Washington—Bob Fu, president of the “China Aid Association”:http://chinaaid.org/about/bob-fus-story/, will be presented with the 2007 John Leland Religious Liberty Award “for courageously defending the right of all people to exercise freely their religious faith” Feb. 7 at the Library of Congress.
The award, which recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to the cause of religious liberty, will be presented by Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) will co-host the 4:00 p.m. ceremony honoring Fu along with the ERLC at the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Congressman Franks serves as co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus’ Force for International Religious Freedom.
The ERLC chose Fu to receive this year’s award based on his steadfast ministry and involvement with the Chinese Christian community.
In China, Fu served as a leader for the People’s University of Beijing student democracy movement, which tragically ended in the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989.
Following this government suppression of calls for political reform, he became a pastor of a house church, subjecting himself to both continual harassment from government authorities and hostility from many Chinese citizens. Shortly after beginning the church, he and his wife, Heidi, were arrested and imprisoned for two months.
After experiencing relentless persecution, the couple eventually fled China in 1996, settling in Midland, Texas. There Fu founded the China Aid Association, through which he serves as a spokesperson for “house church” Christians in China. In this position, he has spoken on behalf of Chinese Christians before the House International Relations Committee, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the UN Commission on Human Rights, among other groups.
Fu is described on the award as “a resolute leader devoted to exposing the human rights violations and religious persecution routinely imposed upon the Chinese people who worship according to the dictates of their consciences.”
_The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 16.3 million members in over 44,000 churches nationwide. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the SBC’s ethics, religious liberty and public policy agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, D.C._
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