
Bill in India smooths way for government to seize church assets
A sweeping foreign funding bill in India could hand the government control over faith-based schools, hospitals and charitable institutions built over decades, church leaders said.

A sweeping foreign funding bill in India could hand the government control over faith-based schools, hospitals and charitable institutions built over decades, church leaders said.
"Abide in me... that you bear much fruit, so showing yourselves to be my disciples". Such fruit is not the output of human effort, it is the result of the Holy Spirit's transformative work in our lives. So why to we invest such energy into achieving material outcomes?
In a lecture series at China Evangelical Seminary back in April, Alexander Chow, Senior Lecturer in Theology and World Christianity at New College, University of Edinburgh, established the need for Christians worldwide to listen to theologians from the Majority World. The future of the Global Church depends on us having ears to hear.
The anti-Christian realities in India provide ample evidence that a culture can quickly turn against freedom of religion. Sadly, in India, some Christian leaders claim that if there is one place you can go to remain unaware of what is happening, it is in established churches on a Sunday morning! Thankfully the Holy Spirit is not so constrained and Christians continue to multiply in the midst of heightening persecution.
In Myanmar, the Church is often the strongest surviving institution in an isolated community, destroying it weakens not only worship but the community’s capacity to resist the oppressive control of Myanmar's military junta. Christians are often thought of as collateral damage in Myanmar’s civil war, but they are also being targeted.

Violent protests erupted in Pakistan’s federal capital this week after civic authorities resumed demolition operations targeting informal settlements, including a predominantly Christian neighborhood, raising concerns among minority rights advocates about the vulnerability of poor Christian communities to forced evictions.

A 25-year-old Christian woman in Pakistan remains in critical condition after two Muslims raped her on Saturday (April 11), sources said.

The governor of Chhattisgarh state, India on April 7 signed legislation against forcible conversion that is harsher than similar laws that authorities and vigilante groups have used to falsely accuse Christians, sources said.

Muslims in Pakistan accused of gang-raping a Christian girl attacked the victims’ relatives on Sunday (April 12) in an attempt to coerce the family to drop sexual assault charges, sources said.

A key committee of Pakistan’s Punjab Province Assembly on Monday (April 13) reportedly approved legislation that would help protect Christian and other minority-religion girls targeted for forced conversion and illegal marriage.

Abortion in South Korea is increasingly being shaped by commercial forces and global pharmaceutical interests, according to a presentation at an April colloquium hosted by a Seoul-based bioethics institute, which warned that the growing use of medication abortion reflects a broader shift from a medical and ethical issue to a profit-driven industry.