An American missionary was reportedly kidnapped on Thursday evening (April 10) during a church service in a town in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Several news outlets reported that masked armed men stormed the Fellowship Baptist Church and abducted Josh Sullivan, a missionary with a Tennessee-based church.
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.
Peace studies students witness locals spitting on a Christian holy site in Jerusalem prompting this response from a respected Christian leader whose family has lived in the city for millennia.
African farmers work hard to grow whatever the land agrees to yield, while in the Nigerian Plateau Christian farmers face increasing threats from Fulani militias. It is rare that we read from the perspective of a victim of terrorism. This account is both an exception and exceptional. Uren, in her final year of high school, writes with terrifying yet beautiful prose of the death of her siblings and father at the hands of a band of brutal Fulani militias. Read on for a reality check.
Fulani terrorists on Wednesday and Thursday (April 2-3) killed more than 60 Christians in Plateau state, Nigeria in what the governor called a “genocide,” sources said.
As coalitions negotiate to form a new government in Germany, the president of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) is calling for them to see the office of the Commissioner for Religious Freedom as an “essential element” of foreign policy.
A mother of six children was stabbed to death by her Muslim husband in Uganda after she attended her first church service on March 23, sources said.
Reports of targeted attacks against Christian communities and the persistent destabilizing influence of armed groups, have led to urgent debates within the European Parliament and renewed commitments from the EU to support peace and security in the region.
A Christian nurse in England who had been punished for saying “Mister” to a transgender prisoner has been suspended without explanation on a vague allegation of potential “gross misconduct,” according to a Christian rights group.
A court in England on Friday (April 4) convicted a retired Christian woman of breaching an abortion clinic “buffer zone” by offering consensual conversation.
The Spanish Evangelical Alliance (Alianza Evangélica Española/AEE) has publicly denounced a bill that would imprison pastors and others helping those wishing to leave a practicing homosexual lifestyle or reconcile their gender identity with their gender.
