Kyrgyz Christians were risking their lives Thursday, June 17, to help and shelter Uzbek believers in southern Kyrgystan, where ethnic clashes killed at least 190 people, injured 1,800 others and uprooted some 400,000 residents, Christian aid workers said.
A religious liberty group warned Saturday, February 6, that “Anti-Christian hostility is getting increasingly deadly” in the United States after two street preachers were shot and killed by a teenager who apparently opposed their message.
There was uncertainty about the future of one of the largest evangelical churches in Belarus Tuesday, June 2, after authorities ordered it to abandon its building in the capital Minsk.
Bulgaria’s government is planning to appeal a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which found Bulgaria guilty of violating religious rights of over 100 Bulgarian Orthodox priests, bishops and lay-workers, who were violently thrown out of their churches, Worthy News learned Monday, March 23.
Devoted Christian students across the United States faced uncertainty Tuesday, February 17, as President Barack Obama signed into law the nation’s biggest ever economic stimulus plan which bans religious worship or instruction in university and college facilities that receive state funds for renovations.
With the theme “Refined by Fire,” Christians around the world are being asked to remember their brothers and sisters in Christ who are persecuted for their faith on the thirteenth annual International Day of Prayer to be held Nov.9.
Belarus has banned a Christian music festival, initiated by Catholics, minutes before it was due to begin, a religious rights group said Thursday, September 25.
More than 600 churches have been demolished, 4,000 Christians forced to flee from their villages, and at least 25 killed as a result of violent persecution in the state of Orissa in eastern India.
A church in China’s autonomous region of Xinjiang faced uncertainty Thursday, February 14, after Chinese security forces raided its Sunday School, detaining church leaders and interrogating "terrified" children, investigators said.
Imprisoned Christian lawyers Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, their sentences reduced by one year due to international pressure, received a rarely granted visit from non-family members when four pastors managed to see them on January 31.
Following the March 29 sentencing of Father Nguyen Van Ly to eight years in prison for distributing “material harmful to the state,†two Protestant lawyers charged with the same “crime†are expected to face equally harsh sentences in what Human Rights Watch has called the harshest crackdown in 20 years.
Following a renewed outbreak of civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), churches in the northeast are fast becoming another war casualty.
Tensions are rising across the Horn of Africa – there is death and danger. Irredentist Somali Islamists have declared jihad against Ethiopia. Christians are being attacked and murdered by Muslims in Ethiopia. Eritrea, which is accused of arming the Somali Islamists, is exploiting an opportunity and has breached the 2000 cease-fire agreement by moving troops into the Eritrea-Ethiopia border buffer zone. Two Protestant Christians were recently tortured to death in Eritrea. The savagery of persecution appears to be escalating in proportion to regional tensions — and it could be about to get much worse.
Seven years after Issa Motamedi Mojdehi converted from Islam to Christianity, Iranian secret police have jailed him for abandoning Islam but officially charged him with illegal drug trafficking.
On 24 July, an Iranian Christian named Issa Motamadi was imprisoned on account of his faith. French internet news site VoxDei reports that Issa Motamadi, a resident of the north-western town of Resht, the capital of Gilan Province, will soon stand trial before a Revolutionary Tribunal.
Christians in Somalia were bracing for more attacks Thursday, July 13, amid reports that at least three Christian men were killed in the capital Mogadishu, as Muslim violence spread across this Horn of Africa nation.
After 126 days in prison, a Cuban pastor has been released without charge. Pastor Carlos Lamelas was unexpectedly freed without being charged on Monday and was allowed to return home to his family in Havana.
Christians in Iran and around the world prayed Tuesday, June 27, for Iran’s government, amid concerns over persecution of churches and political opponents in the Islamic nation.
A US-based religious rights group said Friday, January 27, that violence against the tiny Christian minority in India’s north-central state of Madhya Pradesh increased by 45 percent during the last two years.
The Evangelical Alliance United Kingdom (EAUK), an umbrella group representing one million evangelical Christians in the UK, prepared Tuesday, January 24, a major campaign to “alert” believers to “the dangers of the proposed religious hatred (law) and other legislation.”