World in Brief

On 10 June, Baku Appeal Court rejected arguments that letters given to a Christian fired from his workplace were illegal.

Former parliamentary staffer Rahim Akhundov said he was fired in December 2018 on secret police orders because he is a Christian. Courts said he could not appeal earlier as Parliament sent the letter nine months late. He will appeal to the Supreme Court when he receives the written appeal rejection.

Persecution concerns mounted as China completed a genetic map of the entire male population, it was reported in June.

Chinese police collected mandatory blood samples from 70 million men and boys, 10% of all males, to build a DNA Skynet of the country’s 700million males, raising fresh persecution concerns for Christians and other marginalised groups. Only 5–10% of the male population needs to be sampled in order to build a complete genetic map. US company, Thermo Fisher, supplied Chinese police with tailor-made genetic testing kits for the vast programme.

A pastor compared a second raid on a church to the ‘violence of Mao’s Cultural Revolution’ after authorities raided a house church in Xiamen for the second time in six weeks on 11 June.

Officials entered Xingguang Church and drove out church members before stripping the building of furniture and internal fixtures, including panelling and glass room dividers. Riot gear was worn by the police. The pastor said that officials are not even ‘pretending to follow correct procedures now’.

Nathan Millet was recently appointed pastor to Perspectives church in Le Pré-Saint-Gervais, on the north-eastern edge of Paris.

It is Nathan’s first time as pastor of a church, a role that he combines with being husband to Naomi, and dad to three young children. The lockdown has had benefits for the church and people have been keen to meet virtually. One man, Joffrey, was converted by reading Matthew on his own in January. He found the church on the internet and joined the Perspectives Zoom meetings as well as studying the Bible one-to-one with Millet online.

Kande Mudu, a 27-year-old man who converted four years ago, was murdered in Jharkhand on 7 June.

His was the only Christian family in their village and they faced local opposition and threats to their lives. Mudu was dragged away from family prayers, attacked and had his throat slit whilst his wife pleaded for his life. After the murder, Mrs Bindu Mudu and the couple’s two daughters, who are one and three years old, were forced to flee for their lives.

Pastor Ramesh Jebaraj says he forgives the arsonists who destroyed his church in Tamil Nadu State, southern India, in the early hours of 13 June.

The partially-sighted pastor said: ‘We don’t suspect anyone in particular. Someone may have done it out of jealousy, but we forgive them.’ Police are investigating the blaze that destroyed the thatched roof of the church, built ten years ago, and reduced the building to a burned-out shell.

On 18 June, a 12-year-old heard his family being threatened with murder by relatives angry at his family who wouldn’t renounce Christ.

His mother said her relatives had portrayed her as a bad woman for accepting Christianity. Her husband, who was away on the night of the harassment due to lockdown restrictions, said they had been suffering for three years, including a break-in from relatives who had weapons with them. Not being able to go to church has meant they haven’t had regular support from other Christians.

An appeal verdict has finally been received in the cases of three of the four members of the Church of Iran in Rasht who were serving ten-year sentences.

The church’s leader, Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, and Deacon Saheb Fadaie, have each received six-year sentences. Church member Mohammadreza Omidi (Yuhan), received a sentence of 24 months, but is expected to be released in July. Confirmation on the verdict issued to Yasser Mossayebzadeh, who was convicted alongside the three men in 2017, is pending.

Amendments to the Islamic Penal Code in May are predicted to ‘facilitate the repression and punishment of Christian converts and others belonging to unrecognised religious groups’, according to regional experts.

Anyone who is found guilty of using ‘mind-control methods’ or ‘psychological manipulation’, in the ‘real or virtual sphere’, for ‘deviant educational or propaganda activities that contradict or interfere with Islamic teachings in ways such as making false claims’ can be punished with imprisonment, flogging, fines or even the death penalty.

Israel removed the evangelical Christian station GOD TV from an Israeli cable television provider in June, due to claims that it was trying to evangelise Jewish people.

It was given seven days to halt broadcasting. Ron Cantor, GOD TV regional director in Israel, said the allegations against the station are ‘simply not true’. In April, GOD TV launched a Hebrew-language channel under the condition that it did not engage in missionary activities among non-Christian Jews. It had been given a seven-year licence from the Israeli Communications Ministry.

One Christian was killed and four were seriously injured in a mob attack which took place on 20 June in Omdurman, west of Khartoum.

Mariel Bang died when a mob of young Muslim men shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘Allah is Greater’) attacked a group of Christians with knives and batons at random. He is survived by his wife and four children. Four others were seriously injured in the attack. Earlier in June, the imam of a local mosque called on worshippers to ‘cleanse’ the ‘Muslim area’ of Christians.

Two Christian missionary workers received deportation orders in June from the Turkish authorities, the latest expulsions in what appears to be an official campaign to remove foreign Christian workers from the country.

The Istanbul Protestant Church Foundation (IPKV) issued a public appeal to the Turkish Government on 16 June asking for tight new residency restrictions imposed on foreign pastors to be lifted. Many churches in Turkey, including the IPKV, have long looked overseas to fulfil church leadership roles because of a shortage of qualified clergy.

The Christian Film & Television Commission criticised a film due to be released soon that ‘crosses the line’ of blasphemy in a way that Hollywood wouldn’t allow to happen for other religious figures.

In Habit, Jesus is represented as a female romantic foil for another woman. Written by a daughter of a missionary, critics said the film was ‘actively attacking Jesus’.

A white Mississippi pastor, who believes God has been calling him to multicultural ministry, says he was given the boot by The Heights Church in Columbus for supporting black people.

He believes that ‘black lives matter (as a human fact)’ and stands with protesters against racial injustice. Bishop Scott Volland revealed the church’s board voted to part ways with him as their leader because his activism and views on racial equality did not align with the church’s position.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced in June that state employees would be banned from taking publicly-funded trips to Idaho because of two laws passed recently in the state which it deems to be anti-transgender.

Becerra invoked Assembly Bill 1887, a California law that took effect in 2017 and limits travel to states that it says have engaged in discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. Idaho decided only biology would determine who took part in sports competitions.

Instagram removed a worship video from the site on 23 June citing a violation of ‘community standards’.

Sean Feucht, a worship leader and songwriter, explained how Instagram had stated his video was removed after being classified as containing ‘harmful or false information’.