christians making the headlines - or ramming religion down your throats, but the secular press - story after story tars all beliefs and so believers with the terrorist's paint brush or leads people to attack and deride faith.

Can you not see that Christianity is under some form of attack here in the UK and that non-theists like to equate the average Sunday worshiper with suicide bombers because they both happen to have religion. You don't like the idea that Richard Dawkins is classed as a fundamentalist, or equated with Osama Bin Laden - so don't do the same to us.
Thanks.

[Geoffrey Smith]

Bravo, Nathan! Tell it to them exactly like it is! They'll soon get the message.

[Chris Gillibrand]

One only has to be on the receiving end of foreign jurisdictions in utterly minor civil matters, to fear for the treatment of the McCanns by the Portugese judicial system. Catholics regular in attendance at Mass and in the confessional would never do the things that are being imputed to them or even if God forbid they did, would have given themselves up long ago.

[Wayne]

Well said Nathan!

[hillbilly]

How far has Britian gone from the Wesley's and Spurgeon? About as far as we have here in the US. A true conversion into Christianity is a real relationship with Jesus. Everything else is suspect, such wanting to go to war, oil, power, and the like. Not every Chrsitian in America beleives that God favors the amrican way of life. Comparing a true, born-again Christian to a suicide bomber is a bit of a stretch. People fear what they can't see, and when someone they know becomes converted, it is a scary thing, because they cannot touch, see, taste, feel the conversion. That is the fear. When one trusts in someOne greater than themselves is when the heart begins to change.

[Andrew Brown]

The level of cruelty perpetuated by the North Korean regime against Christians and those of other religious persuasion is truly horrific. I have read reports of elderly Christians being killed in concentration camps by having molten metal poured over them. Just one of the appalling acts of this atheist regime.

Clearly the North Korean government has failed to learn the lessons of its main ally China who also tried to wipe out the Christian Church... it now has a Christian populations in the tens of millions (maybe hundreds?).

As someone once said "Martyrs are the seed of the church." Christians will be around in North Korea long after the current sick regime has become just a distant (if not painful) memory.

[M. Knight]

My daughter and son-in-law have served in the military in the middle east. They are neither agnostics nor evangelicals.
We all incorporate into our being certain ethical principles - some of religious origin, some not. But to paint all military personnel with the same brush of religious sentiment is to apply the same paradigms of beauty across the cultures. I am sick and tired of the "lines drawn" mentality". Please, ask those who serve, not just those who peer in and give comment.