A senior evangelical pastor and his wife are spending Christmas behind bars in southern Iran after security forces raided their Assemblies of God-affiliated church, detaining everyone in the building, including children attending Sunday School, a friend of the couple told Worthy News.
Evangelical Christians in Belarus and Kazakhstan faced increased pressure Friday, October 21, to halt unauthorized worship services after pastors were fined and churches raided in the former Soviet republics.
A young pastor of Iran’s largest house church movement has told an Iranian court he will not “recant” his faith in Christ despite facing execution as early as Thursday, September 29, for abandoning Islam, church sources said.
Police who raided a Protestant family’s home in Fergana also assaulted the husband as they confiscated a Bible, an Uzbek New Testament, the Proverbs of Solomon and a Koran.
Although the Law on Parental Responsibility for the Education and Upbringing of Children has recently been enacted, Religious Affairs officials haven’t explained how the ban on children’s participation in worship will be enforced.
After days of searching, the body of Christian activist Micael Digal was found near the village of Mdikia in Kandhamal; after an autopsy, police ruled the death as “accidental”.
Two pastors arrested six months ago on charges of holding a “secret meeting” during a Christmas celebration without government approval languish in prison without a trial. Officials continue to offer them the option of renouncing their faith and walking free.
A leader in China’s growing underground church movement who disappeared last month was actually in police custody.
Held on “suspicion of using superstition to undermine national law enforcement,” Shi Enhaoi is one of 150 million Chinese Christians who refuse to join the Communist Party’s Three-Self Patriotic Movement: the only officially sanctioned Protestant church on the mainland.
Pastor Yerzhan Ushanov of New Life Protestant Church in Taraz is looking at two years’ imprisonment if criminal charges for injuring an individual’s health ever come to court, Christian rights investigators said.
The pastor of the largest Pentecostal church in Russia’s violent, mainly Muslim republic of Dagestan, has died after being shot in the head, in an apparent bid to intimidate converts from Islam, Christian rights activists and police said Friday, July 16.
A well-known Iranian pastor faces execution after two judges agreed to make him “liable to capital punishment,” as part of a crackdown on the growing Protestant church movement in the Islamic nation, Worthy News and its parner agency BosNewsLife learned Tuesday, July 13.
Saudi Arabia’s security forces freed two German Christian girls kidnapped nearly a year ago in neighboring Yemen but the fate of their abducted parents, their infant brother and a British engineer remained unknown, officials and Christians said Tuesday, May 18.
A Vietnamese Christian lawyer and dissident has pledged to continue her fight for more democracy in the Comnunist-run Asian nation, after leaving prison where she spent three years for challenging the authorities and advocating a multi-party government, Worthy News learned Tuesday, March 30.
A baby boy was reportedly fighting for his life Saturday, March 13, after Moroccan authorities expelled his Christian foster parents and some 70 other foreign Christian aid workers for allegedly trying to convert local Muslims.
Police in India’s Punjab state refuse to investigate the involvement of Hindu militants in the attempted murders of Christians, according to a report obtained by Worthy News and its news partner BosNewsLife Tuesday, March 2.
Rights investigators said Wednesday, January 13, there has been “a surge ofattacks” against Christians since December, with deaths, detentions and destruction reported in the Arab world, Africa and Asia.
Malaysian police said Tuesday, January 12, they have identified their first suspect in attacks on some 10 churches and Christian buildings amid a dispute over the use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims.
Islamists burned and looted a Protestant church in northern Algeria in an attack that was fueled by violence against Christians elsewhere in the Muslim and Arab world, church officials said Monday, January 11.
Tensions remained high in a northern Algerian city Monday, January 3, after a Muslim mob reportedly prevented Christian converts from holding a Christmas service and threatened to kill their church pastor.
The jailed chief of a Hindu-militant group has asked forgiveness for his alleged involvement in the May 23 church bombing in Nepal that killed three people.