Christgiving
Persecution
Russia sentences 70-year-old Korean missionary to nearly six years in prison
Russia (MNN/VOM) – A missionary’s retirement plans have been derailed by a prison sentence. On Wednesday, a Russian court sentenced 70-year-old South Korean Missionary Park Tae-Yeon to five years and eight months in a correctional colony on immigration-related charges. Park was a...
Evangelist and Family Exiled After Attack
An evangelist in northeast India remains in exile from his village after a violent attack and false accusations. Rangja began evangelistic work in his native village in 2020. By 2024, seven families had come to Christ. On Jan. 18, 2026, village leaders called a meeting with these...
Christian Teen Flees Voodoo Violence
A 17-year-old girl named Nogosa fled from her home on Sept. 13, 2026, after being severely beaten by her family for her faith in Christ. Nogosa had recently become a follower of Christ and was attending church services, angering family members who had dedicated her to become the ...
Nine Injured in Church Attack
In Oromia, Ethiopia, a local Islamic sheikh led an attack on a church that left nine Christians injured. On Sept. 13, 2026, a group of Muslims led by the sheikh attacked Christians during their weekly worship service and injured nine of them, including a pregnant woman. A local m...
New Legislation Threatens Independent Documentation of Persecution in Nigeria
Nigeria’s Senate is advancing legislation that could significantly expand government oversight of organizations receiving foreign funding, raising concerns that the measure could affect the ability of churches, humanitarian organizations, human rights groups, and independent rese...
Churches Restrict Entry of Non-Christians in Persecution-Hit Region
In an unprecedented development last week, more than 40 churches in the Dhamtari district of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, India, declared that worship is restricted to Christians only, raising eyebrows among Christians and non-Christians across the country. The churc...
Conditions Worsen for Stateless Rohingya Christians
The Rohingya are known largely as a Muslim ethnic group forcibly driven from Myanmar. But a small subset of Rohingya are Christian. Numbering about 1,500 in total, these Christians comprise a small fraction of 1% of the overall Rohingya population. Life as a Rohingya refugee is t...
TURKIYE: Walking by Faith Doesn't Mean You Don't Get Scared
For our Turkish brothers and sisters, church is not just a weekly service. It's a family where they come together, united in Christ, deepening relationships and encouraging each other. The church is also the training ground where new believers are discipled and equipped to live f...
Seven Letters from the Persecuted Church
By International Christian Concern’s field leader for South Asia Recently, I traveled through Nepal, India, and Bhutan as part of our ministry to the persecuted church, meeting believers and listening to the realities they face because of their faith in Jesus. During the journey,...
Nigerian Pastor, Believer Killed on Their Way to Church
A pastor and another believer on their way to worship God were among the 13 killed during the weekend in Plateau state, Nigeria. The pastor, his son, and a church worker were traveling to a church service on Sunday morning in Dorowa Babuje when armed men ambushed them. They shot ...
Senators Lankford, King Honor Victims on CCP's 105th Anniversary
On Wednesday, the same day Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Washington to be feted by the United States, U.S. Senators James Lankford and Angus King introduced a bipartisan resolution highlighting the 105th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party and commemorating its ma...
Martyr's Widow Begins Cancer Treatment
A Christian refugee whose husband was killed by his family for converting to Christianity has been diagnosed with cancer. Nour became a widow after her Syrian husband’s father and brother attacked and murdered him upon learning he had come to faith in Christ. They also atta...
False Charges Filed After Pastor Refuses Hindu Ritual
A pastor has been falsely charged with forced conversion of a Hindu man. On Dec. 8, 2025, Pastor Rakesh was heading home after working on his farm when stranger approached him and began asking him questions. The man then demanded that Rakesh say “Jai Sri Ram” (a Hindu...
Bible Translator Perseveres After Family's Abduction
A Muslim-background believer is continuing his ministry and Bible translation efforts despite being separated from his family. Diallo Haruna was born into the Fulani tribal group and raised as a Muslim in Chad. He eventually placed his trust in Christ and attended a Bible school ...
Christian Educational Institutions in India Face Mounting Pressure
Elite Christian educational institutions in the Indian state of West Bengal are the latest targets of religious extremism in what seems to be a systematic dismantling of intellectual strongholds. While government officials have begun to conduct surprise visits to Christian colleg...
Divided and Dispossessed: How Sudan’s Government Targets the Church
In Sudan, the battle for the soul of the church is not only fought with guns. It is also fought with court papers, administrative orders, and calculated division. For years, successive authorities in Khartoum have pressured church leaders to comply, encouraged internal conflict, ...
Trump-Xi Meeting Comes Amid Ongoing Persecution in China
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in Washington on Sept. 24, with trade, artificial intelligence, critical minerals, Taiwan, and other issues expected to dominate discussions. But the meeting also comes as Christians and other reli...
TURKIYE: Evangelism Happens Through Relationships
Most Turks believe being Turkish and being Muslim are inseparably intertwined. Pastor Ramazan Arkan was an adult before he ever met a Turkish Christian. Then he became friends with a coworker who had left Islam to follow Jesus. That friendship started Ramazan on a journey that ev...
Pakistani Christian Remains Detained Following Blasphemy Allegations
A Pakistani Christian man remains detained after police arrested him in August over allegations of blasphemy connected to religious remarks and a video said to have circulated on social media. Amir Masih, a Christian from Dhala Sharif, near Nowshera Virkan in Gujranwala District ...
U.S. Refugee Policies Leave Persecuted Christians with Fewer Paths to Safety
Christians facing persecution around the world are finding fewer pathways to safety in the United States as the country’s refugee resettlement program remains effectively suspended, and new asylum procedures change how some claims are initially reviewed. A new report from World R...
Elders of Early Rain Covenant Church Detained in Latest Crackdown
As the elders of Early Rain Covenant Church met quietly on Sept. 10 at a local teahouse to discuss church matters, communist authorities were already on to them. Around 3 p.m., police entered the teahouse, interrupted the meeting, and arrested 11 of the elders, whom they took to ...
Military Kills Another Pastor in Myanmar
Another pastor has died at the hands of the military in Myanmar. At about 4 p.m. on Sept. 14, the military shot and killed the Rev. Dal Thawn Tuang, assistant pastor of Lamzang Baptist Church in Lamzang Village, Chin state. The Burma Research Institute (BRI) confirmed his death. ...
Perpetua and Felicity: Faith Stronger Than Fear
The witness of the early church was not carried by leaders alone, nor was it limited to those with influence, education, or public recognition. Ordinary believers carried it: young and old, free and enslaved, men and women, whose lives became living testimonies to the worth of Ch...
Faithful Service in Dangerous Region
A Christian man continues faithfully witnessing to Christ despite living in a dangerous area. In the north of Mozambique, a majority-Muslim nation that has been the epicenter of an Islamist insurgency since 2017, being identified as a Christian can cost a person his close relatio...
Young Christian Minister Forced into Military
On Nov. 30, 2025, Kyaw Tun Aung, 22, was forcibly enlisted into military service under Myanmar's conscription law despite a provision exempting religious workers. The young man was raised in a Buddhist family but came to faith in Jesus Christ in April 2022. Following his conversi...
Christians in Rural Villages Face Increasing Pressure
Church leaders in Kyrgyzstan say Christians living in rural villages are facing increasing persecution. “One family was reported to social services for being too poor to care for their children, and now government agents are threatening to take them,” said a front-lin...
UN and EU call for action against religious persecution
USA (MNN) – UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently called for greater action against global religious persecution, giving a speech on the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. Todd Nettleton with VOM USA says his comm...
Polycarp: When Loyalty to Christ Was Tested by Fire
Stephen’s story does not stand alone. It began a pattern that would repeat itself across generations. The gospel continued to spread. And wherever it spread, it confronted the powers, loyalties, and idols of the world. In the Roman Empire, this tension became unavoidable. To say ...
Nigeria’s reported Boko Haram ceasefire leaves difficult questions
Nigeria (MNN) — A report from independent, nonprofit newsroom The New Humanitarian says Nigeria’s government and Boko Haram have had a secret ceasefire agreement since June. That’s the same month the radical Islamic group released 360 kidnapped civilians in northeastern Nigeria. ...
Gunmen Kill 11 Christians in Benue State
As Americans marked the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, families in northeastern Benue State were burying 11 people killed during an Islamic extremist attack on their community. Suspected armed Fulani militia attacked and invaded Ayilamo, a predominantly Christian farmi...
Muslim Father Attempts to Burn Christian Daughters Alive
At around midnight on Sept. 6, Amina and Shamila were inside their home in Kibenge, Kasese District, Uganda, when their house was set on fire. Their father, Muhamud, had doused the house with petrol, then set it alight while the girls slept inside. He had told them he would act t...
The Witness Continues: The Testimony of the Martyrs Through History
By Pieter Vermeulen, ICC Board Member, as part of a series, “Persecuted but not Forsaken.” We’ve reached a turning point in this journey. In the previous articles, we walked through the pages of Scripture and discovered a consistent, sobering truth: Faithfulness to God has always...
Maharashtra Anti-Conversion Law Challenged in Court
A major legal challenge was filed in the Bombay High Court on Sept. 11 against the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Act, 2026, arguing that the new legislation overreaches by infringing constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy, dignity, and personal autonomy. The comprehensiv...
Lebanese Christians Stuck Between Mortal Enemies
Lebanon has the highest proportion of Christians anywhere in the Arab World and arguably the region’s least restrictive laws on religious freedom. Lebanese Christians also have important positions in society. This includes the presidency, which is reserved for a Christian under t...
A Christian Mother’s Courage to Fight for Her Children
In the quiet corners of a refugee camp in South Sudan, a mother of six holds tightly to her faith and to the hope that her children will one day live free from fear. Lulu was once Muslim, a wife to a Muslim husband, and a mother living in Sudan. When she gave her life to Jesus Ch...