In three separate incidents, groups of protesters accused pastors of forcing or luring people to change their faith. Three pastors, Rajpati Singh, Rajendra Bahadur Singh and Philip Thomas, were jailed after those accusations. In Rewa District, police arrested Pastor Basantlal Saket and a fellow believer, Shyam Sundar Saket, after complaints about a prayer meeting. Believers and Christian advocates say the accusations are false and were made by hardline activists.
The state's Freedom of Religion law forbids seeking converts through force or coercion. Thirteen Indian states have similar statutes. Christian advocates say the laws hand a weapon to anyone willing to make an accusation, because the accused must answer to police first and prove innocence later.
These arrests follow a heavier blow earlier this year. On June 12, a court in the same state sentenced seven men to five years each, the maximum term, under the same law. They had been arrested in April 2024, after a mob of 100 to 150 people surrounded a home in a village where a Christian couple had invited a few friends and relatives to celebrate their daughter's fifth birthday on April 27. The gathering was described as a purely social occasion. The men who went to a little girl's birthday party went to prison for five years.
What a prison door cannot lock
I do not know the hearts of the men who made these accusations, and I will not pretend to. I know what the men in the cells were doing. They were praying, singing, and keeping a Sunday. Somewhere a father is sitting behind bars tonight because he opened his mouth about Jesus, or because someone said he did.
Here is the plain fact: a government can pass a law about a man's worship, but it cannot pass a law about a man's conscience. Faith that is forced is not faith at all, and every Christian should agree that no one ought to be dragged to Christ by threat or bribe. But the answer to a bribe is a fair trial. It is not a mob at the door and a prison sentence for a child's birthday cake. Freedom to believe, to gather, and to speak of what you believe is not a gift of the state. It is the birthright of every soul made in the image of God, and it is worth defending wherever it is under attack, in Madhya Pradesh or in Missouri.
The Lord Jesus told His followers to expect this. He never promised His people an easy road. He promised His presence on it.
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:10)
Notice the word He uses: blessed. He does not say pitied. The man in a cell in Rewa is not forgotten by heaven. The apostle Paul wrote some of his greatest letters from behind bars, and no chain ever kept the Word of God from running. As he put it, "the word of God is not bound" (2 Timothy 2:9).
And what about you?
My friend, we are tempted to read of trouble on the far side of the world and shrug. Do not. The Bible says that when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Those pastors are your brothers. Pray for them by name, and let your congregation hear their names.
And let the story search your own heart. Would you keep the faith if it cost you your Sunday morning, your good name, your freedom? Many in India are answering that question right now, quietly, with their lives. The gospel they are suffering for is the same one you have been handed: that Christ died for sinners, was buried, and rose again the third day, and that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish. That message has outlasted every empire that tried to silence it. It will outlast this law too.
Nations pass statutes, and statutes pass away. The kingdom of Christ does not.