The bill was first introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 25. As written, it would let a government-appointed "Designated Authority" seize, transfer, or sell the foreign-funded property of any nongovernmental organization whose registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act is canceled, surrendered, or simply not renewed. Thousands of Christian charities, orphanages, clinics, and schools across India operate under that same FCRA registration, many of them dependent on donations sent from believers overseas.
The Joint Parliamentary Committee is now expected to submit its findings during the first week of parliament's winter session, likely in December. The Indian government has defended the bill as a routine tightening of oversight meant to stop the misuse of foreign funds, a justification it has used in recent years while canceling the FCRA licenses of numerous nonprofit and religious groups.
U.S. Representative Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) has been among the bill's sharpest critics abroad, calling it "a clear attack against Christians" and warning that if the legislation moves forward, it would become "a point of major concern" in relations between Washington and New Delhi. Religious freedom advocates in India have echoed that warning, saying the bill would hand a single government office the power to dismantle decades of Christian institution-building with the stroke of a pen.
A government that can seize the well
Set the legal language aside for a moment and look at what the bill actually does. It takes a hospital built to bind up the sick, a school built to teach a child to read, an orphanage built to give a shelter to the fatherless — and it hands the government a legal lever to take the building out from under the people running it, the moment a piece of paperwork lapses. That is not oversight. That is the machinery of a state deciding it does not much like the competition a caring church provides.
My friend, this is an old story dressed in new legal clothes. Every generation, the powers of this world look at the church's works of mercy and wonder how to bring them to heel. Sometimes it is done with fire and prison, as it has been in Nigeria and China and a dozen other places believers could name from hard experience. Sometimes it is done more quietly, with a committee and a form and a "Designated Authority" — but the aim is the same. Cut off the church's hands, and you think you have silenced her witness.
You cannot do it. You never could. The church in India did not begin with foreign money and she will not end for lack of it. She began the way she always begins — with ordinary people who believed a Man rose from a grave and could not keep quiet about it. Governments have tried for two thousand years to legislate that conviction out of existence, and they have never once succeeded, because the thing they are fighting is not a charity registration. It is a Person.
Scripture never promised the saints an easy path through hostile courts and hostile committees. It promised something better — that the gates of hell itself would not prevail against what Christ is building. A parliamentary panel is a small thing next to that promise.
"And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)
If you are a believer watching the news out of New Delhi and feeling the familiar ache — wondering how long the freedom to feed and heal and teach in Jesus' name will last in this world — take heart. The command was never to secure the government's blessing before we love our neighbor. It was to love him regardless, with whatever hands are left free to us. Committees can be stacked, laws can be rewritten, licenses can be revoked. The mercy of God moving through His people cannot be filed away in an office and forgotten. It will find another door.
Pray for the believers in India who run those hospitals and schools and orphanages, that wisdom would be given to them in the months ahead, and pray for the members of that committee, that even now something of the truth they are circling might take root in an unexpected heart. God has turned kings before. He is not finished turning them yet.