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Message: Sep 8, 2005 Presented at First Freedom Conference on Religious Liberty Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Fort Worth, Texas September 8, 2005 Recently, the United States’ Bureau of Immigration Appeals (BIA) argued that a Chinese man who had been arrested and beaten in China for operating an unregistered house church could not remain in the United States but would have to return to China. The BIA denied his request to remain because it believed that the treatment the man received from the Chinese authorities was related to his illegal activity of operating an unregistered place of worship not his religious beliefs. Essentially, the BIA made a distinction between religious belief and religious practice. For them, persecution for religious belief merits protection, but persecution for religious practice born out of that belief is not necessarily protected behavior. The BIA made this decision in spite of the fact that it is clear that… Read Full Article