Religious Hatred and the Role of the State [in Bulgaria]

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By Viktor Kostov

Published initially in Dnevnik, a daily Bulgarian newspaper, on April 25, 2011, after a violent attack on Jehova’s Witnesses building and assembly indoors in the Bulgarian city of Burgas
Link to video UNAVAILABLE
http://youtu.be/TH6adGKoSOA )

The attack on a religious minority in Burgas is not accidental. Violence against people who had gathered peacefully, without weapons, indoors, on their private property by hooligans whose supreme achievement is to mentally distinguish the colors of their favorite team and that of the opponent and to consider whether the match result is a loss or win.

When under the guise of its power the state violates its own laws the result is violence and division in society.

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Ministry in Burgas

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Burgas is one of the two major Bulgarian cities on the Black Sea coast. We were there by invitation of one of the pastors of one of the evangelical churches there. Here is an online video stream of the church service in Burgas (Blagovestie, or Gospel, with pastor Jivko Tonchev) on Feb. 27, 2011. I gave the sermon and the pastor asked the whole family to share about our ministry at the end of the service. We had a great time fellowshipping with the saints in the church and the pastor’s family.
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Bulgarian Homeschooling Update

After the August 2010 conference in a remote Bulgarian town the Association for Home Education filed papers with the local court to register as a non-profit. The registration was denied in October. The founders of the registration voted in majority not to appeal the court’s decision to the higher courts. Since then a new homeschooling family in Sofia, a Christian couple with four children, withdrew their children from the state school system.
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National Homeschooling Conference in Bulgaria – on TV

August 20-22 the whole family drove to Silistra, to the annual conference of Bulgarian homeschoolers. Viktor was the co-founder of the Association for Homeschooling earlier in July. There were families from Romania as well as the situation there is very similar to that in Bulgaria. In both countries the law supports mainly state-run education which is mandatory and the legal status of homeschooling families is uncertain.

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Pornography and religion — equal moral value?

I still remember how 30 years ago, during the years of the atheistic communist regime under which I was growing up we, 10-12 year old boys, had a fun thing to do. We used to go to one of the central streets of our town to look at a window which displayed items of Western diversion and propaganda. Among those items were pornographic magazines and films, and…Bibles and evangelistic tracts.
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