Source: The Ledger
On January 12, 2003 The Ledger reported that "[Lee] Lebanoff is a member of the Vietnamese Alliance Church, a Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation established in 1981. Its 50 members hold services every Sunday and prayer meetings every Wednesday... After Buddhism, Catholicism is the second-largest religion in Vietnam... When compared with other religions in Vietnam, Christianity was introduced fairly recently. Christian missionaries didn't begin preaching the Gospel to the Vietnamese until the 16th century... Since 2001, religious freedom in Vietnam has deteriorated, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., because the government of Vietnam placed restrictions on the practices of Catholics. Some ethnic-minority Christians have been forced to renounce their faith."