HYDERABAD, India (Morning Star News) – In an area of central India where tribal animists enlist Maoist militants to kill Christians who refuse to recant, Sodi Joga took it seriously when relatives threatened to kill him, his wife and 5-year-old daughter. “The villagers demanded that Joga and his family must partake in the cleansing ritual, a puja, which […]
CHENGDU (Church in Chains) — On Nov. 29, elder Qin Derfu of Early Rain Covenant Church (ERCC) in Chengdu, Sichuan province was sentenced to four years in prison for “illegal business operations.” It emerged at the trial that the charge related to 20,000 Christian books used by the church. The authorities reneged on a promise […]
(Evangelical Focus) — At least 14 people were killed in an attack on a Protestant church in eastern Burkina Faso on Sunday morning, the government said. “In these painful circumstances, the government of the Eastern region presents its condolences to the bereaved families and the Protestant community,” Saidou Sanou, governor of the region, said in […]
(Evangelical Focus) — Authorities of Ethiopia’s northern region of Amhara showed up at a gathering of the Ethiopian Fellowship of Evangelical students (IFES) in Debark and arrested an undisclosed number of participants, according to local sources. The police pressured students arrested to sign an agreement to never meet again in Debark, and then released them. […]
(Bitter Winter) — On June 19, over a dozen members of Fule Church, a place of worship that is not part of the state-run Three-Self Church in Jiamusi city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, were listening to an audio sermon by a South Korean pastor, when officials from the local Religious Affairs Bureau and […]
(Open Doors USA) — In today’s 21st-century Iran, the church is increasingly under intensifying persecution from both society and the state, as Christianity— and anyone involved in spreading it — is seen as a threat to the Republic’s Islamic identity. But like the early church of Acts that expanded exponentially in the face of persecution, […]
(International Christian Concern) – Indonesia has 263 million people, 87% of whom are Muslims, making it the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Despite this fact, Islam is not the state religion and enjoys no state-sponsored preference, at least not on paper. According to the country’s 1945 constitution, the state is “based upon the belief in […]
(International Christian Concern) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that Pastor U Maung Maung, who was abducted last month along with 57 others by the Arakan Army (AA) in Rakhine State, Myanmar, was released on Nov. 5. The pastor from the Chin ethnic group, a minority group in Rakhine State that is primarily Christian, […]
NEW DELHI (Morning Star News) – A pastor and his family in eastern India are facing police charges after Hindu extremists with an axe, bamboo rods and wooden sticks attacked them in their home, leaving the pastor for dead, sources said. The eight assailants, including a policeman, who attacked pastor Basant Kumar Paul as he prayed […]
Algeria (Mission Network News) — Though 2019 began as a year of new opportunity for Algerian believers, it now draws to a disappointing end. William Stark, regional manager of International Christian Concern (ICC), recently told Gatestone Institute that authorities have closed 12 churches in Algeria since the beginning of 2019. Read our coverage here. Yet, hope remains. Members of the Full Gospel […]