search

Seventy-four children had to leave their Christian-run hostel in Rajasthan in early May, after the High Court dismissed a petition challenging the child welfare committee’s seizure of the central office of Emmanuel Mission India.

Emmanuel Mission International (EMI), founded in 1960 by Archbishop M.A. Thomas, is well-known for providing quality education to students from under-resourced backgrounds, regardless of caste or religion. EMI now runs five societies. One, Emmanuel Education Society, runs over 40 schools in Rajasthan state.

The American Charge d’Affaires in Ankara said in late June that Turkey’s continued detention of Pastor Andrew Brunson on spying and terrorism-related charges was impeding US-Turkish relations.

Philip Kosnett said there is a ‘strong sense of unity in Congress between Republicans and Democrats’ on the need for Brunson to be released. He continued that there is: ‘A similar sense of unity between Congress and the administration that, in order for the relationship between Turkey and the US to progress, we need to resolve that status not only for Brunson but also for other American citizens and local Turkish employees of US missions who we feel are detained unjustly under the state of emergency’.

The strangest thing happened the other day: I got stuck in a traffic-jam in Pyongyang!

After eight years, it was time to return to North Korea along with a team of wonderful Christian medics from around the world.

More than 220 French-speaking women gathered together on 14 April for the annual ‘Chrétiennes Engagées’ Conference.

The keynote speaker, Sarah Richelle, spoke from Psalms 1 and 2; ‘Happy – Finding your joy in the Word and in the King’. The participants, representing over 59 churches in the Paris region and wider, braved train strikes and Easter holiday traffic to get to the American Church in Paris, on the Quai d’Orsay, close to Les Invalides. They were built up by excellent Bible teaching and the opportunity to praise God and enjoy fellowship together.

A survivor from the devastating terror attack in Orlando, Florida at gay nightclub, Pulse, posted on Facebook on 27 April that he found Jesus as his personal saviour and is no longer identifying as gay.

The attack happened in June 2016 and left 49 people dead. ‘I should have been number 50!,’ wrote survivor Luis Javier. ‘Going through old pictures of the night of Pulse, I remember my struggles of perversion, heavy drinking to drown out everything, and having promiscuous sex that led to HIV. My struggles were real!’ he recalled. ‘The enemy had its grip, and now God has taken me from that moment and has given me Christ Jesus.’

Over 150 people from all over Latin America, North America and Europe assembled in Guatemala City from the 1–7 of February for Latin Link International’s four-yearly International Assembly.

Missionaries, support staff and associates made the trip to the Central American republic, where the main order of business was welcoming Latin Link’s new International Team Leader Paul Turner, who assumes the role from Alan Tower.

Almost 13,000 pastors and church leaders gathered from 11-13 April for the 7th biennial Together for the Gospel conference in Louisville, Kentucky.

Together for the Gospel started with a friendship between four pastors and has now burgeoned into one of the largest Christian conferences in the world. Attendees came from over 50 different countries including a record 62 from the United Kingdom.

On 7 March, police in Nigeria’s north east Adamawa State arrested the organiser of a protest march against the continued killings of predominantly Christian farmers by mainly Muslim Fulani herdsmen.

Mijah Stanley had called on ‘all pro-democracy and civil rights organisations, faith-based and community-based organisations, as well as other Nigerians’ to rally. However, the march never went ahead after police spokesperson S.P. Othman Abubakar warned they would be arrested and prosecuted.

A Christian college gave thanks to God in February after winning a legal battle with significant implications for religious liberty in the US.

Wheaton College won the right to not provide health insurance which covers abortion-inducing drugs. The case centred on the Affordable Care Act – ‘Obamacare’ – which obliges employers to provide health insurance that includes ‘contraceptives’ which act to destroy human embryos.

There is a sense of emergency in the Central African Republic (CAR) where security has dramatically deteriorated across the country: President Faustin-Archange Touadéra failed to establish his authority beyond the capital, Bangui, 18 months after his election.

Gunmen are at crossroads in broad daylight, in a neighbourhood near the international airport. At night, gunshots can still be heard in the capital. In the capital, businesses and schools are working fairly well. In one of the epicentres of the violence, PK5, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood, markets and shops have re-opened (CAR is 76% nominally Christian, 14% nominally Muslim).

Hannah Cho* tells her story of faith in God despite horrendous persecution.

After the Korean war, public religion was discouraged. The local church was turned into a school and Hannah remembers that her Christian mother prayed at home while the family kept watch for informants.

The Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) challenged a government decision in late August to impose an unelected leadership committee on the church, which only came to light when church leaders were arrested.

The Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowments, which oversees religious affairs in Sudan, appointed an alternative Executive Committee of the SCOC, led by Mr Angelo Alzaki, to manage church affairs. Eight senior SCOC leaders were arrested and charged with trespassing on the church headquarters and refusing to hand over control of the church to Mr Alzaki. They were released on bail later that day.

In August, a team led by Bob Lunt completed and published a Wichí–Spanish language dictionary to complement the Wichí Bible translation, which was first published in 2002.

The Wichí language, spoken by up to 50,000 people in parts of Argentina and Bolivia, is the most common language of the Mataco-Mataguayan language family.

A question to start: Is our God still working in China?

The short answer is Yes! It is however important to fully understand the current attitude and freedom permitted by the Chinese authorities regarding religious practice. China’s policy on religion states that ‘the Chinese people are free to choose and express their religious beliefs as well as demonstrate their religious status’.

The relationship between church and society in Australia has always been ambiguous.

In the earliest years of European settlement following the establishment of Sydney in 1788, a fundamental divide existed between the free settlers and colonial officials on the one hand, who tended to be Anglican, and the large numbers of convicts, often Irish Catholics, who were predictably anti-authority and resentful.