Responding to Persecution

As we are celebrating the tenth volume of IJRF, we are glad that IJRF is continuously catching up on its backlog. While this volume comes under the label of 2017, some of the articles have in fact been written later, and the publication occurs at the beginning of 2021. There is also transition among the contributing staff. We warmly thank Dr Byeon Hei Jun, Cape Town, for his many years of faithfully organizing and gathering book reviews since 2009. In 2020 he has handed over to Dr Werner Nicolaas Nel, Johannesburg, under whose coordination the book reviews from this issue onward emanate. Our guest editor for this special issue is Dr Wolfgang Häde. He has contributed articles to IJRF in the past from his doctoral thesis on the perception of Christians in Turkish daily newspapers, accompanied by reflections on appropriate Christian responses to negative perceptions or false accusations. His complete work appeared in German: Anschuldigungen und Antwort des Glaubens – Wahrnehmung von Christen in türkischen Tageszeitungen und Maßstäbe für eine christliche Reaktion (Berlin: LIT 2017). Dr Häde is the co-convenor of the study group on “Religious freedom, persecution and mission” of the International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS). Dr Häde helped coordinate one of the parallel conferences of IIRF and partners in Sao Paulo on 17-18 September 2020 at MacKenzie Presbyterian University in Sao Paulo, Brazil, namely the International Consultation on Mission and Theology in the Context of Persecution. It was held in tandem with the 2nd International Researchers Consultation on Freedom of Religion or Belief and the 7th Brazilian Symposium on Law and Religion. The conferences focused on “Exploring responses to religious discrimination and persecution”. Papers from these conferences form the foundation for this issue of the IJRF. We appreciate Dr Häde’s work in editing this issue of IJRF. Yours for religious freedom, Prof Christof Sauer and Prof Dr Dr Thomas Schirrmacher, editors, and Prof Dr Janet Epp Buckingham, managing editor