Opinion ID: 167154
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Never heard of this book Nefi [sic].

Text: 37 Q. Where would you find the collection called the doctrines and covenants? 38 A. It is in the Old Testament in the Book of the Law. 39 Q. Which one's the Book of the Law? 40 A. The Book of Moses. The five Book of Moses. 41 Q. Which one of the five Books of Moses? 42 A. It is the Book of Genesis, the Book of Exodus, the Books of Leviticus, the Book of Deuteronomy, and the Book of the Law. 43 Q. Which one of those books is considered the Book of Laws? There's one that's considered the Book of Laws? 44 A. It's the Genesis and the Book of the Law. 45 [DHS counsel] TO JUDGE For the record, the Book of Law is Deuteronomy. And also, for the record, Nefi [sic] is in the book of Mormon and doctrine and covenants is not in the Bible. It's a separate text in the Mormon church. 46 MR. YAN TO [DHS counsel] 47 A. I'm sorry, it should be Deuteronomy. It should not be the Genesis. My memory is failing bad on me. [DHS counsel] TO MR. YAN 48 Q. What are the psalms? What type of writing is the Psalms? 49 A. Psalms is David's song of praise to God. 50 Q. That's correct. 51 A. My memory is not very good. 52 [. . .] 53 Q. Were you confirmed into the family church? 54 A. Yes. 55 Q. How were you confirmed? 56 A. What do you mean by confirmed? 57 Q. Well, you just answered yes. What did you understand it to mean? 58 A. How do you get — what you mean by confirm? 59 Q. You just answered yes to when I asked you. 60 A. Yeah. I don't understand what is getting confirmed into the church. I'm sorry because I really don't understand your question in the first place. Could you explain again the meaning to be confirmed? 61 Id. at 102-05. 62 Several observations may be made about this exchange. First, Mr. Yan's responses to the Bible questions were fairly accurate. He was able to complete the Beatitudes question, notwithstanding an error by the interpreter. He knew four of the first five books of the Bible, and referred to the first five books of Moses as the Book of the Law, consistent with Jewish practice, which calls these five books as the Torah, or law. 4 He had, unsurprisingly, never heard of the book of Nephi, which is found in the Book of Mormon and not the Bible. He knew what the Psalms are. While he became confused about confirmation, that may be understandable if his particular group was Protestant and non-sacramental. Confirmation is a rite practiced primarily in Western Christianity among Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches. 5 Only Catholics, among Western denominations, continue to regard confirmation as a binding sacrament of the Church. It should also be noted that Mr. Yan only has a high school education, is the only Christian in his family, and at the time of the hearing had only been a Christian for five years. 63 Later, there followed an exchange that the IJ found particularly significant: 64 Q. Did you celebrate Easter this year? 65 A. Yes. 66 Q. How did you do that? 67 A. I celebrated Easter all by myself at home by myself. 68 Q. What did you do? 69 A. I make own Holy Communion and I pray. 70 Q. Do you know when Easter is? 71 A. Easter is April — April something. Christmas is December the 25th. Easter is — let me think. I cannot really remember. My memory's getting bad. 72 Q. Do you know what Easter celebrates? 73 [. . .] 74 A. I cannot remember. I remember Christmas is the time that we celebrate Jesus coming. 75 Q. You don't know what Easter [is]? 76 A. It's the resurrection of Jesus. 77 Q. Why didn't you remember that before? 78 A. Cause — because see my mind reacts very slow. Sometimes, I just got lapses. Because I have had brain injuries twice already. 79 Id. at 111-12. 80 Mr. Yan's inability to remember the exact day of Easter is unsurprising. The exact date differs from year to year, and actually requires a set of extraordinarily complex calculations. As the U.S. Naval observatory explains, Easter can occur at various times each year, between March 22 and April 25. http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/easter.html (visited Dec. 29, 2005). 81 Christmas, of course, occurs dependably each year on December 25th. Mr. Yan knew that. While it is true that it took Mr. Yan a moment or two to remember that Easter concerns resurrection, this is a slender reed indeed on which to make an adverse credibility finding, particularly given the fact that the word Easter is itself an English word referring to a festival of pagan origin 6 and appears nowhere in the foundational document of Christianity, the Bible. 82 We are troubled that while the IJ relied heavily on Mr. Yan's responses to the mini-catechism administered at the hearing, stressing his formal, doctrinal knowledge of Christianity, he barely addressed, and gave no good reason for rejecting, Mr. Yan's testimony about his personal experiences with Christianity. We agree with the Eighth Circuit that a detailed knowledge of Christian doctrine may be irrelevant to the sincerity of an applicant's belief; a recent convert may well lack detailed knowledge of religious custom. Ahmadshah v. Ashcroft, 396 F.3d 917, 920 n. 2 (8th Cir.2005). Cf. also Mejia-Paiz v. INS, 111 F.3d 720, 725-29 (9th Cir.1997) (Ferguson, J., dissenting) (stating that where alien's testimony that he belongs to a church is uncontroverted, court's opining on sincerity of alien's religious belief, based on his failure to adhere to particular religious customs, violates First Amendment). Or, as Mr. Yan's counsel before the BIA put it, Mr. Yan is a believer and adherent of Christianity and not a seminary student. Admin. R. at 8. 83 The IJ also relied on alleged inconsistencies in Mr. Yan's record of church attendance in the United States. The IJ noted that Mr. Yan testified on direct examination that he attends church every week or every other week. Actually, what Mr. Yan said, in response to a question about how often he attends church in the United States (not specifically in Denver) was Sometimes every week. Sometimes, every two weeks. Id. at 93. The IJ found this inconsistent with Mr. Yan's statement that he had attended church only twice since moving to Denver from Los Angeles, about five months before the hearing. Yet Mr. Yan did provide an explanation for his lack of regular attendance in Denver: 84 Q. What church do you attend? 85 A. In Los Angeles, I attended two Chinese church. One is called Chinese Alliance Church. The other one is called the Glory Church but in here [Denver], I cannot find any Chinese church so I attended American church. Only been there twice. 86 Id. at 108. 87 Mr. Yan further testified that all the services in the Denver church were in English, and he really couldn't understand anything. Mr. Yan also presented testimony from a witness, Mr. Chen, who knew Mr. Yan in Los Angeles, where he lived for two months immediately after arriving in the United States. Mr. Chen stated that he had seen Mr. Yan at Glory Church in El Hombre, California, three or four times, and had spoken to him there. Mr. Chen stated that Mr. Yan had asked him to testify at the IJ hearing to prove that he had attended the Glory Church, and that he had come to the hearing to do so, out of a sense of Christian duty. The IJ found Mr. Chen's testimony relatively credible. Id. at 38. 88 The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from this record was that Mr. Yan did attend Christian services in this country, beginning soon after his arrival here. Notwithstanding his stumbling over a few points of Christian doctrine, he presented a coherent, personal testimony of his conversion to faith in Jesus Christ in China and continued adherence to those beliefs since he arrived in the United States. The IJ's decision provides no valid reason for discounting Mr. Yan's claim to be a Christian. 89 2. Did the Authorities Really Persecute Mr. Yan? 90 Mr. Yan testified that the authorities broke up his home church, confiscated his Bible, and threw him in jail, where he was beaten. Relying on the background material provided from the State Department, the IJ found that a small and unobtrusive house church like Mr. Yan's (which contained only six or seven members) would have been tolerated by authorities, if they knew about it at all. Admin. R. at 42. This conclusion finds at least some support in a State Department Country Religious Freedom Report in the record. Id. at 150 (stating smaller house churches made up of family and friends were tolerated by the authorities as long as they remained small and unobtrusive). What is troubling about this line of reasoning is that the IJ appears to have made an assumption that just because the authorities do not ordinarily attack home churches, they would not have done so in Mr. Yan's case. 7 91 The IJ did not supply any other reason for disbelieving the particular facts that Mr. Yan related about the episode of persecution he endured in China. He mentioned only one specific inconsistency, in whether Mr. Yan actually signed any documents under interrogation. Id. at 39. His conclusion that the respondent would appear to be the most recent new member of a very small group which this Court finds was very unlikely to have come to the attention of the authorities in China, id. at 43, is notably inconsistent with his earlier conclusion that Mr. Yan was not even a Christian. In sum, the IJ gave no reason, other than the minor inconsistency previously noted, to discount the particular facts Mr. Yan related concerning the persecution he endured as a Christian from the Communist government of China. 3. Conclusion 92 The reasons the IJ gave for rejecting Mr. Yan's asylum, restriction on removal, and Convention Against Torture claims are not supported by substantial evidence in the record. We must therefore reverse and remand for further proceedings in this case. 93 The BIA's final order of removal is REVERSED and this case is REMANDED for further proceedings.