{"id":14425,"date":"2013-09-10T18:54:10","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T22:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/?p=14425"},"modified":"2013-09-10T18:54:10","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T22:54:10","slug":"forced-conversion-by-imagery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2013\/09\/forced-conversion-by-imagery\/","title":{"rendered":"Forced conversion by imagery"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>Some 20,000 tribal people in Jharkhand state in eastern India have marched on a village church, accusing local Christians of trying to convert them by dressing up a Virgin Mary statue in tribal clothing.<\/p>\n<p>Members of the animist Sarna faith have been complaining since the statue was inaugurated in the Singpur village church in May.<\/p>\n<p>But the standoff escalated on Sunday when the marchers took a normal statue of Mary to the church, aiming to replace the offending item, which depicts the Virgin Mary wearing a sari with traditional red borders, holding the infant Jesus. <\/p>\n<p>Police blocked the protesters 25 meters from the church. Local head of police Jagannath Oraon said that they were seeking to avoid a confrontation and peace was quickly restored.<\/p>\n<p>Bandham Tigga, head priest of the Sarna tribals, said the sari-clad statue marks the latest effort to deliberately confuse and convert tribal people in the area.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This <a href=\"http:\/\/krestaintheafternoon.blogspot.com\/2013\/08\/anger-over-virgin-mary-dressed-in.html\">story was reported<\/a> back on August 27, 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Strangely what it reminded me was of the so-called new atheists. There seems to be an odd parallel in thinking. If you can consider that a statue dressed in a sari is a forcible attempt at conversion you just might need something to thicken your skin.<\/p>\n<p>The new atheists seems to have the same thinness of skin in that just seeing religious symbols especially on government land is outrageous and must be stamped out. That a nativity scene is akin to proselytizing in the most negative sense of the term. Good thing lawsuits are a tool of reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some 20,000 tribal people in Jharkhand state in eastern India have marched on a village church, accusing local Christians of trying to convert them by dressing up a Virgin Mary&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14426,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14425\/revisions\/14426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}