Ukraine: Invasion brings religious hunger, threat of religious restrictions

Posted on March 8, 2022 by Pastor Foley

As the Russian-Ukrainian conflict drags on, some Christians in Ukraine are literally taking their churches underground in an effort to survive missile and artillery attacks, while other Christians have little choice but to seek supplies and safety as temporary refugees in neighboring countries like Poland and Moldova. But both groups of Christians are witnessing some common themes: an upsurge in religious hunger among their fellow Ukrainians, along with a concern that religious restrictions may soon prevent those hungers from being satisfied.

Eastern Ukraine, with the conflict zones of Luhansk and Donetsk indicated.

Always during times of war, people search for hope as much as they search for food and shelter. The Ukraine Bible Society announced last week that they are nearly out of Bibles as a result of the upsurge of spiritual interest among ordinary Ukrainians. That’s why spiritual aid is as urgent to offer as physical aid to people whose lives are disrupted by conflict. Whether they are refugees in a new country or residents in a bomb shelter, whether they are Christian or atheist, people want more than bread and an Internet connection. They want someone to pray with them, cry with them, and help them try to make sense of all the death and destruction.

Voice of the Martyrs Korea is partnering with dozens of local Ukrainian churches, as well as Polish and Moldovan churches along the border with Ukraine, in cooperation with our sister ministry, Voice of the Martyrs Poland. We are supplying both humanitarian and spiritual aid to Ukrainian Christians, as well as Ukrainians who are turning to local churches for help. Voice of the Martyrs Korea sent an emergency transfer of 10,000 USD last week to enable the local churches to immediately meet needs, and we will send additional funds as future donations permit.

Though international media has not reported extensively on the religious dimension of the conflict, it is a subject of considerable discussion among ordinary Ukrainians. Since Russia’s action in Crimea in 2014 and so-called “People’s Republic” forces in Donetsk (DPR) and Lutensk (LPR) gained increasing control of the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, Ukrainians have heard DPR and LPR soldiers say they are fighting for a unified Orthodox state—a Russian Orthodox state.

Russia and Ukraine have by far the largest population of Orthodox believers of any two countries in the world, though a recent bitter split has placed the oversight of those believers under two different leaders and church structures, one loyal to Moscow and the other supported by most of the other Orthodox church bodies around the world.

It is not only the autonomous Orthodox churches that the Russian and DPR/LPR forces regard as enemies. Protestants, though they are comparatively small in number in both Ukraine and Russia, are also facing growing restrictions and difficulties. Protestants are regarded theologically as sects and politically as suspicious because they are rumored to be pro-American and pro-Western, funded and directed by outside forces hostile to the so-called “Russian world”.

When DPR and LPR forces gained control in the Donbas region in 2014, it was natural for anti-Protestant suspicions to coalesce into anti-Protestant policies and laws, similar to ones implemented in Russia during the same period. As a result, for Christians in Eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, underground church life is already an everyday reality.

Protestant Christians in the DPR and LPR have been underground for eight years already. When DPR and LPR forces gained control in the Donbas territory in 2014, they forced Protestant churches to re-register in order to obtain legal status, and, especially in the Luhansk region, they denied most of the re-registration requests. In both the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Donbas they confiscated the Protestant church buildings, and in many cases those buildings are still in use today as barracks and command posts for the DPR and LPR forces.

The constitutions of both the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics give the discrimination against Protestant churches the force of law. Article 22 in both constitutions ban so-called religious “propaganda” that would claim any religion as “superior”—which in practice since 2014 has clearly meant “superior to Russian Orthodoxy”.

Protestant Christians across Ukraine are well aware of the restrictions the Donbas Christians face. They expect that they would be subject to the same restrictions in the event of a Russian victory in Ukraine. But Ukrainian Christians are inspired by the Donbas Christians and look to them as a model of how they can continue to be church regardless of who is in control of the country.

It would be a mistake to conclude that the loss of church buildings and legal status has crippled Protestant Christianity in the Donbas region, or that Christians across Ukraine look at Donbas and think their only hope is to flee Ukraine. We sometimes wrongly assume that the apex of Christian development is found in external things: legal status, church buildings, pastors, and a strong public presence in the community. But if that’s the standard, then none of the churches in the New Testament meet it. Instead, scripture shows us that the apex of Christian development is not found in external things at all, but rather in internal things, namely, Christians being brought to full maturity in Christ, especially in the midst of persecution. That’s what we’ve seen in Donbas as well.

40,000 Action Bibles were distributed to Ukrainian children living in conflict zones in 2021.

Many of the Donbas churches were involved in a Bible distribution project co-sponsored by Voice of the Martyrs Korea last year.

Local Christians distributed 40,000 Action Bible New Testaments to children in conflict zones throughout Eastern Ukraine last year, in a project supported by a coalition of ministries including Voice of the Martyrs Korea, Voice of the Martyrs Canada, Mission Eurasia, and School Without Walls. Some people might say, “Who can distribute Bibles during a war?’ But the answer is: Local Christians can, and they must. Religious hungers are high, and 1 Peter 3:15 tells us that we must always be ready to give an account of the hope within us. And “always” means even during a war.

Voice of the Martyrs Korea is in regular contact with a wide cross-section of Christians across Ukraine and now in neighboring countries where they are living as refugees, through our Russian language Facebook page. Most local Christians are staying in Ukraine, and the ones who are leaving say they plan on coming back as soon as is practicably possible.

Even amidst the conflict and danger, Ukrainian Christians remain focused on their Christian mission.

One of our Facebook subscribers in Kiev had been writing letters to Christian prisoners as a part of our VOMK Prisoner Alert project. As military activity intensified around Kiev, she was concerned that she would not be able to mail the letters. So she asked us to send her drawing to Christians in prison for their faith. We are including it here in response to her request. Please consider printing it out and sending it to Christians prisoners on our list.

A drawing done by a Ukrainian Christian to be sent to Christians imprisoned for their faith. At her request, please print it out and send it to prisoners on our PrisonerAlert list.

The witness of the Donbas underground Christians has prepared and emboldened the Ukrainian church overall. For eight years they’ve showed their brothers and sisters in the rest of Ukraine that it’s possible to be fully church, even when you don’t have a building or legal status, and even when you’re in the middle of a war zone.

Ukrainian Christians in contact with VOMK profess a faith that goes deeper than politics. Part of the aid we are providing Ukrainian Christians, both inside Ukraine and in the refugee areas, is access to our Preparing for the Underground Church series, which was written in English and Korean but has been translated into Russian and made available for free online and through printed copies. It tells Christians how to take their churches underground.

VOMK has also made available to Ukrainian Christians the Russian translation of our book on underground North Korean Christians, called These are the Generations. The Christian from Kiev who sent us the drawing for prisoners also wrote to us about this book right as her area of Kiev was facing bombardment. She said she had read it right before the war started. She wrote, “It was very interesting to learn how people live in North Korea, especially believers. What incredible challenges they face, how brave, hardworking and resilient they are. Praise God for the North Koreans.” Christians in crisis are always encouraged by other Christians in crisis. So in addition to providing the Ukrainian Christians physical bread, we are providing them with underground church spiritual “bread” as well.

Individuals interested in donating to the Ukraine Christian Emergency Relief project can give at www.vomkorea.com/en/donation or via electronic transfer to:
국민은행 (KB Bank) 463501-01-243303
예금주 (Account Holder): (사)순교자의소리
Please include the word “Ukraine” with the donation.

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VOMK partners with NK defectors to prepare “Readers Edition” of Korea’s first Bible

Posted on February 22, 2022 by Pastor Foley
North Korean defector students at Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s Underground University work to update the Ross Bible as part of a “Contemporary Reader’s Edition” marking the 140th anniversary of the first appearance of scripture in Hangul.

2022 marks the 140-year anniversary of the release of the first portion of scripture ever translated into the Korean language: Missionary John Ross’ Gospel of Luke, first published in 1882 and smuggled into Korea from Moukden, China (today’s Shenyang). We at Voice of the Martyrs Korea are currently preparing a “Contemporary Reader’s Edition” of the Ross New Testament with the aid of our North Korean students and constituents. We will be releasing the Gospel of Luke in fall 2022, followed by a Luke/John/Acts trilogy in 2023 and a full Ross New Testament “Contemporary Reader’s Edition” in 2024.

Today, Korean Christians are able to read the Bible in a large number and variety of translations. Sadly, the one Bible that is not available for them to read is the Bible that has been called the foundation of the Korean Church. The Ross Bible was for two decades the only Hangul New Testament available to Koreans, until in 1900 the first edition of the Korean Authorized Version New Testament was published. The Ross Bible was the Bible of the Korean church during its formative period, and it left a permanent imprint on the Korean church in the form of a church that is Bible-centered and lay-driven. God used the Ross Bible powerfully to impart the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ to the first generation of Korean Christians even before missionaries arrived in Korea.

An estimated 15,000 copies of the Ross New Testament were distributed throughout Korea and Northeast China by Korean colporteurs and Bible smugglers before foreign missionaries became established in Korea and decided to develop their own Bible translation. The pioneering missionaries were amazed at the fruit that the Ross Bible produced. In 1889, just four years after he first arrived in Korea, H.G. Underwood wrote, “Applications for baptism are coming to Seoul to-day by the hundreds from all parts of the land where copies of the [John Ross] gospel have been distributed.” That was just one of countless reports the missionaries received as churches sprung up wherever the Ross Bible was distributed, in places the missionaries had not yet visited.

While the official translation committee ultimately decided to create their own translation rather than to revise and continue to use the Ross version, respect for the Ross translation has grown over the years.

The translation committee raised various concerns about the Ross translation, including the possible difficulty of adapting the Pyongan dialect, as well as issues about the use and non-use of Chinese, the spelling, the new Korean words the translators created, and even some questions of translation philosophy. But in 1960 when the translation committee was working on the new translation of the New Testament, a liaison to the committee from the British and Foreign Bible Society, Richard Rutt wrote, “The best piece of [Bible] translation work so far done in Korean was Ross’s”, because of how easy to understand that it was for ordinary Korean people.

Some scholars have even suggested that the reason why the Ross Bible was not adopted by the translation committee was precisely because it was primarily the work of ordinary Koreans, written for other ordinary Koreans. After all, these were not professional Bible translators. Missionary Ross and Missionary McIntyre were still learning Korean. The many Koreans who were involved in the translation were still learning Christianity. In fact, the reason why they came to Ross and McIntyre was to be discipled. And the way that Ross and McIntyre discipled them was to have them help to translate the Bible.

VOMK’s work in creating a “Contemporary Reader’s Version” of the Ross Bible has given all of us who are participating in the project a deep appreciation for how sophisticated Ross’ translation process was. Missionary Ross and his team may not have been professional Bible translators. But when you read the detailed documentation of the steps they went through to ensure both the accuracy and the understandability of the translation, it’s clear that they had a professional process. And when you look at how the Ross translation fundamentally shaped the character of the Korean church, it’s clear that the process was guided by the Holy Spirit.

My own motivation for participating in the project comes from a desire to see that spirit return to the Korean church. Missionary Ross had absolute trust in the sufficiency of scripture to reveal Christ fully. There’s a great story about Yi Song Ha, one of the earliest colporteurs, when he was trying to smuggle Bibles into Korea. He was staying at an inn on the border, and the innkeeper reported to the authorities that he had these books. So Yi had to quickly burn some of the books and then throw the rest in the Yalu River. He was sad and embarrassed to tell this to Missionary Ross. But Missionary Ross responded, “Whoever then drinks the waters of the Yalu or lives in the houses on which fall the ashes of burning Bibles will believe in Christ!” And Ross was right: Christianity spread up and down the banks of the Yalu. Now, with Korean Christianity in sharp decline, we need to recover Missionary Ross’ trust in the word of God. We hope the publication of the “Contemporary Reader’s Edition” can accomplish that goal.

Dr Foley and I have had the goal of publishing a reader’s edition since we started Voice of the Martyrs Korea nearly twenty years ago, but over the years we discovered that it was a project that professional translators and publishers were reluctant to undertake. Some told us there would be little popular interest in the book. Others told us that it might be too controversial to publish it. But to me, when I see Korean Christians reading the Message Bible or the Living Bible or some of the other popular new translations, how can it be that the only place to see a Ross Bible is in a museum and the only people who can read it are scholars of early Korean writings? The Ross Bible is how the voice of Christ first came to ordinary Korean people. Ordinary Korean people deserve to hear that voice again today, exactly as it first sounded—or as close to how it first sounded as possible.

Undertaking the project has required assembling a team and process similar to Ross’. We have foreign missionaries and bilingual staff who are able to read Ross and McIntyre’s English language notes in order to help track down why certain words or phrases were used. We have people who can look at the Chinese versions that Ross’ team used, which is necessary for solving certain translation puzzles.

But the core members of our team are Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s North Korean students and constituents. Since the Ross translation was originally done by Koreans from the north and west parts of the country, ordinary North Koreans of today actually can better understand some of the dialect and vocabulary than professional South Korean translators can.

The Ross Bible project has become the entire curriculum of both of Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s schools for North Korean defectors this year, just as it was for the North Koreans who came to Ross and McIntyre. Now that we’ve been doing the project for a while, it’s easy to see why Missionary Ross discipled North Koreans by having them translate. Many of our North Korean students get completely absorbed in the work of updating the translation. They will work intensely all day and into the evening without taking a break. It’s been the most effective form of ministry we’ve ever done with North Koreans. Missionary McIntyre wrote that during the translation process, his role was mainly to sit back and listen. That’s been our experience, too.

I believe God has given North Koreans a particular anointing or gift or connection related to the Ross Bible. One of our North Korean students attends a North Korean defector congregation at a South Korean church. Some of the church members were skeptical about the project. So she stood up in front of the leaders and passionately shared with them how she encountered God in translating the Bible, and how important the project is to both North Koreans and South Koreans. There were South Koreans there who heard her, and they clapped enthusiastically. One said, “I have never heard any testimonies like this one before.”

Creating a “Contemporary Reader’s Version” of the Ross Bible is hard work. It’s difficult to explain how long it takes, and how challenging it is for the participants. The Ross Bible was done before the standardization of the Korean language, so the text represents every word phonetically. You have to sound out the word, figure out what it is, write it out, figure out how it is written today, figure out what the whole sentence is, figure out what words are obsolete, research those—literally every sentence is a challenge. But it drives all of us further into the text, and like our North Korean student said, that’s where you meet God.

The goal of our project is to put the Ross Bible back in the hands of ordinary Koreans. There was a previous effort by a South Korean scholar to update the Ross Bible. It was well done, but the end product was a limited edition hardback book for other scholars, with many footnotes. Our project is designed to more closely mirror the original one: Ordinary North Koreans, assisted by missionaries, putting the New Testament in an inexpensive paperback book format that ordinary Koreans all over the world can read. No footnotes, no scholarly comments, no fancy printing or binding. Just the words of life, expressed in ordinary Korean words through the work of ordinary North Korean people who are learning to follow Christ.

Voice of the Martyrs Korea is scheduled to release the first installment of the project, the “Contemporary Reader’s Version” of the Ross Bible Gospel of Luke, in fall 2022. Distribution is planned for both North and South Korea.

More information about Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s schools for North Korean defectors is available at https://vomkorea.com/en/project/northkorea/uu-school/.

That those who are interested in donating to the Ross Bible project can make their donation at www.vomkorea.com/en/donation  or give via electronic transfer to:  

국민은행 (KB Bank) 463501-01-243303 

예금주 (Account holder): (사)순교자의소리  

Please include the phrase “NK Bible” on the donation

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Maldives: Charges filed against college for playing a Christian song

Posted on February 8, 2022 by Pastor Foley

A college in the Maldives which claims it played a Christian song by accident during a children’s sports festival is now facing a police investigation.

According to the Times of Addu, the Maldives media source which first reported the incident, Clique College says it had no desire to promote Christianity and no intention to play the Christian song, which they say auto-played from a playlist during a Taekwondo exhibition. The song’s lyrics reportedly included the words, “We believe in Jesus. We believe in Holy Spirit.” College officials say the song was changed as soon as the mistake was detected. The Taekwondo academy responsible for the exhibition similarly disclaimed responsibility on a Facebook post, saying that the music that was played was “out of their hands”.

The Times of Addu quotes an unnamed representative from the Maldives Islamic Ministry of Culture as saying, “[The Islamic Ministry has] filed the case of a Christian religious song played at an event held at the Hulhumalé Central Park at the police as a very serious matter. [We will] take legal action against organizers for such activities.”

The Times report added, “The Religious Unity Act (Act No. 6/94) prohibits the practice by citizens of any religion other than Islam.”

The U.S. State Department has previously raised concerns about restrictions on religious freedom in the Maldives, noting in its 2020 religious freedom report on the country that “Propagation of any religion other than Islam is a criminal offense, punishable by two to five years in prison or house arrest” and that the Maldives constitution “designates Islam as the state religion, which it defines in terms of Sunni teachings. It states citizens have a ‘duty’ to preserve and protect Islam.” The State Department report also notes that the legal code of the Maldives “prohibits the establishment of places of worship for non-Islamic religious groups.”

A Facebook post from a Taekwondo academy in the Maldives disclaimed responsibility for a Christian song being played at a children’s sports exhibit in the officially Muslim country.

Voice of the Martyrs Korea Representative Dr Hyun Sook Foley says her organization is currently monitoring the case against Clique College, as well as reports of an increased crackdown by Maldives authorities on Christian Internet and social media content in December 2021. “There have always been restrictions on Christian activity in the Maldives, but local media sources in the Maldives are reporting on a new criminal court order that was requested by police to ban online non-Muslim religious content, including Christian content, that is in the Dhivehi language of the Maldives,” says Representative Foley. She says the government’s action against Clique College does not surprise her. “We first learned about Clique College and the investigation into the Christian song simply from our organization’s regular daily global monitoring of news reports about Christian persecution. But as we have monitored the Maldives for years, we have seen time and time again how officials there have resisted and reacted against even the smallest signs of possible Christian activity. A group that recently wanted to do Christian radio broadcasting into the Maldives told us that they were dissuaded from their plans by the possibility of the Maldives taking diplomatic action against the country where the group was planning to originate the broadcast.”

But Representative Foley says that such crackdowns against Christianity often spread Christianity rather than eliminating it. “God never leaves himself without a witness,” says Representative Foley. “It doesn’t even have to be a person. When there are no people to make a faithful witness, God can raise up rocks to cry out, as Jesus says in Luke 19:40. He can use a song that somehow plays by accident, like in this incident in the Maldives. Then a government files a complaint, a newspaper reports about it, and then God gives the readers of the newspaper report a curiosity in their heart to learn more. They ask, ‘Why is our government banning this? Why is it so dangerous?’ It’s human nature to seek out what is banned.”

A photo from the Clique College website. The College said it had no desire to promote Christianity and no intention to play Christian music at its event.

Representative Foley says that her organization has seen a similar phenomenon at work in North Korea. She pointed to the example of workers sent abroad by the North Korean government. “North Korean Workers have told us that they received a briefing from the government before they were sent abroad in which they were shown a Bible and told, ‘This is a Bible. Do not read this book.’ And then they were showing a picture of a church building and told, ‘This is a church building. Do not go here.’ The workers tell us that the first thing they want to do when they arrive in the new country is to find a Bible and a church building.”

Representative Foleys says she expects a similar outcome in the Maldives. “Our experience at Voice of the Martyrs Korea is that when we see a government institute a new wave of crackdowns on Christianity, it’s frequently because they are responding to a new wave of Christian growth, and they panic and are afraid. Christians should rejoice when we hear about these crackdowns, because when God opens the hearts of people in a particular country to the gospel, no government can shut them.”

Representative Foley says that more information on Christian persecution in the Maldives is available from Voice of the Martyrs Korea at www.vomkorea.com/en/maldives.

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