
Five regions go to polls as India’s democratic fault lines deepen
Voting has concluded across five regions in India’s most closely watched regional elections in years.

Voting has concluded across five regions in India’s most closely watched regional elections in years.
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.
A documentary about indigenous land dispossession and military violence in West Papua has been watched more than 13.6 million times on YouTube within days, after Indonesian authorities failed to suppress organized screenings in cities throughout the country. More than 107,000 people in April 2026 have been displaced and most of them Christian.

More than 25,000 Christians living in informal settlements in Pakistan’s federal capital have expressed cautious relief after the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) ordered authorities to halt imminent evictions and finalize long-delayed regulations to legalize such communities within four weeks.

Police in Pakistan have declined to recover a 15-year-old Christian girl who was abducted at gunpoint, forcibly converted to Islam and married to the kidnapper, according to her father.

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.