
Attack in India ends church’s in-person worship services
Members of a house church in northern India can no longer meet for worship after a mob of about 150 Hindu extremists attacked them on July 14, sources said.
Members of a house church in northern India can no longer meet for worship after a mob of about 150 Hindu extremists attacked them on July 14, sources said.
India’s famed Emperor Ashoka was an ancient convert from Hinduism to Buddhism. He demonstrated that a person is NOT forced by others to convert from one religion to another. Today, “religious conversions are forced,” is the flawed premise of all anti-conversion laws of India. Who could have forced mighty Emperor Ashoka to change his religion? The Emperor’s famous religious conversion was his choice.
The situation for Iranian people is more dangerous now than before the recent war with Israel and the United States of America. Even more so for Christians who represent a growing minority religion in the staunchly Shia theocracy. Under threat, the ruling regime has increased its morality terror with brutal force.
In a perfect world, where legal systems hold political power to account and protect minorities against human rights abuses we might expect an end to persecution. But we do not live in a perfect world. People with power continue to act with impunity against those who think and live differently to them. Christians have a way to cope with this reality and a real and living hope for a future free of persecution.
New political winds are blowing with increasing force as the push-back against globalization grows with increasing nationalisms. The demand to pledge allegiance to something other than God in Christ will put renewed pressure on the Church and we need to be prepared to hold true to our faith. Here is a stern warning that Christians must take to heart.
Azerbaijan is guilty of “cultural genocide” for destroying Christian sites in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and falsely claiming that Armenian religious presence there never existed, according to a report by a legal advocacy group.
Religious leaders in China were instructed to put President Xi Jinping and his doctrines at the center of their teaching and preaching at a recent high-level seminar of top faith representatives and bureaucrats.
A Catholic father of four children was gunned down by Muslim neighbors last week after he objected to their harassment of Christians in the area, his family said.
Worship services at a church in a village in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state have been suspended since Hindu extremists attacked the congregation on June 1, sources said.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) again has recommended that the State Department designate Pakistan as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), citing the country’s blasphemy laws as a prime source religious freedom violations.
Another Christian girl in Pakistan, this one 14 years old, has fallen victim to forced conversion/marriage by a Muslim kidnapper, sources said.