Afghani Christians are warned of “dire consequences” should American forces leave Afghanistan, Worthy News has learned. “If U.S. troops are not in Afghanistan the Taliban will come to power,” said Obaid S. Christ, an Afghan Christian exiled to India, said last Tuesday. “We will have the same situation we had in the 1990s when the Russians left Afghanistan, when we had civil war and millions killed.”
Franklin Graham this past weekend held Spanish speaking meetings (Festival De Esperanza) – Festival of Hope – at The Home Depot Center, in Carson, California, where the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Trevor Freeze says hundreds of Hispanic hearts were warmed and changed forever by the saving power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
At least four incidents of Christian persecution were reported from the former Soviet country of Uzbekistan this week. According to an analysis and report researched and written by Fernando Perez for the World Evangelical Alliance – Religious Liberty Commission, a Christian woman was beaten into concussion, another woman was fined $1,465 by a court for giving the New Testament to a child, a Christian man was threatened with axe attack by a police official and another man was assaulted by police.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has formally launched her campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Bachmann is not the best known Republican running for president for next year, but she does have a growing national following among conservative voters who are looking for an alternative to the current front runner, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
This past Friday, Planned Parenthood’s request to block a provision of an Indiana law that requires doctors to tell women who are seeking abortions that “human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm” was denied by U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt.
The Palestinian Authority says it will go to the United Nations in September and ask for recognition of an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, a move opposed by both Israel and the United States.
The general director of comparative religious studies in Iran claimed the enemies of Islam donate approximately $50,000 a year to Iranian house churches that often have memberships of only 15-20 members.
An Ethiopian court sentenced 579 Muslims from three to 18 months in prison for a week of violence against Christians that left one dead and 69 churches destroyed by fire.
Being a Christian in Uzbekistan can be costly. Just ask Galina Shemetova who was ordered to pay a fine of 2,486,750 som, 50 times the minimum monthly pay for giving a colleague a children’s Bible. This amounts to $60,320US, four times the yearly pre-tax salary of a 40 hour-a-week minimum wage earner. Miss Shemetova not only had to pay the fine, but she was also beaten physically by police, a fact known by the Tashkent Court of Appeals.
Police detained 16 more members of Beijing’s Shouwang House Church and placed others under house arrest: two were held in protective custody while the rest were sent to 10 different police stations; most were released by Sunday morning.
Sudanese Military agents killed one Christian and Islamic militants another last week after attacking churches in Sudan’s embattled South Kordofan state.
Uzbekistan continues to persecute Christians exercising their religious rights. Recently a Christian in eastern Uzbekistan was beaten by police, another was threatened with death by an axe while a Baptist congregation was promised prison for failure to co-operate in a pre-trial investigation of their pastor.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, warned that the vacuum left by failed autocratic regimes was being filled by extremists who have turned the Arab Spring into a “very anxious time” for Christians.
Poland has granted asylum to 16 Christian refugees who accompanied Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski on a flight back from Tunisia.The Foreign Ministry said Friday, June 17, that the six adults and 10 children were “political refugees” from Eritrea and Nigeria, whose lives have been upturned by recent turmoil in North Africa.
An international advocacy group urged the U.S. government Friday, June 17, to condemn Indian authorities for reportedly asking three American Christians to leave India because they allegedly participated in evangelism.
Christians in Pakistan remained fearful Thursday, June 16, after a court in Pakistan acquitted 70 Muslims who were suspected of killing Christians in one of the country’s worst sectarian clashes in recent memory.
Christian rights campaigners on Wednesday, June 15, demanded the immediate release of seven Vietnamese activists, including three Christians, who were convicted of “attempting to overthrow the government” and jailed to between two and eight years.
An Indonesian court sentenced an Islamic cleric to one year in jail for provoking hundreds of people to riot, attacking police and burning churches.
The Christian farmers of Mdandi village in northern Nigeria were preparing for a new harvest when armed Islamists attacked their homes and drove them out.
No country in the Middle East has seen more Christians imprisoned in 2011 than in Iran. A recent report by Christian Solidarity Worldwide revealed that 254 Christians were arrested in more than thirty cities across the country since June 2010.