A house church in China’s Taiyuan city was raided by forty government officials who arrested the pastor and five female members of the congregation at the same time, Christian Headlines reported Monday. While the five women were released some hours after the raid, Pastor An Yankui, whose home the church meets in, was detained for 15 days.
German police stormed a church service as pressure mounts on Europe’s devoted Christians to stop gathering or accept government rules amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Suspected Islamist militants have killed scores of people in simultaneous attacks on two villages in Niger, near the border with Mali, security officials said.
China faces international pressure for sentencing an independent Christian journalist to four-year imprisonment over her coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan city. Zhang Zhan, 37, reportedly saw it as “God’s will’ to be among the few people whose firsthand accounts from crowded hospitals and empty streets painted a more gloomy picture of the COVID-19 epicenter than the official narrative.
A prominent Catholic bishop in Nigeria, kidnapped on December 27, has been released unharmed in an “answer to prayers,” his church said Saturday.
Islamic extremists in Uganda raped a female church pastor last month, claiming they were “teaching her a lesson” for converting Muslims to Christianity, Morning Star News reports. The Pastor, who was not named for her protection, was attacked in Kapyani in the Kibuku District of eastern Uganda on December 21. Although Ugandan law allows freedom of religion, and Muslims are a small minority in the country, radical Islamic persecution of Christians is ongoing.
Muslim Fulani militants are continuing to murder Christians in Nigeria, and at least 18 people from Christian communities in Kaduna state were slaughtered in the week leading up to Christmas, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.
Christians in a movement of former Muslims and other believers welcomed a decision by Indonesia’s government to ban an Islamist group that attacked churches and other targets.
A new report forecasts that Christians in India will be subject to increased persecution in 2021, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.
Chinese government authorities increased their persecution of Christians this Christmas season by banning numerous worship services and carol events, the Christian Post reports.
Sudan’s police reportedly detained nine men suspected of repeatedly burning church properties amid ongoing Islamic pressure on minority Christians.
Christian farming communities reportedly faced new attacks and abductions on Christmas Eve by suspected Islamic Fulani fighters who recently killed dozens of Christians.
A groundbreaking new study entitled “Persecuting Faith” has found that Christianity is the most persecuted faith in secretive North Korea, Christianity Today reports. Drawing on the testimonies of 117 defectors, the 2020 report was published by the Korea Future Initiative (KFI) in the hope it will inform any future human rights sanctions applied to North Korea by Western countries.
Islamic terrorists in Sudan have burned down a church’s worship tent five times and have threatened to kill congregants if they put up another tent and continue to worship, Morning Star News reports. Sudanese Christians hope that Islamic persecution against them will diminish as dictator Omar al-Bashir was deposed in Apr. 2019 and Sudan has a new transitional government led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
Authorities in China’s Wenzhou City are forcing all school teachers, including Christians, to sign a document forbidding them to profess their faith or any other religious beliefs, rights activists and other sources confirmed.
Indonesian security forces have detained hardline Islamic leaders with suspected links to terrorism amid concerns among Christians about growing Islamic extremism.
Families of more than 300 Nigerian kidnapped schoolboys fear they may face similar pressures as Christian schoolgirls abducted earlier by Islamist militants.
Chinese Pastor John Cao, who serves a seven-year jail term in China, has written a poetry book urging believers to realize that Jesus Christ will never forsake them. Christ, he adds, gives treasures nobody can take away.
China is prosecuting Christian businessmen for selling audio versions of the Bible in a government effort to “eradicate pornography and illegal publications,” rights groups confirmed.
A U.S. pastor who spent two years in a Turkish prison for activities linked to his faith warns of upcoming persecution of Christians in the United States.