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Resolution on the Persecution of Religious Minorities, in India and Beyond

The Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA:

 

ACKNOWLEDGES that religious nationalism can be a potent source of danger to faithful believers in religious minorities around the world. In any context, when this is true, religious nationalism often uses the language, images, texts, and symbols of a majority religion to merge political, legal, ethnic, and religious identities in order to assert power, domination, and privilege. Instead of constructively enhancing political and civic life, it favors one religion over another, to the detriment of minority religious communities.

 

HEARS the cries of persecuted religious communities, who suffer from such manifestations of religious nationalism. We recognize that the possibility of this danger exists in any religious context, and that it has occurred in multiple settings. We have already voiced our concern over the dangers of Christian nationalism in the United States, in a policy statement adopted in 2021; we have likewise expressed our concern over the problem of religious nationalism globally, in a policy statement adopted today. One such example where NCC member communions have called attention to such persecution motivated by religious nationalism, is in India.

 

UNDERSTANDS that, in India, Hindu nationalism, known as Hindutva, has merged Hindu faith and culture with politics to dominate and control the government. In recent years, Muslim, Christian, and Sikh believers have faced not only discrimination, but also oppression, imprisonment, and violence, often resulting in death. Indeed, Churches have been burned and mosques destroyed; Muslims have been beaten in public; Christians have been subject to sexual violence; and Sikh leaders have been assassinated, all of this justified by Hindu nationalism.

 

THEREFORE, we as the National Council of Churches:

 

CALL upon its member churches, as well as partner organizations, to raise awareness of the financial and other community support Hindu nationalism receives in some sectors of the US, and to denounce any actions that aim to provide such support.

 

ENCOURAGE individuals and organizations to advocate that local legislatures include caste as a form of discrimination in non-discrimination laws. We further call upon individuals to contact their elected officials to bring awareness of the human rights atrocities in India and the fundraising that takes place in local US communities to support such acts of hate and terror. We also recommend that the US Department of State, due to the failure of the Indian government to heed diplomatic calls to end persecution based in Hindu nationalism, to consider designating India as a ”Country of Particular Concern.”

 

COMMEND Hindu believers and community organizations in the US and elsewhere who resist Hindu nationalism and caste discrimination, and renounce any actions that

 

interfere with free expression of religious belief for Hindus apart from the extremism inherent in the promotion of Hindu nationalism.

 

AFFIRM our commitment to religious freedom for all. We believe no religion should shape politics or government in ways that control, dominate, oppress, persecute, harm, and destroy believers of any other religion and their free exercise thereof.

 

PRAY for our Christian siblings in India, as well as other religious minority groups there and in other contexts, who are examples to us of faithfulness, “for in spite of persecution [they] received the word with joy…” (1 Thessalonians 1:6b).

 

Considered / Adopted by the NCC Governing Board October 17, 2024

 

Policy Base

 

“The Dangers of Christian Nationalism in the United States: A Policy Statement of the National Council of Churches” (2021).

 

“The Problem of Religious Nationalism, in the US and Globally”.

 

Adopted October 18, 2024