{"id":6113,"date":"2006-05-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/05\/21\/2006-05-21-christians-hopeful-with-nepal-s-secular-state-declaration\/"},"modified":"2006-05-21T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-21T12:00:00","slug":"2006-05-21-christians-hopeful-with-nepal-s-secular-state-declaration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/05\/21\/2006-05-21-christians-hopeful-with-nepal-s-secular-state-declaration\/","title":{"rendered":"Christians Hopeful With Nepal&#8217;s &#8220;Secular State&#8221; Declaration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.gfa.org\/gfa\/newsupdate051906\">www.gfa.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">USA, May 21, 2006: (HPI Note: The following article is from the Christian evangelical organization, Gospel for Asia.) <\/p>\n<p>Described by some observers as a &#8220;21st century Magna Carta,&#8221; the sweeping political changes decreed yesterday by Nepal&#8217;s parliament are being met with prayerful caution by Gospel for Asia leaders in the region. &#8220;To experience this historic change for this nation is truly an answer to prayers,&#8221; declared Narayan Sharma, Gospel for Asia&#8217;s national leader for Nepal. &#8220;For the last 10 years there has been no prayer meeting or worship service in our churches without specific prayer for the nation.&#8221; &#8220;This is definitely welcome news,&#8221; said GFA President K.P. Yohannan. &#8220;It is the first time in the history of Nepal that there has been a democratic, secular government.&#8221; If the changes passed by the parliament stand, they will indeed be a peaceful revolution for the mountain kingdom. &#8220;May 18, 2006&#8211;the day a new Nepal was born,&#8221; declared the Nepali Times. It explained that Thursday was &#8220;the day the parliament restored by &#8216;people power&#8217; declared itself supreme and decided to save the monarchy from a king who nearly took it down with him.&#8221; In the new Nepal, decisions on royal succession and other palace matters will be made by the parliament&#8217;s State Affairs Committee. The parliament, taking power on the strength of recent massive street demonstrations, also passed laws to: 1. Slash royal allowances; 2. Tax royal income; 3. Allow court trial of royal family members in court in criminal cases; 4. Strip the king&#8217;s command of the army; 5. Replace the royal household with civil servants;  6. Declare Nepal a secular state instead of &#8220;the world&#8217;s only Hindu kingdom&#8221; It is this last provision that is of most interest to Nepal&#8217;s long-oppressed Christian minority. <\/p>\n<p>For the rest of the article, click URL above.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.gfa.org USA, May 21, 2006: (HPI Note: The following article is from the Christian evangelical organization, Gospel for Asia.) Described,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}