Indian Christians are “awash in tears,” in the words of one church member, after rioters killed and burned houses of worship in the country’s Orissa state.

Rioters disrupted the Sunday worship of a 25-member church meeting in a house in the east Indian state. The minister, Shankhanand Baugh, and his congregation fled as the mob approached.

“To quench their thirst of hatred, (the rioters) put the house to flames,” said Nehemiah Gootam, director of the Kakinada School of Preaching in Andhra Pradesh state, south of Orissa. Baugh is a graduate of the Kakinada school. The mob found a young woman hiding near the burning house and threw her inside.

“She was burned alive,” Gootam said.
Rioters also attacked three orphanages that had applied for financial aid from Lifeline of Hope, a church-supported ministry in Kalispell, Mont. Workers at the orphanages had completed the ministry’s application and assessment process, said Jeff Timmons, orphanage programs director, and were waiting for on-site visits from the ministry’s personnel when the attacks began.

“There is no safety for us. Please pray for our protection,” one orphanage administrator wrote in a message to Lifeline of Hope. Armed rioters looted the orphanage before setting it on fire.

“They raped two of our young girls,” said the administrator, whose name was withheld by Lifeline of Hope.
“All the children ran away to the forest for their lives. Still, children are missing.”

The attacks began in late August after a prominent Hindu leader in Orissa was killed in a grenade attack. Supporters blamed Christians for the attack, although a Marxist political group took credit, and some of the resulting protests turned violent.

Christians comprise less than 3 percent of the state’s population, said Nilendra Chhatria, minister for the Bolangir church in Orissa. Though no church members were reported injured, at least 70 people claiming Christianity as their faith were killed before police restored order in the state, Chhatria said.

Just north of Orissa, India’s Bihar state is awash in floodwaters. The banks of the Kosi river overflowed recently, swallowing thousands of acres of farmland and forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Bihar has few Churches of Christ, said Ken Grimm, a missionary who works with Lifeline of Hope. Evangelism there “is a very difficult, uphill job with much effort to produce few results,” he said.
Massih Tudu, a minister in the city of Purnia, Bihar, traveled south to Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu — where Churches of Christ are stronger — to request aid for flood victims. Ministers have asked about 70 churches in the region to donate whatever rice, oil, sugar, tea and soap they can spare for the victims, evangelist David Martin said.

“Almost all the churches have agreed to collect,” Martin said.