Hindus upset over use of gods on underwear

Hey! This is America where you can buy all kinds of blasphemous products. Nobody cares about "hurting religious sentiments:"

India's eastern state of Orissa has lodged a protest with the US government seeking action against a California-based website for hurting religious sentiments of people by selling undergarments with images of Hindu gods, a newspaper reported Friday. Hindu priests and religious groups had slammed the website, cafepress.com, for selling undergarments embellished with faces of several gods and goddesses, including the presiding deities of Jagannath temple, considered among the most sacred Hindu temples in India.

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Gere kiss still a problem for Shilpa Shetty

I can't believe this poor actress is suffering because of Gere's kiss on stage at an AIDS awareness event. I posted the video here at the time.

Five months later, Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty is still feeling the effects of a kiss from Richard Gere.

Immigration officials at Mumbai airport briefly detained Shetty, saying she was still wanted for obscenity charges filed in the wake of the public kiss with the Hollywood star, her publicist, Dale Bhagwagar, said Thursday.

Shetty was in tears late Wednesday after being stopped at the airport while on her way to Berlin where the musical "Miss Bollywood" opens this weekend, said Bhagwagar. Shetty plays the musical's lead role.

"She called me in the middle of the night and was in tears," said Bhagwagar, adding Shetty was finally permitted to join her dance troupe after prolonged questioning.

"I can understand something like this if I'd committed a criminal offense. But what was my offense, when I'm just an actor, going to perform a musical on foreign land," Bhagwagar quoted Shetty saying.

Gere embraced and kissed Shetty on her cheek at a public AIDS awareness event in New Delhi in April, sparking an outcry among conservative hardline Hindus, who claimed the pair had violated the country's strict anti-obscenity laws.

A regional court issued arrest warrants against Gere and barred Shetty from leaving the country. The order was soon overturned by the Supreme Court.

But the Supreme Court ruling didn't show up in the immigration department computer system, Bhagwagar said.

The Senate is Not a Church

We our a pluralistic society with religious freedom for all. Christians who have mixed Christianity with politics better understand the difference between church and state. In a nation made up of many different religions, why wouldn't a Hindu pray in the Senate?

Three people were arrested Thursday after staging a noisy protest as a Hindu chaplain read the opening prayer at the US Senate, branding his appearance an "abomination."

US Capitol Police said the protestors, apparently Christian religious activists, were ejected from the chamber and charged with an unlawful disruption of Congress.

As Hindu chaplain Rajan Zed started to recite his prayer, one protestor was heard chanting "Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer which is an abomination in your sight.

"You are the one, true living God."

There's nothing sacred about the Senate, it's no more an abomination than if the Hindu prayed in his temple. Do these people brake into Hindu temples screaming that their prayers are an abomination to God?

Though most Christians understand that the kingdom of God is not of this world, they act as if we are living in a theocracy. They have intertwined politics and religion so much that they have a hard time understanding the difference.

Here's the video:

Farmer fined because he's a Christian

More Hindu persecution of Christians in India. Villagers and family force a Christian farmer from his village:

In a nation where 75 percent of the population is Hindu, there was a congregation of four Christians in his small village when Rajan expressed a faith in Jesus Christ. But that's back down to three after he lost his family and crops, and was forced to leave his home and village, because of his conversion, according to new documentation obtained by the Voice of the Martyrs.

Sources within Nepal, the mountainous nation sandwiched between India and China that holds Mt. Everest, have told the Voice of the Martyrs that the persecution campaign encompassed all parts of Rajan's life when he became a Christian.
"Hindu neighbors have dug up Rajan's cauliflower and potatoes," the VOM reported its sources confirmed. "He has lost his whole year's income."

Villagers took every opportunity to make life difficult for him, including their response when some water from his field inadvertently spilled onto a neighbor's land, the sources reported.

"He was recently fined 6,000 rupees (about $100, a large sum in Nepal), after water from his field spilled over into a neighbor's field," the VOM sources reported. "Normally, this would not be a problem, but the neighbors consider water from Rajan's field unclean because he is a Christian.

"Normally, we wouldn't fine you, but because you changed your religion and became a Christian, you need to pay 6,000 rupees," the villagers told him, according to VOM.

They even turned Rajan's wife and family against him, and he was forced to leave his home, to stay with a pastor briefly, and then to move to another village.

But nothing can separate us from the love of God:

"When Rajan left his home to live with the pastor he was sad, but said his experiences had made Jesus more precious to him than before," the Voice of the Martyrs reported. "His pastor told us that as persecuted believers, they have learned that one of the results of persecution is that Jesus becomes much more precious to them."

VOM reported, however, that Rajan's faith was unshaken.

"No matter what you do to me, I will not leave Christ," Rajan told his Hindu neighbors.

Pray for those who have lost everything to follow Christ and pray also that we who have everything will not take it for granted but will appreciate the many blessings that the Lord has given us and that we realize that he has given them to us for a purpose.