Worthy Christian News

Police arrested a missionary and four church leaders after Christian groups in the state of Nagaland were accused of forcing people of other faiths to convert to Christianity.

After 20 weeks in a Saudi jail for participating in prohibited Christian activities, Eritrean Christian Girmaye Ambaye was deported from Jeddah by plane back to his home country on Saturday, August 9.

A researcher who is analyzing new materials just received from Vietnam says he has found a “smoking gun” that shows religious rights are still restricted in the Southeast Asian country, despite official claims to the contrary.

The bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta on August 5 has contributed to fears of a rising wave of terrorism in Indonesia. The attack on the hotel was the fifth bombing incident since January 2003.

Following lengthy judicial delays, the United Arab Emirates allowed Rev. Fernando P. Alconga to be deported back to Manila on July 23, more than nine months after he was arrested in Dubai for illegal Christian activities.

Hindu extremists clubbed a Christian believer to death in Karnataka state recently, beat another pastor till he was unconscious, and then hindered relatives from conducting Christian burials.

On July 13, police raided a house church in Xiaoshan City, Zhejiang province, China, and arrested at least three church leaders. According to a China Aid Association press release dated July 24, the raid came at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning while the Christians were meeting for prayer and worship.

Mobs attacked five churches in the southern district of Galle, Sri Lanka, on August 2. Initial information from the Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (EASL) suggests the organized attack on the churches is part of the government’s plan to introduce anti-conversion legislation.

On 1 October 2001, as U.S. and coalition forces were assembling in Pakistan in preparation for the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, Bangladeshis were heading off to vote in their national elections.

Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Belarus have told Christians and other religious communities they can no longer hold meetings in their homes without prior permission, news reports said Friday, December 13.

Just over a month after he signed what critics call "Europe's most restrictive religion law," the president of Belarus has agreed to allow a Christian radio program to air daily in his ex-Soviet republic, an official said Tuesday, December 17.

Terrorists now pose a serious threat in Peru, and one Peruvian mission leader is asking that Christians everywhere band together in prayer to protect God's people from violence.

The body of a Muslim convert to Christianity who went missing in mid-July, has been returned to his family, slaughtered and cut into four pieces by Islamic extremists, according to a report from the Barnabas Fund which monitored the incident.

Papua (Irian Jaya) is a former Dutch colony of Melanesian peoples on the western half of the island of New Guinea. Today, over 90% of all indigenous Papuans are officially reckoned as Christians. Papua was annexed by Indonesia in 1963. In December 2001 President Megawati Sukarnoputri signed a Special Autonomy law into effect. Church leaders were involved in writing the law, but Papuans in the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM) or Free Papua Movement, continue their low-level resistance to Indonesian rule, whilst the Papua Presidium Council seeks independence by peaceful means.