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A senior Algerian pastor tells Release International’s
John Lawson how believers are paying a high price
for phenomenal church growth in recent years
In a recent interview with Release
International, a senior leader in
the Algerian church requested
prayer for the 53 Algerian
Christians, almost all pastors, who
have been arrested and prosecuted
in the past five years simply for living
out their faith. Five have already spent
months behind bars, but the majority
have prison sentences hanging over
them (usually of two to five years)
pending appeal at the Supreme Court.
Although grateful that currently
there are none in prison, he spoke
frankly about the impact these long,
drawn-out, and sometimes bizarrely
unpredictable, legal proceedings
have had on them and their families,
and then sentenced to imprisonment
and fined in contravention of the
freedom of worship and other
civil liberties enshrined in their
constitution. Their places of worship
are being shut down, with 43 out
of the 44 member churches of the
Protestant Association of Algeria
(EPA) having been closed since 2018,
for holding ‘unauthorised worship’
despite the EPA having registered
as an official denomination in 1994.
Recent laws, which also contravene
the constitution, forbid Algerian
Christians from sharing their faith
with Muslims (around 98 per cent of
Algeria’s 44 million population would
identify as Sunni).
As a result Christians are
constitutionally free to practise their
faith, but outlawed from sharing it;
are members of a legally registered
church, whose places of worship are
all closed; while many of their leaders
contributing to stress-related
conditions such as hyper-tension,
diabetes, psychological trauma and
exhaustion.
In Algeria, a North African country
with close ties to France and other
EU states, and perhaps not keen to
earn the same kind of reputation and
international isolation as Eritrea, it
seems the authorities are trying to
intimidate Christians through the
prolonged threat of incarceration
without actually jailing them. A
veneer of due legal process through
interminable waits for Supreme
Court appeal hearings thinly
disguises the fact that Christians
are being arrested, tried, convicted
CHURCH LEADERS
CAUGHT IN CRUEL
LEGAL LIMBORecent laws in Algeria, which
contravene the constitution, forbid
Christians from sharing their faith