Secret police crack down on home-church movement

The multilingual Point Final website has confirmed that eight Christians who are part of an evangelical home-church group in Iran have been arrested.

The report said the Iranian Secret Service also investigated the homes of several of the Christians who belong to the churches who emphasize only Jesus in their worship, and of the eight summoned to police headquarters in several cities, six are pastors, and all were arrested.

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The report said the arrests are the latest attacks on the churches, whose members have been dismissed from their jobs and had their homes searched, in what apparently has been a systematic effort by authorities.

One woman even spent a night in a "sinister" Secret Service prison after attending a party at the embassy of Ivory Coast, the report said.

Another believer, Issa Motamadi, was held in prison for several weeks after giving his son a Christian name, the report said. In Iran, a child given a Christian name is spared, later in life, from allegations of the death-penalty carrying apostasy, but Iranian authorities also continue to impose Islamic education on children.

The report said the home churches involved also are the subject of a campaign to discredit them in the perception of the West, with accusations of heresy and misappropriation of funds, the report said.

The report confirmed the group does hold beliefs that do not align with typical Trinity-based evangelicals in the West, based on their interpretation that no human organization has the right to define God.

But "under such critical situation, we should set aside some minor [theological] nuances that risk [creating] unnecessary divisions between Christians," the report said.

"Instead, we need to focus on the fact that brothers and sisters in Iran are facing death sentence because of their faith in Jesus Christ. This is an hour for unity, not for theoretical debates," the report said.

The government's main concern apparently continues to be the group's efforts to evangelize in a nation where converting from Islam to Christianity still is a death-penalty offense.

The report identified those arrested as Behnam Irani, a pastor in Karaj; his brother Bahman Irani; Tehran pastor Behrouz Sadegh-Khandjani; his sister Chirine Sadegh-Khandjani; Rasht pastor Yussef Nadarkhani; Parviz Khalaj, an elder who is in charge of new Christians in Rasht; Rasht associate pastor Mohammad Reza-Taghizadeh; and Tehran preacher Hamid Toolooinya.

According to a report from Compass Direct, two of those arrested from the religious community estimated at several hundred were released later, but the community also was warned not to give any news about the situation to those outside of Iran.

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