Chinese-speaking people across the world are busy preparing to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which this year falls on Jan. 25. The festival marks the beginning of the Year of the Rat. Chinese Christians, of course, are part of the celebrations, composing and adapting the parallel sentences of greetings typical of the festival.

The expression “parallel sentences” needs a bit of explanation. Chinese alphabets allow the flexibility of writing sentences from top to bottom or left to right. During the Lunar New Year, the Chinese have a tradition of writing two-sentence greetings on two strips of paper, placed vertically on either side of a statue, picture or door. These couplets of greetings came to be known as parallel sentences.

Christians adapt these greetings and also compose their own. Sometimes they may vary among different denominations. In order to understand these sentences, we must return to the context in which these sentences are written. These greetings of four to 10 characters evoke a story, an affirmation of wisdom, or a blessing, corresponding to each other. Concise and poetic, their form and content are meant to reflect a certain beauty. Each sentence sounds like a maxim that highlights an idea; it translates and transports them. The parallel sentences are found in all regions and religious groups of the Chinese world.

China’s ruling Communist Party has fired a warning shot to the fast-growing underground Protestant Churches in the country by jailing Wang Yi, founder of Sichuan province’s Early Rain Covenant Church, for nine years after a secret trial where he had no legal representation. The US State Department has demanded his immediate release.

The sentence for “inciting subversion of state power” and “illegal business activities” became public on Dec. 29 when the court that convicted the preacher issued its judgment. He was found guilty during a closed-doors trial on Dec. 26 on what the State Department described as “trumped-up charges.” Pastor Yi and his wife Jiang Rong were arrested with dozens of other congregants on Dec. 9, 2018, during a crackdown on Cheng-du’s largest unregistered church.

Wang has been deprived of his political rights for three years and 50,000 yuan (US$7,160) of his personal property was confiscated as part of his sentencing. Jiang’s whereabouts remain unknown, although a congregant posted on the internet that she was being held under residential surveillance.

Hue Archdiocese in central Vietnam has kicked off a year of celebrations marking 170 years as a Catholic Church jurisdiction by honouring Mother Mary and thousands of people martyred in anti-Catholic purges.

An estimated 3,000 people attended the opening Mass on Jan. 1 to start the special year at Phu Cam Cathedral in Hue, the capital of Thua Thien Hue province.

Before the Mass, Archbishop Joseph Nguyen Chi Linh of Hue and Archbishop Marek Zalewski, the Vatican’s non-resident envoy to Vietnam, offered incense in front of a large statue of Our Mother of La Vang at the nearby Pastoral Centre.

Archbishop Linh, head of the Vietnamese bishops’ conference, said the special year with the theme “God is joy of youth” is “aimed at thanking God for loving us and giving us an opportunity to express our deep gratitude to our ancestors who protected and passed down the faith to us today.”

He said local Catholics would honor Mother Mary and appeal to her to continue supporting them as she protected their ancestors in La Vang from religious persecution in 1798.

The Supreme Court of the Philippines has reiterated its dismissal of a petition to redefine marriage in the country to include same-sex couples.

The court had initially dismissed the petition in September 2019, on the grounds that the applicant lacked standing because he did not have a partner, nor was he seeking a same-sex marriage.

In a Jan. 6 order, the Philippine News Agency reported, the Supreme Court said the motion for reconsideration was “denied with finality,” adding, “No further pleadings or motions will be entertained.”

The court said that “no substantial arguments were presented to warrant the reversal of the questioned decision.”

The petition had been filed in 2015 by 33-year-old lawyer and radio show host Jesus Nicardo M. Falcis III and the LGBTS Christian Church Inc. Falcis sought to challenge provisions in the country’s Family Code that defined marriage as a “permanent union between a man and a woman.” He also challenged clauses declaring homosexuality as grounds for legal separation and declaring concealment of homosexuality at the time of marriage as an act of fraud that constitutes grounds for annulment.

According to CNN, Falcis said he “decided to use the tool of litigation, because it has been successful in other countries — such as the United States — to have gay marriage legalized.”

However, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the petition in September, saying he lacked legal standing and had failed “to raise an actual, justiciable controversy.”

Foreign workers are gathering their families, packing their bags and leaving Brunei, where a ban on celebrating Christmas has been enforced since 2014 by an authoritarian regime happy to impose stiff penalties for any breaches of the law.

Fearing Muslims would be led astray and convert to Christianity, the sultan of Brunei imposed full Sharia law in April, a culmination of an all-imposing Islamic legal system that was introduced step by step over the last six years.

In a move that bears striking similarities to Biblical stories from the Roman occupation of the Holy Land, Christians are only allowed to celebrate Christmas within the privacy of their own homes and only after they have notified authorities.

Any breaches can result in jail terms of up to five years and fines of up to US$20,000, or both, following the growing influence of Wahhabism, a harsh brand of Islam followed by the likes of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that has its roots in Saudi Arabia.

“The people in Muslim-dominated Brunei are quite tolerant and very easy to get along with, but the government is fearful of outside religions,” said one Western expatriate who fears Brunei’s harsh defamation laws and declined to give his name.

Increasingly, foreign Christians working in Brunei spend Christmas time outside the Islamic country and return only in the new year, the expatriate said.

“Leaders here don’t have the oil money they once did and are trying to impress and win foreign aid dollars from Saudi Arabia. The only way to enjoy the festive season is to get out for a vacation.”

The Muslim chief minister of Sabah in Malaysia has ramped up the celebratory mood among Christians in the state by adding Dec. 24 or Christmas Eve as a new public holiday.

The neighbouring state of Sarawak is also thinking of declaring Christmas Eve a holiday, local reports said.

“The additional public holiday will enable those celebrating Christmas to return home earlier,” Sabha Cheif Minister MohdShafieApdal said when launching the five-day Kota Kinabalu Christmas Carnival in the state capital on Dec. 11.

The state is the first in Malaysia to add the Christian celebration to the list of two-day public holidays accorded to significant festivals in the country after Eid al-Fitr and Chinese New Year.

For many Christians in Malaysia, Christmas celebrations can be a minefield. Decades of Islamization and the steady rise of Islamic conservatism in the South-East Asian nation has led to anti-Christian rhetoric forcing restraint when observing such religious events.

The sudden deterioration of the security situation in Sri Lanka has come as a shock to its people. Five days after a series of suicide bombings on Easter Sunday killed more than 250 people, injured over 500, wrecked three Christian churches and caused substantial damage to three five-star hotels, Sri Lanka continues to be in a state of siege. A night-time curfew has been declared and there is vastly reduced traffic on the usually packed Colombo roads.

Rumours of further attacks are spread wildly and widely, forcing the government to ask people only to listen to official police warnings. The little-known National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ), which has been identified as the source of the suicide bombers, has about 150 members. It is feared that many of them might be potential bombers. There is a high-priority security search for them. Until they are all found, the danger of another suicide bombing will remain.