Widow pressured to re-convert after husband’s death refuses to leave Jesus

(Photo: Unsplash)

A Christian woman in Odisha was physically assaulted and compelled to re-convert to her previous faith, following the death of her husband, who was also a believer.

The widow and her late husband from the Koya ethnic group had proclaimed faith in Christ and attended church with other family members, according to reports from the Barnabas Fund.

When the husband was alive, Koya villagers opposed him because of his beliefs, confiscating sections of his land and attempting to block his work on what was left.

When he died, the villagers took the widow's money and forced her to re-convert. They even held her husband’s funeral in a non-Christian, traditional manner.

With nowhere else to turn, the widow agreed that her husband's funeral be done in a non-Christian manner.

“Today, I have no other way and so accepted their custom,” she told her pastor.

However, “I will not leave the Lord Jesus," she said, adding, “I will come back again.”

Christians are constantly being persecuted in India's rural areas. The Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) documented 327 cases of persecution against Christian community in 2020, while most of the population was under COVID-19 lock down.

“Christians, especially in rural areas of several states across the country, were victims of violence, had their congregational prayers disturbed, and places of worship attacked,” EFI stated.