One of 21 churches in Egypt’s southern rural Minya governorate was given permission to restore, expand and rebuild after receiving approval from the Minya governor on 17 November.
Governor Essam al-Bedeiwi approved the 21 applications over the last six months. Some of the churches had been waiting for more than 20 years for a permit to come through. An evangelical church in Tama, Sohag gov-ernorate, was the latest to receive its permit.
Reformation influence
Some analysts note that the approvals have preceded several visits by international evangelical delegations to Cairo. Leaders from evangelical churches around the world met Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo, as part of the celebrations marking 500 years since the Reformation. This followed a visit in early November by a delegation of Christian evangelicals from the US to meet evangelical leaders in Egypt. Egypt’s President is keen to ‘show the US that Egypt is standing with the Christians and that there is no persecution in Minya governorate’.
