Sunday, September 30, 2007

Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007, the Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007 and the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007. On the day he stood down as Prime Minister, he was appointed official Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East on behalf of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia.
Blair, Tony (2003). Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government Diane Publishing, ISBN 0-7567-3102-X
Blair, Tony (2002). The Courage of Our Convictions Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0603-4
Blair, Tony (2000). Superpower: Not Superstate? (Federal Trust European Essays) Federal Trust for Education & Research, ISBN 1-903403-25-1
Blair, Tony (1998). The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0588-7
Blair, Tony (1998). Leading the Way: New Vision for Local Government Institute for Public Policy Research, ISBN 1-86030-075-8
Blair, Tony (1997). New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country Basic Books, ISBN 0-8133-3338-5
Blair, Tony (1995). Let Us Face the Future Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0571-2
Blair, Tony (1994). What Price Safe Society? Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0562-3
Blair, Tony (1994). Socialism Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0565-8
Tony Blair's Cabinets
Blairite
Blair Brown Deal
'Cash for Honours' scandal
Impeach Blair campaign
Labour Party leadership election, 2007
Politics of the United Kingdom
The Queen (film)
Abse, Leo (2001). Tony Blair: The Man Behind the Smile. Robson Books. ISBN 1-86105-364-9. 
Beckett, F. & Hencke, D. (2004). The Blairs and Their Court, Aurum Press, ISBN 1-84513-024-3
——— (2003). Tony Blair: The Man Who Lost His Smile. Robson Books. ISBN 1-86105-698-2. 
Blair, Tony (1998). in (ed.) Iain Dale: The Blair Necessities: Tony Blair Book of Quotations. Robson Books. ISBN 1-86105-139-5. 
——— (2004). in (ed.) Paul Richards: Tony Blair: In His Own Words. Politico's Publishing. ISBN 1-84275-089-5. 
Gould, Philip (1999). The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party. Abacus. ISBN 0-349-11177-4. 
Naughtie, James (2001). The Rivals: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage. Fourth Estate. ISBN 1-84115-473-3. 
——— (2004). The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency. Macmillan. ISBN 1-4050-5001-2. 
Rawnsley, Andrew (2000). Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour. Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 0-241-14029-3. 
——— (2001). Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour, 2nd edition, Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-027850-8. 
Rentoul, John (2001). Tony Blair: Prime Minister. Little Brown. ISBN 0-316-85496-4. 
Riddell, Peter (2004). The Unfulfilled Prime Minister: Tony Blair and the End of Optimism. Politico's Publishing. ISBN 1-84275-113-1. 
Seldon, Anthony (2004). Blair. Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-3211-9. 
Short, Clare (2004). An Honourable Deception? New Labour, Iraq, and the Misuse of Power. Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-6392-8. 
Stephens, Philip (2004). Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader. Viking Books. ISBN 0-670-03300-6. 
Blair, T. (2004). "Blair, The Right Hon. A. C. L." from Who's Who, 156th ed., London: A & C Black.
Halsbury's Laws of England (2004), reference to impeachment in volume on Constitutional Law and Human Rights, paragraph 416
The Queen (2006 film)
"Delusions of Honesty," by Theodore Dalrymple, Summer 2007 City Journal
Angus Reid Global Monitor: Polls on Tony Blair
Tony Blair's post-Downing Street official website
A Day in the Life an on-line documentary by Tony Blair on life as Prime Minister
Tony Blair's Resignation Speech Audio and Transcript of Tony Blair's Resignation Speech at Trimdon Labour Club on 10 May 2007
Tony Blair A Decade in Power Photo Gallery from Time.com
Tony Blair at the Internet Movie Database
pm.gov.uk "Tony Blair - Biography" at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine
The Blair Years—Timeline
Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Tony Blair MP
TheyWorkForYou.com—Tony Blair MP
The Public Whip—Tony Blair MP voting record
BBC News: Special Report - The Blair years 1997-2007
Triple A Accessible version of Tony Blair's resignation speech
Tony Blair Online A website providing news, info, pictures etc on Tony Blair.
Tony Blair's keynote speech at Policy Network conference 'Britain and Europe in the Global Age', 2007
Blair reinvented the Middle Ages and called it liberal intervention, Simon Jenkins in The Sunday Times on Blair's legacy
Hansard - Prime Ministers Question Time, June 27 2007 – Official transcript of Tony Blair's final appearance in the Commons containing a mix of day to day business, tributes, quips and light hearted put downs.

Saturday, September 29, 2007


Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See International Phonetic Alphabet for a pronunciation key.
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel.
In all languages, vowels form the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages which have them) coda. However, some languages also allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the syllabic l in the English word table [ˈteɪ.bl̩] (the stroke under the l indicates that it is syllabic; the dot separates syllables), or the r in the Serbo-croatian words vrba [vr̩.ba] "willow" or vrt "garden".
The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "speaking", because in most languages words and thus speech are not possible without vowels.

Articulation

Main article: Vowel height Height

Main article: Vowel backness Backness

Main article: Vowel roundedness Roundedness

Main article: Nasal vowel Nasalization

Main article: Phonation Phonation
Main articles: Advanced tongue root, Retracted tongue root.
Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa. The contrast between advanced and retracted tongue root resembles the tense/lax contrast acoustically, but they are articulated differently. ATR vowels involve noticeable tension in the vocal tract.

Tongue root retraction

Main article: Pharyngealization Secondary narrowings in the vocal tract

Main article: R-colored vowel Tenseness/checked vowels vs. free vowels
Related article: Phonetics.
The acoustics of vowels are fairly well understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of the formants, acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on a spectrogram. The vocal tract acts as a resonant cavity, and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time.
The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height). Open vowels have high F1 frequencies while close vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen at right: The [i] and [u] have similar low first formants, whereas [ɑ] has a higher formant.
The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels have low F2 frequencies while front vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear at right, where the front vowel [i] has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels the high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so a better measure of frontness is the difference between the first and second formants. For this reason, vowels are usually plotted as F1 vs. F2 – F1. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.)
R-colored vowels are characterized by lowered F3 values.
Rounding is generally realized by a complex relationship between F2 and F3 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are.

Acoustics
Main articles: Prosody, Intonation.
The features of vowel prosody are often described independently from vowel quality. In non-linear phonetics, they are located on parallel layers. The features of vowel prosody are usually considered not to apply to the vowel itself, but to the syllable, as some languages do not contrast vowel length separately from syllable length.
Intonation encompasses the changes in pitch, intensity, and speed of an utterance over time. In tonal languages, in most cases the tone of a syllable is carried by the vowel, meaning that the relative pitch or the pitch contour that marks the tone is superimposed on the vowel. If a syllable has a high tone, for example, the pitch of the vowel will be high. If the syllable has a falling tone, then the pitch of the vowel will fall from high to low over the course of uttering the vowel.
Length or quantity refers to the abstracted duration of the vowel. In some analyses this feature is described as a feature of the vowel quality, not of the prosody. Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Arabic and Latin have a two-way phonemic contrast between short and long vowels. The Mixe language has a three-way contrast among short, half-long, and long vowels, and this has been reported for a few other languages, though not always as a phonemic distinction. Long vowels are written in the IPA with a triangular colon, which has two equilateral triangles pointing at each other in place of dots ([iː]). The IPA symbol for half-long vowels is the top half of this ([iˑ]). Longer vowels are sometimes claimed, but these are always divided between two syllables.
It should be noted that the length of the vowel is a grammatical abstraction, and there may be more phonologically distinctive lengths. For example, in Finnish, there are five different physical lengths, because stress is marked with length on both grammatically long and short vowels. However, Finnish stress is not lexical and is always on the first two moras, thus this variation serves to separate words from each other.
In non-tonal languages, like English, intonation encompasses lexical stress. A stressed syllable will typically be pronounced with a higher pitch, intensity, and length than unstressed syllables. For example in the word intensity, the vowel represented by the letter 'e' is stressed, so it is longer and pronounced with a higher pitch and intensity than the other vowels.

Prosody and intonation

Main article: English phonology Pronunciation in English

Main articles: Monophthong, Diphthong, Triphthong, Non-syllabic vowel, and SemivowelVowel Monophthongs, diphthongs, triphthongs
The semantic significance of vowels varies widely depending on the language. In some languages, particularly Semitic languages, vowels mostly serve to denote inflections. This is similar to English man vs. men. In fact, the alphabets used to write the Semitic languages, such as the Hebrew alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark all the vowels. These alphabets are technically called abjads. Although it is possible to construct simple English sentences that can be understood without written vowels (cn y rd ths?), extended passages of English lacking written vowels are difficult if not impossible to completely understand (consider dd, which could be any of add, aided, dad, dada, dead, deed, did, died, dodo, dud, dude, eddie, iodide, or odd).
In most languages, vowels are an unchangeable part of the words, as in English man vs. moon which are not different inflectional forms of the same word, but different words. Vowels are especially important to the structures of words in languages that have very few consonants (like Polynesian languages such as Maori and Hawaiian), and in languages whose inventories of vowels are larger than their inventories of consonants.

Written vowels

list of phonetics topics
table of vowels
list of vowels

Friday, September 28, 2007

Ace of Aces
Ace of Aces is a two-player combat picture book game designed by Alfred Leonardi and first published in 1980 by Nova Game Designs. In 1981, Ace of Aces won the Charles Roberts/Origins Gamers choice of 1980.

Expansions
Ace of Aces was the first game of this type, but others were done later. Bounty Hunter used much the same format for an old west gunfight (only one set was released, Shootout at the Saloon). Dragonriders of Pern used the Ace of Aces format in a contest to stop Threadfall. Alfred Leonardi also designed the Lost Worlds combat book game system which is sometimes mistakenly described as using the Ace of Aces system.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Early life
She was married by proxy in Lisbon on 23 April 1662. After her arrival at Portsmouth on 14 May 1662, the couple were married in two more ceremonies – a Catholic one conducted in secret, followed by a public Anglican service – on 21 May. Her large dowry brought the port cities of Tangier and Bombay to British control.
At the time, she was not a particularly popular choice of queen, being a Roman Catholic, and her religion prevented her from ever being crowned, since Roman Catholics were forbidden to take part in Anglican services. She initially faced hardships due to the language barrier, the king's infidelities and the political conflicts between Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Over time, her quiet decorum, loyalty and genuine affection for Charles changed the public's perception of her.
Catherine never became pregnant, although during a severe illness in 1663 she thought for a time she had given birth. Charles comforted her by telling her she had indeed given birth to two sons and a daughter. Her position was a difficult one, as Charles continued to have children by his many mistresses, but he insisted that she be treated with respect, and sided with her over his mistresses in those cases where he felt she was not receiving the respect she was due. Throughout his reign, he firmly dismissed the idea of divorcing Catherine, even when Parliament exerted pressure on him to beget or declare a Protestant successor.
Though known to keep her faith a private matter, her religion and proximity to the king made her the target of anti-Catholic sentiment. In 1678, the murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey was ascribed to several of her servants. In November of the same year she was accused by Titus Oates, an instigator of the "Popish Plot", of being part of a conspiracy to poison the king, even though Charles himself disbelieved the entirety of the plot. Although both the evidence in her case and the Popish Plot were later discovered to be fabrications, the House of Commons voted unsuccessfully for an address calling for the Queen and her household to be banished from Whitehall. In 1679 she was defended against the allegations by the king himself.

Catherine of Braganza Later years

November 25, 1638December 1, 1640 Dona Catarina of Braganza
December 1, 1640November 17, 1653 Her Highness The Infanta Dona Catarina
November 17, 1653April 23, 1662 Her Royal Highness The Princess of Beira
April 23, 1662February 6, 1685 Her Majesty The Queen of England
February 6, 1685December 31, 1705 Her Royal Highness The Princess of Beira

Wednesday, September 26, 2007


The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS, is a collaborative project of volunteers, who use Prime95 and MPrime, special software that can be downloaded from the Internet for free, in order to search for Mersenne prime numbers. The project was founded and the prime testing software was written by George Woltman. Scott Kurowski wrote the PrimeNet Server that supports the research to demonstrate Entropia distributed computing software, a company he founded in 1997.
This project has been rather successful: it has already found a total of ten Mersenne primes, each of which was the largest known prime at the time of discovery. The largest known prime as of September 2006 is 2 are both licensed under the GPL.

Dr. Steven BooneDr. Steven Boone Primes found

George Woltman
Scott Kurowski
Mathematics
List of distributed computing projects
Distributed computing
Prime95
MPrime
BOINC

Tuesday, September 25, 2007


The material conditional, also known as the material implication or truth functional conditional, expresses a property of certain conditionals in logic. In propositional logic, it expresses a binary truth function ⊃ from truth-values to truth-values. In predicate logic, it can be viewed as a subset relation between the extension of (possibly complex) predicates. In symbols, a material conditional is written as one of the following:
1. X supset Y
2. X to Y
The material conditional is false when X is true and Y is false - otherwise, it is true. (Here, X and Y are variables ranging over formulæ of a formal theory.) We call X the antecedent, and Y the consequent. The material conditional is also commonly referred to as material implication with the understanding that the antecedent (X) materially implies the consequent (Y).
A distant approximation to the material conditional is the English construction 'if...then...', where the ellipses are to be filled with English sentences. However, this is the most common reading of the material conditional in English. A closer approximation to XY is 'it's false that X be true while Y false'—i.e., in symbols, neg(X and neg Y). Arguably this is more intuitive than its logically equivalent disjunction ¬XY.

Definition
The truth table associated with the material conditional if p then q (symbolized as p → q) and the logical implication p implies q (symbolized as p ⇒ q) is as follows:

Venn diagram
The material conditional is not to be confused with the entailment relation ⊨ (which is used here as a name for itself). But there is a close relationship between the two in most logics, including classical logic which we only consider here. For example, the following principles hold:
These principles do not hold in all logics, however. Obviously they do not hold in non-monotonic logics, nor do they hold in relevance logics.
Other properties of implication:




p rightarrow (q equiv r) equiv ((p rightarrow q) equiv (p rightarrow r))

If Gammamodelspsi then emptysetmodelsphi_1landdotslandphi_nsupsetpsi for some phi_1,dots,phi_ninGamma. (This is a particular form of the deduction theorem.)
The converse of the above
Both ⊃ and ⊨ are monotonic; i.e., if Gammamodelspsi then DeltacupGammamodelspsi, and if phisupsetpsi then (philandalpha)supsetpsi for any α, Δ. (In terms of structural rules, this is often referred to as weakening or thinning.)
associativity: (p rightarrow (q rightarrow r)) rightarrow ((p rightarrow q) rightarrow r)
distributivity: s rightarrow (p rightarrow q) rightarrow ((s rightarrow p) rightarrow (s rightarrow q))
transitivity: (a rightarrow b) rightarrow ((b rightarrow c) rightarrow (a rightarrow c))
commutativity: (a rightarrow (b rightarrow c)) rightarrow (b rightarrow (a rightarrow c))
idempotency: a rightarrow a
truth preserving : The interpretation under which all variables are assigned a truth value of 'true' produces a truth value of 'true' as a result of material implication. Formal properties
The truth function ⊃ does not correspond exactly to the English 'if...then...' construction. For example, any material conditional statement with a false antecedent is true. So the statement "if 2 is odd then 2 is even" is true. Similarly, any material conditional with a true consequent is true. So the statement, "if Pigs fly then Paris is in France" is true. These problems are known as the paradoxes of material implication, though they are not really paradoxes in the strict sense; that is, they do not elicit logical contradictions.
There are various kinds of conditionals in English; e.g., there is the indicative conditional and the subjunctive or counterfactual conditional. The latter do not have the same truth conditions as the material conditional. For an overview of some the various analyses, formal and informal, of conditionals, see the "References" section below.

Material implication See also

Counterfactual conditional
Indicative conditional
Corresponding conditional (logic)
Strict conditional
Logical implication

Monday, September 24, 2007

September 12
September 12 is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 110 days remaining.

Deaths

RC Saints - Holy Name of Mary, Sacerdos of Lyon, Guy of Anderlecht
Also see September 12 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics).
Cape Verde - National Day.
Ethiopia - National Revolution Day (1974).
Maryland (United States) - Defenders Day.
Mexico - Commemoration of the mass hanging of the Saint Patrick's Battalion.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

British Medical Association
The British Medical Association (BMA) is the trade union to which the vast majority of British doctors belong. It is based in Tavistock Square in central London. It owns the "British Medical Journal".

General information

Saturday, September 22, 2007

James Watson Cronin
James Watson Cronin (born September 29, 1931) is an American nuclear physicist.
He was born in Chicago, Illinois and attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Cronin and co-researcher Val Logsdon Fitch were awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics for a 1964 experiment that proved that certain subatomic reactions do not adhere to fundamental symmetry principles. Specifically, they proved, by examining the decay of kaons, that a reaction run in reverse does not merely retrace the path of the original reaction, which showed that the interactions of subatomic particles are not indifferent to time. Thus the phenomenon of CP violation was discovered.
At present, Jim Cronin is Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago and a spokesperson for the Auger project. Prof. Cronin is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists[1].

Friday, September 21, 2007

Bus transport in Singapore
Bus transport in Singapore is the most comprehensive and affordable means of public transport for the masses, with over two million rides taken per day on average on the buses of the two main public transport providers SBS Transit and SMRT Corporation. There are more than 300 bus services covering all parts of Singapore.
Plans released in the Public Transport White Paper by the Land Transport Authority, however, predict the gradual decline of extensive public bus transport with the development of a comprehensive rail-based transport system such as the Mass Rapid Transit. It was due to this concern, that the government worked towards establishing multi-modal transport companies so as to allow them to remain relevant in the future.
However, plans are also underway to revitalize the public bus network, and make it an attractive and practical alternative to private transport. It is hoped that this would increase the ridership onboard public transport, as well as reduce congestion. A comprehensive review of Singapore's public transport and bus system, commissioned by the Land Transport Authority, is currently in place, to be completed end 2007.

History

Thursday, September 20, 2007


Mac Davis (born Scott Davis, January 21, 1942, in Lubbock, Texas) is a country music singer and songwriter, who has enjoyed much pop music crossover success. He became one of the most successful country singers of the 1970s and 80s and also was an actor.

Career as a songwriter
Mac soon decided to pursue a career in Country music. He was soon signed to Columbia Records in 1970. His big success came two years later in 1972 when he topped the Country and Pop charts with the hit song "Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me".
Mac's work in music seemed sometimes to be overtly sexual. For example, "Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me" (in which he pleads with a woman not to get too attached to him because he doesn't want to commit to a full-time relationship with her) was one of them, as well as other hit songs like "Naughty Girl" and "Baby Spread Your Love On Me". He wasn't alone in this; many country songs popular in the 1970s and 1980s featured sexual overtones.
In 1974, Mac was awarded the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year award. Some of Davis' other hits included "Stop and Smell the Roses" (a number one Adult Contemporary hit in 1974), "One Hell of a Woman," and "Burnin' Thing". At the end of the 1970s, he moved to Casablanca Records, which had now had gone into country music and was known primarily for its success with disco diva Donna Summer. His first hit for the label in 1980 was the novelty hit "It's Hard To Be Humble" which became his first country Top 10. He also had another Top 10 with "Let's Keep It That Way" later in the year. He achieved other hit songs like "Lubbock Texas In My Rear View Mirror" and "Hooked On Music" which became his biggest country hit in 1981 going to #2. In 1985, he recorded his very last Top Ten country hit with the song "I Never Made Love (Till I Made Love With You)".

Success as a singer
From 1974 to 1976, Davis had his own television variety show on NBC, The Mac Davis Show. He made his feature film debut opposite Nick Nolte in the football film, North Dallas Forty (1979) and as a result, was listed as one of twelve "Promising New Actors of 1979" by Screen World magazine. This proved that Mac could have success in not just singing and songwriting, but also as an actor. He soon became well known for all three of these careers.
Mac Davis played Will Rogers in the Broadway production of The Will Rogers Follies. Mac Davis was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000. For his contribution to the recording industry, he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7080 Hollywood Blvd. At this point there seemed that there was nothing that Mac Davis couldn't do.
In 1980, Davis hosted an episode of The Muppet Show. [1]
Davis served as the balladeer for the 2000 telefilm The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood, replacing Don Williams, who served the part in 1997's The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion!, and Waylon Jennings, who narrated the original Dukes of Hazzard TV show. Davis was the first balladeer to appear on screen to welcome the audience and provide exposition.
Davis also guest starred briefly in the 8 Simple Rules episode Let's Keep Going, Part II in April 2004.

Mac Davis Acting career
By the mid 1980s, his career in music was declining. His chart success was falling rapidly; Davis was one of many Country singers who had Pop music crossover success in the 70s and 80s whose careers slowed down to make way for artists like Garth Brooks and Clint Black. After Casablanca Records closed down, Davis recorded for a short period of time with MCA Records in the mid 1980s. In 1990, he gained attention when he helped write the hit song for Dolly Parton called "White Limozeen". That same year, he also was on Broadway, performing in the show The Will Rogers Follies. Mac Davis was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in June of 2006.

Decline and comeback

"Elvis was just like a big old kid. It was like he never got past 19, I don't think, in a lotta ways."
"Don't Cry Daddy" is a pretty sad song. He got to the end of it and it was just real quiet when Elvis says, I'm gonna cut that someday for my daddy. And, by God he did. He lived up to his word." Some famous quotes

Discography

Selected filmography

Country Music:The Rough Guide; Wolff, Kurt; Penguin Publishing
All Music Guide

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Early beginnings
In April 1854, after preaching three months on probation and just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon, then only 19, was called to the pastorate of London's famed New Park Street Chapel, Southwark (formerly pastored by the Particular Baptists Benjamin Keach, theologian John Gill, and John Rippon). This was the largest Baptist congregation in London at the time, although it had dwindled in numbers for several years. Spurgeon found friends in London among his fellow pastors, such as William Garrett Lewis of Westbourne Grove Church, an older man who along with Spurgeon went on to found the London Baptist Association. Within a few months of Spurgeon's arrival at Park Street, his powers as a preacher made him famous. The following year the first of his sermons in the "New Park Street Pulpit" was published. Spurgeon's sermons were published in printed form every week, and enjoyed a high circulation. By the time of his death in 1892, he had preached almost thirty-six hundred sermons and published forty-nine volumes of commentaries, sayings, anecdotes, illustrations, and devotions.
Immediately following his fame was controversy. The first attack in the Press appeared in the Earthen Vessel in January 1855. His preaching, although not revolutionary in substance, was a plain spoken and direct appeal to the people using the Bible to provoke them to consider the claims of Jesus Christ. Critical attacks from the media persisted throughout his life.
The congregation quickly outgrew their building, moved to Exeter Hall, then to Surrey Music Hall. In these venues Spurgeon frequently preached to audiences numbering more than 10,000 — all in the days before electronic amplification. At twenty-two Spurgeon was the most popular preacher of the day.
On January 8, 1856, Spurgeon married Susannah, daughter of Robert Thompson of Falcon Square, London, by whom he had twin sons, Charles and Thomas September 20, 1856. At the end of that eventful year, tragedy struck on October 19, 1856 as Spurgeon was preaching at the Surrey Gardens Music Hall for the first time. Someone in the crowd yelled, "Fire!" and there was a panic and a stampede that left several dead. Spurgeon was emotionally devastated by the event and it had a sobering influence on his life. He struggled against clinical depression for many years and spoke of being moved to tears for no reason known to himself.
Walter Thornbury later wrote in "Old and New London" (1897) describing a subsequent meeting at Surrey:
Still the work went on. A Pastor's College was founded in 1857 by Spurgeon and was renamed Spurgeon's College in 1923 when it moved to its present building in South Norwood Hill, London;. At the Fast Day, October 7, 1857 he preached to the largest crowd ever: 23,654 people at The Crystal Palace in London. Spurgeon noted:

The New Park Street Pulpit
On March 18, 1861 the congregation moved permanently to the newly constructed purpose-built Metropolitan Tabernacle at Elephant and Castle, Southwark, seating five thousand people with standing room for another thousand. The Metropolitan Tabernacle was the largest church edifice of its day and can be considered a precursor to the modern "megachurch." This orphanage turned into Spurgeon's Child Care which still exists today.
On the death of missionary David Livingstone in 1873, a discolored and much used copy of one of Spurgeon's printed sermons "Accidents, Not Punishments" was found among his few possessions much later, along with the handwritten comment at the top of the first page "Very good, D.L." He had carried it with him throughout his travels in Africa, and it was returned to Spurgeon and treasured by him (W. Y. Fullerton, Charles Haddon Spurgeon: A Biography, ch. 10).
Additional controversy flared among his fellow Baptists in 1887 with the publication of the "Down-grade" paper which exposed the spiritual decline among the churches. This led to The Metropolitan Tabernacle separating from the Baptist Union to become essentially the largest non-denominational church of the time.
Often Spurgeon's wife was too ill to even leave home to hear him preach. Spurgeon, too suffered ill health towards the end of his life, afflicted by a combination of rheumatism, gout, and Bright's disease. He often recuperated at Menton, near Nice, France, where he eventually died on January 31, 1892. Spurgeon's wife and sons outlived him. His remains were buried at West Norwood Cemetery in London.

The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit
with the devotions of Rev. Joseph Parrish Thompson)

2200 Quotations from the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon compiled by Tom Carter
Able To The Uttermost
According To Promise
All of Grace
An All Round Ministry
Around the Wicket Gate
Barbed Arrows
C. H. Spurgeon's Autobiography
Chequebook Of The Bank Of Faith, The
Christ's Incarnation
Come Ye Children
Commenting and Commentaries
The Dawn of Revival, (Prayer Speedily Answered), Diggory Press ISBN 978-1846856822
Down Grade Controversy, The
Eccentric Preachers
Feathers For Arrows
Flashes Of Thought
Gleanings Among The Sheaves
Good Start, A
Greatest Fight In The World, The
Home Worship And The Use of the Bible in the Home (American reprint of "The Interpreter"
Interpreter, The or Scripture for Family Worship
John Ploughman's Pictures
John Ploughman's Talks — the Gospel in the language of "plain people"
Lectures to My Students — Four volumes of lectures to students of college Spurgeon established
Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, The
Miracles and Parables of Our Lord-- Three volumes
New Park Street Pulpit, The
Only A Prayer Meeting
Our Own Hymn Book edited by Spurgeon and he authored several hymns
Pictures From Pilgrim's Progress
The Preachers Power and the Conditions of Obtaining it Diggory Press ISBN 978-1846856358
Saint And His Saviour, The
Sermons In Candles
Sermons On Unusual Occasions
Soul Winner, The
Speeches At Home And Abroad
Spurgeon's Commentary on Great Chapters of the Bible compiled by Tom Carter
Spurgeon's Morning and Evening — a book of daily devotional readings
Sword and The Trowel, The — a monthly magazine edited by Spurgeon
Till He Come
Treasury of David, The — a multi-volume commentary on the Psalms
We Endeavour
The Wordless Book
Words Of Advice
Words Of Cheer
Words Of Counsel Charles Spurgeon Spurgeon's library

Austin, Alvyn (2007). China's Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans. 

Tuesday, September 18, 2007


The persecution of Christians is the religious persecution that Christians have endured as a consequence of professing their faith, both historically and in the current era. Christians are by far the most persecuted group, religious or otherwise, in human history. In the two thousand years of the Christian faith, about 70 million believers have been killed for their faith, of whom 45.5 million or 65% were in the twentieth century, according to "The New Persecuted" ("I Nuovi Perseguitati").
African religions · Atheists Bahá'ís · Buddhists · Cathars Religion in China · Christians Hellenistic religions · Hindus · Jews Mormons · Muslims · Neopagans Rastafari · Sikhs · Zoroastrians
Anti-clericalism · Censorship Genocide · Forced conversion War · Discrimination · Fascism Intolerance · Police · Terrorism Segregation · Violence · Abuse State atheism · State religion
Dechristianisation in the French Revolution Revolt in the Vendee · Cristero War Red Terror · Red Terror in Spain Cultural Revolution · Reign of Terror Inquisition · Wars of Religion St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre Khmer Rouge · Pontic tragedy · Kulturkampf Armenian Genocide · Assyrian GenocidePersecution of Christians History of Communist Albania
Persecution of early Christians by the Jews

Main article: Persecution of early Christians by the Romans Persecution of early Christians by Romans
According to the New Testament, Jesus' crucifixion was authorized by Roman authorities but demanded by the leading Jews and probably carried out by Sanhedrin soldiers, rather than Romans. The New Testament also records that Paul was imprisoned on several occasions by the Roman authorities. Once he was stoned and left for dead. Eventually he was taken as a prisoner to Rome. The New Testament account does not say what then became of Paul, but Christian tradition reports that he was executed in Rome by being beheaded.
The Foxes Book of Martyrs reports that, of the eleven remaining Apostles (since Judas Iscariot had already killed himself), only one- John, the son of Zebedee and Salome, the younger brother of James and the writer of the Book of Revelation- died of natural causes in exile. The other ten were reportedly martyred by various means including beheading, by sword and spear and, in the case of Saint Peter, crucifixion.

Persecutions narrated in the New Testament

Rise of persecution in the Roman Empire
The first documented case of imperially-supervised persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire begins with Nero (37-68). In 64 A.D., a great fire broke out in Rome, destroying portions of the city and economically devastating the Roman population. Nero, whose sanity had long been in question, Tacitus' Annals XV.44 record: "...a vast multitude, were convicted, not so much of the crime of incendiarism as of hatred of the human race. And in their deaths they were made the subjects of sport; for they were wrapped in the hides of wild beasts and torn to pieces by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set on fire, and when day declined, were burned to serve for nocturnal lights."

Persecution under Nero, 64-68 A.D.
By the mid 2nd century, mobs could be found willing to throw stones at Christians, and they might be mobilized by rival sects. The Persecution in Lyon was preceded by mob violence, including assaults, robberies and stonings (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.1.7).
Further state persecutions were desultory until the third century, though Tertullian's Apologeticus of 197 was ostensibly written in defense of persecuted Christians and addressed to Roman governors The "edict of Septimius Severus" familiar in Christian history is doubted by some secular historians to have existed outside Christian martyrology.
The first documentable Empire-wide persecution took place under Maximin, though only the clergy were sought out. It was not until Decius during the mid-century that a persecution of Christian laity across the Empire took place. Christian sources aver that a decree was issued requiring public sacrifice, a formality equivalent to a testimonial of allegiance to the Emperor and the established order. Decius authorized roving commissions visiting the cities and villages to supervise the execution of the sacrifices and to deliver written certificates to all citizens who performed them. Christians were often given opportunities to avoid further punishment by publicly offering sacrifices or burning incense to Roman gods, and were accused by the Romans of impiety when they refused. Refusal was punished by arrest, imprisonment, torture, and executions. Christians fled to safe havens in the countryside and some purchased their certificates, called libelli. Several councils held at Carthage debated the extent to which the community should accept these lapsed Christians.

Persecution from the second century to Constantine
The persecutions culminated with Diocletian and Galerius at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century. Their persecution, the Diocletian Persecution is considered the largest. Beginning with a series of four edicts banning Christian practices and ordering the imprisonment of Christian clergy, the persecution intensified until all Christians in the empire were commandeded to sacrifice to the gods or face immediate execution. However, as Diocletian zealously persecuted Christians in the Eastern part of the empire, his co-emperors in the West did not follow the edicts and so Christians in Gaul, Spain, and Brittania were virtually unmolested.
This persecution was to be the last, as Constantine I soon came into power and in 313 legalized Christianity. It was not until Theodosius I in the latter fourth century that Christianity would become the official religion of the Empire.
Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, estimates that "the whole might consequently amount to about fifteen hundred ... an annual consumption of 150 martyrs." The Western provinces were little affected, and even in the East where Christianity was recognized as a growing threat, the persecutions were light and sporadic.
Some early Christians sought out and welcomed martyrdom. Roman authorities tried hard to avoid Christians because they "goaded, chided, belittled and insulted the crowds until they demanded their death."

Diocletian Persecution
In 337 a spate in the ongoing hostilities between Sassanid Persia and the Roman Empire led to anti-Christian persecutions by the Persians of Christians, see also Sassanid Church, who were perceived as potentially treacherous friends to a Christianized Rome, see also Christendom, under Constantine.

Early persecutions outside the Roman Empire
As with many religions, Christianity is not a homogenous group; there exist many sects of Christianity, which often find themselves at odds with each other, often because one group does not consider another Christian at all, as is the case with Mormons and mainstream Christians (see below).
The Catholic Encyclopedia mentions a Natalius, before Hippolytus, as first Antipope, who, according to Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History 5.28.8-12, quoting the Little Labyrinth of Hippolytus, after being "scourged all night by the holy angels", covered in ash, dressed in sackcloth, and "after some difficulty", tearfully submitted to Pope Zephyrinus.
Upon the establishment of official ties between the state and Christianity, the state and the Church turned their considerable negative attention to those deemed heretics, although who was and was not a heretic could alter with the winds of political change. The first nonconforming Christian executed was Priscillian. Many 4th century examples of such a situation involved Arianism, which held, against the orthodox tradition, that Jesus was not "one in unity with the Father", but instead was a created being, not on the same level with God, above humans but below God the Father.
When high-ranking officials agreed with orthodoxy, the state stopped at no ends to bring down the Arians. The converse was true when high-ranking officials, instead, adhered to Arianism, at which point the power of the state was used to promulgate that particular interpretation. The Germanic Goths and Vandals adhered to Arian Christianity, establishing Arian states in Italy and Spain. Orthodox Christians defended themselves vigorously against these foreign Arians. St. Augustine, for example, died while in a town besieged by the Arian Vandals.
An increasing number of scholars have claimed that Early Christianity had no single agreed-upon tradition, and various sects claimed no limit of things about Jesus, God, and the universe, but the extent of this "proto-Christian" diversity can be a matter of debate. Some scholarly opinion adheres to the picture of a continual line of theological orthodoxy, but the early sources, such as Celsus, Origen, Arius, Irenaeus, and Marcion, suggest a world of Christianity far more colorful than the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers painted. This must be contrasted against Irenaeus' claim in Against Heresies that the church had an overall orthodoxy.
In the medieval period the Roman Catholic church moved to suppress the Cathar heresy, the Pope having sanctioned a crusade against the Albigensians. The Crusades in the Middle East also spilled over into conquest of Eastern Orthodox Christians by Roman Catholics and attempted suppression of the Orthodox Church. The Waldenses were as well persecuted by the Catholic Church, but survive up to this day. The Reformation led to a long period of warfare and communal violence between Catholic and Protestant factions, leading to massacres and forced suppression of the alternative views by the dominant faction in many countries. In the 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre the French king ordered the murder of Protestants in France.
In the modern period, such events include violence between Mormons and Protestants in the United States during the 19th century. That century also saw the martyrdom of St. Peter the Aleut at the hands of Roman Catholic clergy in San Francisco, California.

Persecution of Christians by Christians

Main article: Anti-Catholicism Anti-Catholic

Main article: Anti-ProtestantismPersecution of Christians Anti-Protestant

Main article: Anabaptist Persecution of the Anabaptists

Main article: Anti-Mormonism Anti-Mormon

Main article: Islam and Anti-Christian sentiment Muslim persecution of Christians
The new Ottoman government that arose from the ashes of Byzantine civilization was neither primitive nor barbaric. Islam not only recognized Jesus as a great prophet, but tolerated Christians as another People of the Book. As such, the Church was not extinguished nor was its canonical and hierarchical organization significantly disrupted. Its administration continued to function. One of the first things that Mehmet the Conqueror did was to allow the Church to elect a new patriarch, Gennadius Scholarius. The Hagia Sophia and the Parthenon, which had been Christian churches for nearly a millennium were, admittedly, converted into mosques, yet countless other churches, both in Constantinople and elsewhere, remained in Christian hands. Moreover, it is striking that the patriarch's and the hierarchy's position was considerably strengthened and their power increased. They were endowed with civil as well as ecclesiastical power over all Christians in Ottoman territories. Because Islamic law makes no distinction between nationality and religion, all Christians, regardless of their language or nationality, were considered a single millet, or nation. The patriarch, as the highest ranking hierarch, was thus invested with civil and religious authority and made ethnarch, head of the entire Christian Orthodox population. Practically, this meant that all Orthodox Churches within Ottoman territory were under the control of Constantinople. Thus, the authority and jurisdictional frontiers of the patriarch were enormously enlarged.
However, these rights and privileges (see Dhimmitude), including freedom of worship and religious organization, were often established in principle but seldom corresponded to reality. The legal privileges of the patriarch and the Church depended, in fact, on the whim and mercy of the Sultan and the Sublime Porte, while all Christians were viewed as little more than second-class citizens. Moreover, Turkish corruption and brutality were not a myth. That it was the "infidel" Christian who experienced this more than anyone else is not in doubt. Nor were pogroms of Christians in these centuries unknown (see Greco-Turkish relations).Devastating, too, for the Church was the fact that it could not bear witness to Christ. Missionary work among Moslems was dangerous and indeed impossible, whereas conversion to Islam was entirely legal and permissible. Converts to Islam who returned to Orthodoxy were put to death as apostates. No new churches could be built and even the ringing of church bells was prohibited. Education of the clergy and the Christian population either ceased altogether or was reduced to the most rudimentary elements.
The Ottoman Empire was marked by periods of limited tolerance and periods of often bloody repression of non-Muslims. The Janissary army corps consisted of young men who were brought to Istanbul as child-slaves (and were often from Christian households) who were converted, trained and later employed by the Sultan (the devshirme system).

Ottoman Empire

Main articles: Armenian Genocide, Pontic Greek Genocide, and Assyrian Genocide Turkey
Although Christians represent less than 5% of the total Iraqi population, they make up 40% of the refugees now living in nearby countries, according to UNHCR.

Persecution of Christians in Iraq
After the defeat of a Christian Balkan coalition lead by a prince of Serbia, Lazar, the Ottomans occupied Kosovo. The Christian population of Kosovo was composed overwhelmingly of Serbs (see Demographic history of Kosovo). Initially, former Christian nobles were allowed to maintain their properties and privileges, especially the local nobles that fought on the side of the Ottomans during the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Christians within the Ottoman Empire were not violently persecuted but gradually Islamized through incentives such as property, reduced taxes and the right to bear arms. The Orthodox and Catholic churches of Kosovo during the Ottoman period were awarded special protections and rights including placing Christians under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople[2]. The living conditions of the average serf in Kosovo improved during the Ottoman occupation due to the rationalization of the Ottoman Timar system which was less demanding then previous feudal relations. Persecution of Christians has been limited to the Serbian Orthodox tradition and is ethnic not religious. Catholic's, most of whom were Albanian, were unmolested in Kosovo. The ongoing ethnic conflict has resulted in the destruction of 56 Serb Orthodox Christian churches, monasteries, graveyards and other religious monuments, some of them being of great historical and architectural importance. The latest wave of anti-Serb violence was in March 2004 (see Unrest in Kosovo).

Persecution of Christians in Kosovo
The war in Lebanon saw a number of massacres of both Christians and Muslims. Among the earliest was the Damour Massacre in 1975 when Palestinian militias attacked Christian civilians. The persecution in Lebanon combined sectarian, political, ideological, and retaliation reasons. The Syrian regime was also involved in persecuting Christians as well as Muslims in Lebanon.

Christian casualties of the War in Lebanon
There is an abundance of evidence since the early 1990s of oppression and persecution of Christians, including by Sudan's own Sudan Human Rights Organization, which in mid-1992 reported on forcible closure of churches, expulsion of priests, forced displacement of populations, forced Islamisation and Arabisation, and other repressive measures of the Government. In 1994 it also reported on widespread torture, ethnic cleansing and crucifixion of pastors. Pax Christi has also reported on detailed cases in 1994, as has Africa Watch. Roman Catholic bishop Macram Max Gassis, Bishop of El Obeid, also reported to the Fiftieth Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, in Geneva, in February 1994 on accounts of widespread destruction of hundreds of churches, forced conversions of Christians to Islam, concentration camps, genocide of the Nuba people, systematic rape of women, enslavement of children, torture of priests and clerics, burning alive of pastors and catechists, crucifixion and mutilation of priests. The foregoing therefore serve to indict the Sudanese Government itself for flagrant violations of human rights and religious freedom.

Persecution of Christians in Sudan

Blasphemy laws
The Christian community in Pakistan is frequently the target of attacks by Islamic extremists.

Attacks on Pakistani Christians by Islamists
Religious conflicts have typically occurred in western New Guinea, Maluku (particularly Ambon), and Sulawesi. The presence of Muslims in these regions is largely due to Suharto's transmigrasi plan of population re-distribution. Conflicts have often occurred because of the aims of radical Islamist organizations such as Jemaah Islamiah or Laskar Jihad to impose Sharia. The following list is far from comprehensive:

1998 - 500 Christian churches burned down in Java.
November, 1998 - 22 churches in Jakarta are burned down. 13 Christians killed.
Christmas Day 1998 - 180 homes and stores owned by Christians are destroyed in Poso, Central Sulawesi.
Easter 2000 - 800 homes and stores owned by Christians are destroyed in Poso, Central Sulawesi.
May 23, 2000 - Christians fight back against a Muslim mob. 700 people die.
June, 2001 - the Laskar Jihad declares Jihad against Christians. Muslim citizens are recruited by the thousands to exterminate Christians.
May 28, 2005 - A bomb is exploded in a crowded market in Tentena, killing 28. This marks the highest death toll due to bombing after the devastating attacks in Bali.
October 29, 2005 three school girls were found beheaded near Poso. The girls, students at Central Sulawesi Christian Church, were killed by six unidentified assailants while on their way to class. Attacks on Christians by Islamists in Indonesia
In Saudi Arabia Christians are arrested and lashed in public for practicing their faith openly.

Discrimination and persecution in other Muslim nations

Atheist persecution of Christians

Main article: Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution The Dechristianization program during the French Reign of Terror
Marxist ideology promotes atheism. This can often lead communist-states to persecute Christians as well as other theists.

Communist persecution of Christians
Further information: Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union and Human rights in the Soviet Union
After the Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks undertook a massive program to remove the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church from the government and Russian society, and to make the state atheist. Thousands of churches were destroyed or converted to other uses, such as warehouses. Monasteries were closed and often converted to prison camps, most notably the Solovetz monastery becoming Solovki camp. Many members of clergy were imprisoned for anti-government activities. These victims are now recognized as the "New Martyrs" by the Russian Orthodox Church, the old martyrs being the victims of the Roman persecutions. Church property, including the icons and other objects of worship (especially those made of precious metals) was confiscated and put to other uses.
While religion was never outlawed in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Constitution actually guaranteed religious freedom to all Soviet citizens, persecution was still government policy.Richard Wurmbrand, author of Tortured for Christ described the systematic persecution of Christians in one East Bloc nation. Many Christian believers in the Soviet Union have told of being imprisoned for no other reason than believing in God. Many have recently been canonized as saints following their death at the hands of Soviet authorities; they are collectively referred to in the Orthodox Church as the "new martyrs". (See also Enemy of the people, Gulag, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov)

Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union
Further information: Persecution of Christians in Warsaw Pact countries
Enver Hoxha conducted a campaign to extinguish all forms of religion in Albania in 1967, closing all religious buildings and declaring the state atheist. Albania was the only Eastern Bloc nation that actually outlawed religion. See Communist and post-Communist Albania.
However, persecution of Christians, especially Protestants, Pentecostals and non-registered minority denominations, has continued after the fall of the Soviet Union, in many countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, notably Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus.

Persecution in other Eastern Bloc nations
Persecution of Christians is currently the worst in North Korea.

Persecution of Christians in North Korea
Although far less hostile to Christianity than to Judaism, which the Nazis sought to exterminate throughout the Third Reich and lands that came under Nazi rule, Nazi totalitarianism demanded that all religious activity conform to the desires of Nazi leadership. Christian churches were obliged to accept the racist doctrines of Nazism. The Gestapo monitored Christian clergy and congregations for any semblance of dissent with Nazi policies, and many Christian clergy and laymen ended up in concentration camps when they asserted opposition to the teachings and practices of Nazism or if they acted upon pacifist convictions (like many Jehovah's Witnesses and some Confessing Church members). During the early part of the Nazi rule, the "German Christians" were an important pseudo-Protestant tool of the regime to bring about the Gleichschaltung of the churches.
The expansion of Nazi Germany and the establishment of Nazi rule in occupied countries brought about persecutions ranging from those characteristic in Germany itself to conditions approaching those of the Soviet Union. Catholic priests in Poland that were opposed to the Nazis were taken to the concentration camps; many were murdered in the liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia. Due to its long historical association with Slavic cultures, Nazi occupation officials used collaborators such as the Roman Catholic Ustashe to specifically target Eastern Orthodox Christians in Yugoslavia. Roman Catholics were heavily persecuted in Nazi Germany because of their opposing views on Nazi eugenics and racial hatred.
In Italy the fascist regime of Mussolini persecuted Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and other Protestant groups following the Lateran Accords with the Roman Catholic church. In 1935, the interior minister Guido Buffarini Guidi ordered the complete break-up of the Pentecostalist network in Italy.

Nazi-Fascist persecution

Persecution of Christians in China
Christians in China before 1550 by A.C. Moule notes a tradition that St. Thomas the Apostle made a mission to China. Francis Xavier, de Cruz , de Gouivea, and de Burros, writing in Latin, and Ebed Jesus, writng in Syriac, all mention the tradition of Thomas in China. There is also Chinese tradition of uncertain veracity regarding Christian missionaries in China in A.D. 64. There writings noting Christian missions in China from the second through sixth centuries. The first effective Christian missions to China of which we have detailed knowledge was in A.D. 635, sent by an eastern Patriarch. In Chang'an (Hsi-an) a great stone monument erected in 781, containing a list of missionaries, memorialized the mission to China in 635 spreading Christianity. At this time the emperor (whose mother was said to be a Turkish-Mongolian Nestorian) received the Christians openly, studying the scriptures and noting "their propriety and truth and specially ordered their preaching and transmission." A large number of manuscripts were found in north west China which address seventh and eighth century Christianity. The emperor Kao-tsung continued a policy of religious toleration.

Christian Origins in China and Early Persecution
Tang Wu Zong (of the Tang dynasty) ruled China from 840 to 846. Known as a Taoist zealot, he first suppressed Buddhism in China for its perceived status as a "foreign" religion. He then attacked all other "foreign" religions, including Christianity. Nestorianism, the only Chinese Christian branch at that time, was virtually wiped out in China. Part of the reason for the persecution was the existence of both Christian and Buddhist monasteries which were perceived to have a negative effect on the economy and cultural life of China. Christianity largely disappeared from China, its only substantial remnants in the regions past the Tarim desert from which it had made its entry.

Emperor Tang Wu Zong
With the defeat of the Mongols. China became increasingly xenophobic in area of religion. "China as it has so often done, turned away from the world and turned in upon itself. The new China was to be isolationist, nationalist, and orthodox Confucian, ruled by a completely China centered dynasty, the Ming (1368-1644)."

Under the Ming Dynasty
When Jiaqing Emperor of China declared the closed-door policy, Christianity suffered the first repercussions under the Qing Dynasty. After the Opium War, Christians became a target of hatred and many Christians were killed in the Boxer Rebellion.

Qing Dynasty

Main article: Status of religious freedom in People's Republic of China People's Republic of China

Main article: Martyrs of Korea Persecution of Christians in 19th Century Korea

Persecution of Christians in Japan
In the early 1500s Christianity was brought to Japan by a Spanish Jesuit named Francis Xavier. Following its arrival, Christianity gained some ground.

Arrival of Christianity
As the Sengoku period drew to a close in the late 1500s, the reigning kampaku Hideyoshi Toyotomi became concerned with the Christians on account of a number of perceived offenses.

Edo Period
During the Meiji era, Western governments continued to pressure the Japanese authorities to legalize Christianity. As a result, public notices proclaiming Christianity a forbidden sect were taken down in 1873. Ever since, Japanese authorities turned a blind eye to missionary preaching. In 1889, a new constitution was finally set in place that guaranteed religious freedom and equality under the law. As a result, Christians could worship and preach in security.

Meiji Revolution and WWII
After the surrender of Japan in 1945, the government was forced to enact freedom of religion as part of the surrender. After Japan regained her sovereignty, freedom of religion remained as part of the new Constitution of Japan.

1945 onwards

Main article: Persecution of Christians in Mexico Early 20th Century Mexico
During the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, and in the context of atrocities on both sides (eventually far higher on the Nationalist side), many of the Republican forces were violently anti-Christian and anti-clerical anarchists and Communists, whose assaults during what has been termed Spain's Red Terror included sacking and burning monasteries and churches and killing 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy (despite the fact that the vast majority of clergy were not involved in active opposition to the Republican forces). It was not uncommon that clergy and the faithful were tortured and some leftist soldiers would cut off the ears of priests as trophies. The Catholic Church has seen fit to canonize several martyrs of the Spanish Civil War.

During the Spanish Civil War

Persecution of Christians in India
Many Christians in India regard anti-conversion laws passed by some states in India as a restraint on religious freedom, a view taken by the State Department of the United States

By national and state governments
Hindu nationalist attacks against Christians, especially in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa, have occurred in recent years

By Hindu Nationalists
Muslims in India who convert to Christianity are often subjected to harassment, intimidation, and attacks by Muslims. In Kashmir, a region with many Islamic Fundamentalists, a Christian convert named Bashir Tantray was killed , allegedly by Militant Islamists in 2006

By Muslims

In the 11 Northern states of Nigeria that have introduced the Islamic system of law, the Sharia, sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians have resulted in many deaths, and some churches have been burned. More than 30,000 Christians were displaced from their homes Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria.
Copts in Egypt are often subject to attacks. The most significant was the 2000-2001 El Kosheh attacks, in which 21 Copts and 1 Muslim were killed. A 2006 attack on three churches in Alexandria left one dead and 17 injured. Though they are accepted officially, Copts claim that discrimination against them continues. Persecution of Christians in Africa
A partial list of countries not already mentioned above where significant recent persecution of Christians exists includes North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Sri Lanka

Sources

Christianophobia
Barnabas Fund
Christian pacifism
Christian Solidarity Worldwide
Anti-Protestantism
Anti-Catholic
Martyrs Mirror
Forum 18
Foxe's Book of Martyrs
Voice of the Martyrs
Persecution of Heathens
Historical persecution by Christians
Jizya
Abdul Rahman (convert)
Compass Direct
Open Doors
Persecution of Muslims
Persecution of Jews
Religious intolerance
Religious persecution
Religious pluralism
Protestantism in China
Category:Christian martyrs