On Thursday, the Arkansas House of Representatives passed a bill that will protect teachers from repercussions if they are unwilling to use a transgender student’s preferred name or pronouns.
Eight Christians who were abducted by gunmen in Nigeria’s Kaduna state last month have been freed and were taken to hospital for medical evaluation, International Christian Concern reports. Nigeria currently ranks 9th on the US Open Doors Watch List of countries where it is most difficult to be Christian: believers in the northern region and in the Middle Belt are vulnerable to abduction, violence, and murder at the hands of Islamic extremist groups such as militant Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram/ISIS West Africa.
Two Christian nurses in Pakistan have been jailed for violating blasphemy laws by following a hospital supervisor’s instructions to clean up an area covered with old hangings and stickers, including a half-torn old sticker with a verse from the Koran on it, International Christian Concern reports. Rights groups have said Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws are frequently abused; Pakistan ranks 5th on the Open Doors Watch List of countries where Christians are persecuted.
Tens of thousands of mainly Christian ethnic Karen people were hiding in the jungles of Myanmar on Sunday, after fresh attacks by the military that took power in a coup, aid workers told Worthy News.
Seven Catholic clergy, including two French citizens, were abducted Sunday in Haiti, where kidnappers increasingly target churches, officials said.
Rescue workers in Indonesia search for scores of people still missing after deadly floods and landslides devastated Indonesia’s most Christian islands and other areas.
Prince Philip, the husband of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, has died aged 99, Buckingham Palace announced Friday. He was already some time in frail health.
Evangelicals across the U.S. are growing more divided over the use of COVID-19 vaccines.
A judge in Ohio has temporarily blocked the enforcement of a state law requiring abortion clinics to give a proper burial or cremation to aborted fetal remains.
Authorities in Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland seek long prison terms for at least six people who converted from Islam to Christianity, Worthy News established Thursday.
A few days after being kidnapped by gunmen in Ondo state, Nigeria, fifty year-old Pastor Frederick Ojo Aramuwa was found dead in the bush near his hometown of Ifira, International Christian Concern reported Wednesday. Pastor Aramuwa was killed even though his family paid his captors $5,000 in ransom.
The Citizens Against Enforced Disappearances (CAGED) organization is calling on the Malaysian government to release the results of a public inquiry into the disappearance of Pastor Raymond Koh, who was abducted in broad daylight in February 2017, International Christian Concern reports. It is believed the pastor was disappeared for involvement in matters against Islam.
In compliance with a recent state law, Christian colleges in California are now giving employer training on gender identity and sexuality that may not reflect the Biblical perspective on these issues, Just the News reports.
A Christian girl abducted in Pakistan more than six weeks ago was forcefully converted to Islam and married to her kidnapper, Christian activists told Worthy News.
Christian rights activists and other advocates urged Vietnam Tuesday to release four prisoners of conscience in Vietnam, including pastors, amid concerns about their health.
Gujarat has become the latest Indian state to pass anti-conversion legislation which primarily targets Christians and Muslims accused of forcing poor Hindus to convert to their respective faiths, International Christian Concern reports. Gujarat is currently led by the Hindu nationalist party Bharathiya Janatha Party (BJP), which is also India’s governing power.
A federal court ruled Monday that Michigan’s Wayne State University (WSU) officials violated the constitutional rights of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship student club in 2017: the officials revoked InterVarsity’s registered status saying it was “discriminatory” for the group to require its leaders to be Christian. The lawsuit was filed against the university’s board of governors, board members, and administrators.
Reports emerged last week that China is working to brainwash its Christian citizens by imprisoning them in mobile “transformation facilities,” Fox News reported. The reports came through Radio Free Asia, which has published accounts of abuse told by a man given the name Li Yuese to protect his identity.
While Christians in Ethiopia were already subject to persecution, they have seen intensified attacks against them amid the extreme violence of the current conflict between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), International Christian Concern reports.
A British court has ruled that the 2018 UK Lancashire Festival of Hope featuring Franklin Graham was subject to discrimination by local authorities which removed festival bus advertisements reading only “Time for Hope,” Assist News reports. The Blackpool Borough Council and Blackpool Transport Services were found to have violated the UK’s Equality Act 2010 by discriminating against the Festival specifically because of Graham’s religious views on homosexuality.