The gifts and prayers of Christians worldwide made quite a difference for Indonesian Christians under attack by Laskar Jihad extremists, says Jeff Hammond, Australian missionary directing a relief effort among 54,000 displaced believers in Sulawesi and Halmahera islands.
A crucial paradox lies at the heart of China’s persecution dynamics. Over the past 30 years, conditions have improved for Christians in China. But during the past five years, they have deteriorated markedly.
LONDON, January 7 (Compass) — The forty-six-year-old founder of the “South China” house church movement, Gong Shengliang, was granted a reprieve from his death sentence, which was due to be carried out on Saturday, January 5. Gong was given a stay of execution, relatives said.
The appointment of former Senator John Danforth as special envoy to Sudan could result in positive action, according to The Voice of the Martyrs, a ministry organization focussed on serving the persecuted church.
A mob of Orthodox Church members led by priests attacked and killed an evangelical Christian pastor in his home two weeks ago in Merawi, a town in northwestern Ethiopia.
Christians in the Indonesian province of Papua (Irian Jaya) are fearful that a violent campaign could be unleashed against them later this year as Laskar Jihad Islamic militants continue to flood into the province with the apparent collusion of the authorities.
1 July 2002
Moderate Muslims, women’s groups, Christians and other non-Muslim minorities have all reacted with horror to plans by Muslim opposition party PAS to impose full Islamic Shari’ah law in Malaysia’s Terengganu State.
The injured but rescued US missionary worker Gracia Burnham, who lost her husband but not her faith in Christ, hugged their three children Monday in Kansas City Monday June 10, after a year-long hostage drama in the jungle of the Philippines.
A Pakistani Muslim convicted of alleged religious blasphemy was shot dead by a fellow prisoner yesterday afternoon in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Central Jail.
A Jordanian Christian widow threatened with loss of the legal guardianship of her two children was assured in late May by representatives of her government that the children will not be removed from her custody.
Two lawyers known for defending Pakistani Christians and Muslims over alleged blasphemy charges received death threats over the weekend, part of a series of overt warnings dished out to perceived “enemies of Islam” by local extremists during the past two weeks.
In a shocking turn of events, the radical Laskar Jihad has been banned from the Moluccas and its combative leader placed under arrest.
Protestant pastor Ahmet Guvener goes on trial in Turkey’s southeastern city of Diyarbakir in late May, accused by the state prosecutor of making illegal changes in the architectural plan of his nearly completed church building.
Christians in the Maluku provincial capital of Ambon are appealing to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to send peacekeeping forces in the wake of recent terrorist attacks.
A $300,000 ransom payment has failed to free American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham from a militant Muslim group in the Philippines linked to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.
An uncertain number of leaders of a major house church movement in China have disappeared in what at first was thought to be a massive government raid. Now cult activity is suspected.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Organization, VHP) is secretly conducting large-scale conversion drives in India’s Marxist-ruled state of West Bengal. More than 16 tribal Christians were forced to re-convert to Hinduism on April 22 at a purification ceremony in Chopra village in the Malda district about 300 kilometers from Calcutta, NGO sources said. Ten other animist tribals were also converted to Hinduism in the village.
A Presbyterian church close to the Kashmir border was attacked by a group of Islamic extremists on Sunday April 7.
A three-day Baptist convention for 100,000 people, which was due to be held in Burma, has been cancelled on the orders of the junta.
A Presbyterian church close to the Kashmir border was attacked by a group of Islamic extremists on Sunday April 7.