Church leaders joined with a crowd of some 400 racially diverse citizens in Lakeland, FL last week for what was called the “One Heart Community & Faith Rally,” CBN News reports. Participants prayed together and proclaimed unity against racism following the police killing of George Floyd.
U.S. President Donald Trump told Christian leaders on Thursday that he would sign an executive order for police to meet the best professional standards when using force as the nation faces civil unrest.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed concern Wednesday about ongoing beheadings and other abuses of Christians and other faith groups in several nations.
The United States accused China’s leadership on Wednesday of increasing repression of Christians and other minorities while forcing religious groups to adopt its communist ideology. In remarks obtained by Worthy News, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that “In China, state-sponsored repression against all religions continues to intensify.”
Suspected Hindu nationalists hacked to death a Christian teenage boy in eastern India amid efforts to eradicate devoted Christians from the area, Worthy News learned Wednesday.
Muslim Fulani herdsmen hacked to death and shot nine Christians in Nigeria’s Kaduna state on June 3rd, Morning Star News (MSN) reported. Women and children were among those slain and seven other people were kidnapped at gunpoint during a Muslim Fulani assault on the predominantly Christian Tudun Doka village in Kajuru County. MSN sources said this latest Fulani attack occurred while the bodies of over 30 Christians murdered in previous invasions still lay in nearby villages: surviving residents had to flee and have not been able to bury their loved ones’ corpses.
The US and Russia have invited China to attend nuclear arms control talks this month, the Washington Times reports. The 2021 deadline for renewal of the US-Russia New START nuclear arms limitation treaty is fast approaching, and Russia is willing to extend for another five years. However, the US reportedly wants China to come to the negotiating table and join a trilateral treaty.
The U.S. Supreme Court will effectively decide whether Christian and conservative employers can be forced to hire transgender people and gays. Its case centers around a late funeral director who, in 2013, lost her job after telling her boss she would transition from male to female.
Hindu violence and threats against minority Christians spread in eastern India, a leading advocacy group says.
Three Christian families were hiding in India’s Chhattisgarh state on Sunday after they were attacked by Hindu nationalists while sleeping in their homes, rights investigators confirmed.
Christians around the world spent their first Pentecost Sunday in decades without the comforting voice of Ravi Zacharias, who U.S. Vice President Mike Pence recalled as a great evangelist.
The Chicago Health Department Commissioner has told the Elim Pentecostal Church and other Romanian churches that if they do not stop holding services of more than 10 people in accordance with COVID-19 restrictions, the city “will take all necessary measures to abate the nuisance to ensure the safety of the City’s residents,” CNS News reported on May 27.”
Christians remained concerned Thursday about the plight of a young woman in Uganda who was reportedly burned by her father for converting to Christianity.
Leading rights groups and church officials will hold Thursday their annual protest and prayer vigil against the reported massive persecution of Christians in Eritrea for the first time online, amid ongoing coronavirus lockdown restrictions in Britain.
The brother-in-law of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who faced the death penalty for “blasphemy” against Islam, has been killed, local Christians confirmed Wednesday.
When asked what authority he had in mind when threatening to overrule governors on reopening houses of worship, President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he “can absolutely do it” if he wants to.
The state of California issued guidelines Monday under which houses of worship may reopen. The Department of Health guidelines were published even though the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 ban on public gatherings could stand. The decision to allow churches to reopen also follows interventions last week by the US State Department, which specified that California’s ban on church gatherings was unfair, and by President Trump, who called on all states to lift bans on religious assemblies.
Supporters of detained Iranian Christian Ismaeil Maghrebinejad say a court has increased his prison sentence for evangelical activities in Iran.
Tensions were rising Saturday after U.S. President Donald Trump demanded that states allow churches and other houses of worship to reopen from stay-at-home restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic. Saying America needed more prayer, Trump threatened to override governors’ orders though he faced constitutional limits to enforce these policies.
Four former Muslims who became Christians and part of Iran’s leading house church movements have been freed from an Iranian jail, Christian activists confirmed Thursday. Kathrin Sajadpour, Moslem Rahimi, and another Christian, of the ‘Church of Iran,’ were reportedly freed on a reduced bail of 200 million tomans ($11,500) this week, Wednesday.