By Bettina Krause
Seventh-day Adventists face challenges observing the Sabbath in nearly every corner of the Earth as religious freedoms grow increasingly restrictive and less stable worldwide, according to a new Adventist Church study.
The 2015 Religious Freedom World Report uses the church’s vantage point as a religious minority in many countries to assess how far and effectively governments are protecting religious freedom around the globe, the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s public affairs and religious liberty department said Monday as it released the country-by-country report of 223 countries and territories.
The 2015 Religious Freedom World Report is also available as a PDF (see the link at the end of the article).
The report documents Sabbath-keeping difficulties experienced by Adventist students or employees in most world regions and in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Belarus, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Romania, Russia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
Adventists and other people of faith live under particularly onerous conditions in many Central Asian countries and in places with the presence of strong religious fundamentalism, whether Hindu, Buddhist, or Islamic, the report says.
