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Minority Christians were among those suffering after at least 140 people died during four consecutive days of violence in Iraq, raising fears that sectarian conflicts could lead the troubled Middle East nation into civil war.

"It is difficult to tell of the intensity of violence here over the past week," said Canon Andrew White, who leads the St George's Anglican Church in Baghdad, the capital. "The slaughters and massacres have intensified so much that the sound of explosions has almost become the norm," he added in a statement monitored by BosNewsLife.

"At first the attacks were all against the Shia by the Sunni (Muslims), but on Friday we saw a major Shia response against the Sunni with over one hundred Sunnis being killed as they left their mosques."

More than 70 people were reportedly killed in bombings on Friday, 17th May, in majority Sunni districts in Baghdad and surrounding areas, in what media called "the deadliest day in Iraq" in more than eight months.

Canon White, who has negotiated with different factions in the past, said 80 per cent of the initial violence was linked to "Sunni terrorists" with most having links to the 'al-Qaida in Iraq' terror group.

"The sad fact is that there are now many Sunni clerics shouting from TV that the Shia should be killed before the Jews and the Christians," he added.

Among several other deadly attacks was violence on Saturday that killed at least 16 people, including a police officer, his wife and two children, while armed men abducted 10 policemen, officials said.

In Anbar province, four state-backed so-called Sahwa (Awakening) fighters, and allies of the US military, were killed in an attack on their headquarters, reported Al Jazeera television. Armed men reportedly also ambushed and abducted 10 Sunni policemen near Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, a Sunni heartland bordering Syria.

Amid the chaos, Canon White said he visited some of the 550 local Iraqi Christian families belonging to his church amid concerns about injuries. "There are people injured but not killed as far as I know." Yet, "The more terror and destruction that our people experience the more they are certain that when they have lost everything Jesus is all they have left," he noted.

That became clear last week when Jews and Christians celebrated the Jewish feast of Shavuot, held 50 days after Passover to celebrate that God gave the Torah, the Jewish Bible, and "the Holy Spirit came" in his power, he said. "The celebration was very small and secret. We dined in the church as Jews and Christians in a nation where there are only six Jews left."

The celebration came amid concerns that part of the violence is specifically targeted against Christians.

Since the fall of leader Saddam Hussein a decade ago, about 1,000 Christians are known to have been killed, a relatively high number compared with percentages killed from other groups in Iraqi society, according to Open Doors, a Christian aid and advocacy group.

"If these attacks take place in a Christian neighborhood or a Christian village, you can assume they are targeted, especially against the Christian population of the neighborhoods and villages," added an Open Doors field worker, who was not identified amid security concerns.

Among those killed last month was Adbuljabar Khidher Toza, a devoted Christian from Mosul, Open Doors said. Armed men apparently shot him to death in front of his house. All these targeted attacks are part of a wider attempt to remove Christians from Iraq, the field worker said.

"We received documents and threats stating that the aim of the Islamist Insurgents is to make Iraq a 'Muslim only' country; they want the Christians out."

Louis Raphael Sako, the recently elected Chaldean Catholic patriarch of Iraq and Syria, says he is afraid of what Islamist rule would mean for Christians.

"People are afraid of a kind of Islamic state as it was in the seventh century where Christians would be considered second-class citizens," he added in published remarks.

Ongoing violence has prompted hundreds of thousands of believers to flee the region to nearby countries Jordan and Lebanon as well as Iraq's northern Kurdish region.

Of the roughly 1.2 million Christians in the early 1990s, some 350,000 have remained in the conflict-torn country, according to Open Doors estimates.

WORLDVIEW: BURMA, CHINA, IRAN AND NORTH KOREA ON US LIST OF WORST ABUSERS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Countries including Burma, China, Iran and North Korea should retain their position as "countries of particular concern" with regard to religious freedom, according to the latest report from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, while seven other countries - including Egypt and Nigeria - should also be designated as such.

Released in late April, the latest annual report from the USCIRF - an independent federal advisory body to the US Government - looks at the state of religious freedom across the globe and highlights governments deemed to be "egregious violators".

It recommended that the US Secretary of State John Kerry redesignate eight countries - Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan - as being "countries of particular concern" or CPCs.

DAVID ADAMS reports on the findings of the latest annual report from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom highlighting some of the world's worst abusers of religious freedom... | more... |

Christian missionaries say they have stepped up efforts to spread the "Gospel of peace and hope" in Russia's volatile North Caucasus after revelations that the suspected Boston Marathon bombers arrived from that region.

Russian Ministries, a major mission group, said the apparent acts of terrorism by the Tsarnaev brothers underscored that "radical Islam is making every possible effort to capture the hearts and minds of the younger generation."

In April, the US Embassy in Moscow said it has sent a team to Dagestan, a province in southern Russia where the parents of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are staying.

Information from the parents is seen as crucial in the investigation. The Tsarnaev brothers are accused of setting off the bombs on 15th April that killed three people and wounded more than 180 others.

BosNewsLife reports on how Russian Ministries are reaching young people in the North Caucasus region in the wake of the Boston bombings... | more... |

Churches play an important role in the rebuilding of Sudan after years of conflict, the head of the World Council of Churches said during a visit to the country last week.

Rev Dr Olav Fyske Tveit, general secretary of the WCC, said as citizens of Sudan, Christians have "an important role in assisting the rebuilding of their nation".

"We support churches in their struggles and aspirations for peace," he said during a meeting with Sudanese minister Alfatih T Abdallah. "We affirm our hope in the government to accomplish its responsibility in protecting churches and Christians and ensuring their security."

His comments were echoed by the minister who said Sudan "needs churches to rebuild the society after a long history of conflict". "Their right to worship and conduct their activities is a guarantee in (the) constitution of the country," he said.

DAVID ADAMS reports on a recent visit by the Dr Olav Fyske Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, to Sudan and South Sudan... | more... |

22nd April, 2013

CALL TO PROTECT RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN SYRIA

A coalition of Christian organisations from more than 20 countries has called on the international community to "provide sufficent protection" for ethnic and religious communities in Syria as well as their historical, religious and cultural sites after expressing concerns over the ongoing exodus of Christians and other minority groups from the country and attacks on religious sites within the country.

The Religious Liberty Partnership - whose members include the World Evangelical Alliance's Religious Liberty Commission, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Open Doors, The Voice of the Martyrs and International Christian Concern - has also urged Christians around the world to write to the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, and ask him to pay "particular attention" to "vulnerable ethnic and religious minorities, ensuring their equal participation in his mandate".

DAVID ADAMS reports on new calls to protect religious minorities in Syria and for 23rd June to be designated a special day of prayer... | more... |

Men running, women pleading for God’s mercy, children screaming out of fear, older women trapped under rubble and thick dust rising in the air. This has been a recurring scene in Iraqi cities for close to a decade.
Since 26th June, 2004, Assyrian (also known as Chaldean and Syriac) churches have come under attack more than 80 times. The most widely publicised assault came on 31st October, 2010, when Islamic terrorists wearing suicide vests invaded Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Church in Baghdad during mass, shot two priests and then blew themselves up. When it was over, 62 people were killed and 78 injured.
For many people, news of this attack was their first exposure to the Assyrian people, whose history dates back to 4750 BC in Mesopotamia. According to Biblical tradition, they are the direct descendants of Shem, the Son of Noah. The Assyrians, whose language evolved from Akkadian to Aramaic, built the first cities and invented agriculture; river-fed irrigation systems and establishment of the first library were among many other Assyrian inventions that have shaped our world history.

In an article first published by Morning Star News, JULIANA TAIMOORAZY - president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, writes of the plight of Assyrian Christians in Iraq... | more... |

Bulgaria has begun three days of special prayers against suicide and nationwide pessimism after at least seven people set themselves on fire while protesting against poverty and corruption.

The prayers were requested by the country's President Rosen Plevneliev who says he wants to help heal the spiritual wounds of the nation amid growing public desperation.

Prayers reverberated throughout churches in Bulgaria, a heavily Orthodox nation. Worshippers remembered five Bulgarians who died and two who remain in critical condition by self-immolations that have shaken the conscious of this Balkan nation.

Prayers were held by all main Christian churches, including the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant denominations, as well as the Jewish and Muslim communities.

Just before they began, religious leaders met President Plevneliev who urged them and the country to "pray for an end to the suicides and for passing through the crisis with patience and dignity."

Spiritual unity is not the same as unification. Believers will always interpret Scripture differently, observe different traditions and prefer different styles. Spiritual unity rises out of the recognition that all who are in Christ are one flock with Christ as Shepherd, one body with Christ as Head, one people filled with one Spirit and one family with God
as Father.

Whilst spiritual unity may develop as a fruit of persecution, this is not automatically the case. If there has been a history of competition, conflict or suspicion between fellowships or denominations, then divisions may actually widen during persecution as groups long hostile towards each other compete for favoured status or limited resources in a desperate, fear-based struggle for survival.

In an article written for the Australian Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (AEA RLC), ELIZABETH KENDAL, an international religious liberty analyst and advocate and a member of the AEA RLC team, looks at the importance of unity among Christians... | more... |

Some 1,500 Christians trapped in Sudan were last week on their way to neighboring South Sudan as part of a massive rescue operation dubbed 'Exodus', an aid group said last week.

The Christians bring the total of rescued believers under the program to roughly 3,800 - almost double the number originally planned, explained Barnabas Fund.

"It has been a great privilege for us to be able to help suffering Christians...begin a new life in a place where they can be free to practice their faith in peace and have opportunities to improve their circumstances," said Patrick Sookhdeo, the Fund's international director.

A convoy of buses and lorries carrying the Christians and their belongings set off on 19th March, taking them to a new life in South Sudan, aid workers said.

A BosNewsLife report on an operation to bring stranded Christians out of Sudan... | more... |

18th March, 2013

PAKISTANI CHRISTIANS DEMAND SEPARATE PROVINCE AFTER VIOLENCE

Christians demand a separate province in Pakistan after as many as 180 Christian-owned homes, shops and two churches were burned down by an angry Muslim mob in the city of Lahore.

A Christian-ruled province could have avoided incidents such as last week's attacks against Lahore's Joseph Colony, a Christian neighborhood, said activists and politicians talking to BosNewsLife.

"We request all Christian political, religious and civil society leaders to raise their voice...for a separate province for Christians, where we can live without fear of the majority's (Islamic) faith and concepts" added the Legal Evangelical Association Development (LEAD) group and the Pakistan Christian Congress (PCC) party.

Under the plan, Punjab province would be divided in four parts, including one for minority Christians and the others for Sunni Muslims and the Hazara and Seraiki communities.

BosNewsLife reports on calls for a separate province for Christians in Pakistan following violence in Lahore... | more... |

11th March, 2013

LIFE IN VENEZUELA UNCERTAIN

Venezuelans began seven days of public mourning last Tuesday night following the death of their president, 58-year-old Hugo Chavez, after a long battle with cancer.
His hand-picked successor, vice-president Nicolás Maduro, is acting as interim president and running for the office in the upcoming election in the next 30 days. The Voice of the Martyrs Canada spokesman Greg Musselman says of Maduro, "He was very loyal to Hugo Chavez. We've seen a consolidation among left-leaning Latin American countries, so there is the belief that he will continue on in the same way that Hugo Chavez had."

Venezuela's constitution specifies that the speaker of the National Assembly should assume the interim presidency if a president can't be sworn in, but Chavez made his wishes known before he died. Government officials are following the plan he outlined at that time.
The big question now is: will there be a huge change? Not likely. "Chavism" is expected to reign on. Musselman explains, "He's a guy that does hold to the socialist ideology. We don't expect things to change drastically for the evangelical Church when it comes to evangelism and freedom to gather."

Voice of the Martyrs' Greg Musselman looks at the situation in Venezuela following Hugo Chavez's death, in a report from Mission Network News... | more... |

A mild tremor in Eritrea's façade rippled through the government last month. A brief and quickly-ended coup attempt executed by dissident soldiers did little to provoke an uprising. It was over before it really began. However, it did give rise to two thoughts: (1) the government was dealing with discontent, and (2) due to the heightened tension, anyone who fell outside the prescribed government lines was under scrutiny.

The latter was particularly true for Christians, who voiced expectation of a spike in harassment and oppression. True to form, the government obliged. Paul Estabrooks, Open Doors' minister-at-large, explains that on 20th February, "Seven more believers were arrested. Three of them work for the telecom company, one is a university student, and there was one woman among the seven - a mother of five."

Paul Estabrooks, of Open Doors, talks about the deteriorating situation for Christians in the African nation of Eritrea in a report from Mission Network News... | more... |

ESSAY: SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF LIBYAN REVOLUTION BRINGS ARRESTS OF FOREIGN NATIONALS

The Arab Spring was supposed to be about freedom and democracy. Since then we have seen an increase in extremist activities throughout nearly every country that had a revolution.

Last year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had to suspend its activities in eastern and central Libya after its offices in Benghazi and Misrata were attacked.

The aid group was accused by some people of proselytising activities and distributing Bibles to internally displaced Tanagra people in Benghazi - accusations it strenuously denied.

Earlier this month, seven foreign nationals were arrested in Benghazi under allegations that they were engaged in spreading Christianity and forced conversions.

As Libya recently marked the second anniversary of an uprising which toppled the government of Muammar Gaddafi, DAN WOODING, of ASSIST News Service, looks at the situation for Christians there now... | more... |

Christian missionaries and a pastor in Russia's Ural Mountains appealed for prayers after a meteor with the power of an atomic bomb exploded over the region injuring more than 1,000 people on Friday.

"At least 1,000 people, including some 200 children, are reported injured, mostly by flying glass as the blast shattered windows," said Sergey Rakhuba, the president of mission group Russian Ministries, in a statement to BosNewsLife.

"Praise God, at this time there are no reports of fatalities, although some people are still hospitalised," he explained, adding that "no believers have been reported injured."

Hardest hit was the city of Chelyabinsk, some 1,500 kilometres east of Moscow, where Russian Ministries has a presence through its 'School Without Walls' program, which trains the next generation of Christian leaders, summer Bible camps and a Christmas gifts project for the needy.

A report from BosNewsLife on the aftermath of last week's meteor explosion over Russia... | more... |

Foreign missionaries living in Hungary fear they will be forced to leave the country under new tax legislation, amid a wider government crackdown on religious groups.

The Budapest Times, Hungary's leading English newspaper, said "law-abiding expats" including American missionaries could face up to 45.5 per cent in taxes over their wages.

US missionaries, whose modest income is tax-exempt back home, are “living in uncertainty”, added the wife of an American clergyman in Hungary.

“Missionaries will need to drum up a very large amount of additional support to imply stay here and pay their taxes," The Budapest Times quoted her as saying in this week's issue. "Most will not be able to do that, so they will be forced to move out of the country,” she explained, speaking on condition of anonymity.

WORLDVIEW: SYRIA'S REFUGEE CRISIS CONTINUES TO WORSEN

More than 700,000 refugees have fled from Syria to neighbouring countries since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad broke out in the Middle Eastern country in early 2011 while an additional 2.5 million people have been displaced inside the country.

The mass movement of people - which comes alongside the more than 60,000 people estimated to have been killed in the conflict - has created an ongoing humanitarian crisis within the region with countries like Lebanon and Jordan bearing the brunt.

World Vision Australia - which has staff working in the region - has welcomed the announcement last week that the Australian Federal Government had committed $10 million to be spent on emergency medical treatment, food, water and essential items for people affected by escalating conflict but warns the number of refugees seeking shelter is continuing to rise.

DAVID ADAMS reports... | more... |

FISCAL DESPAIR REVEALS NEW CRISIS IN GREECE

Many Greeks are afraid to imagine a future.
Austerity measures have taken hold, and their bite runs deeper than winter's cold. The new measures limit family benefits and force the middle class to pay over 40 per cent of their annual salary in taxes.

There are three main categories of people feeling austerity's sting, and the first two are related: the unemployed, and the "neo-homeless" (the unemployed and homeless). AMG International's coordinator of Eastern European ministries, Fotis Romeos, says, "We have more than 20,000 neo-homeless people in the city of Athens. It's a very tragic situation."

The third category is refugees. "Athens is the hub, actually, the entrance of what we call the ‘Refugee Highway' for people from North Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe who are trying to enter Europe to find a better future."

A report from Mission Network News... | more... |

BRITISH AND IRISH CHURCHES PRAY AND WORK TOGETHER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY

Hundreds of thousands of Christians across Britain and Ireland are joining in the 2013 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in churches across these islands.

The week is an annual event marked by churches of all traditions - Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, evangelical and indigenous. It runs from 18th to 25th January, though many congregations are most involved on Sunday, 20th January.

The collaborative event aims at building bridges in witness and common service between Christians of many backgrounds and understandings, and is promoted by ecumenical bodies nationally and internationally.

Here the official 'four nations' (England, Scotland, Wales and both jurisdictions of Ireland) ecumenical body, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) makes resources available for the week.

A report from Ekklesia... | more... |

Manohar Lal Sharma, the lawyer defending the six men who assaulted a young woman aboard a moving bus, says the victims are to blame for the attack.

"Until today, I have not seen a single incident or example of rape with a respected lady," said Sharma last week. "Even an underworld don would not like to touch a girl with respect."

This viewpoint isn't surprising to Brent Hample of India Partners, which helps women overcome the obstacles they face through a number of programs, including health care, tailoring school, and sponsorships.

"That attitude is very common in India," says Hample. "To blame a woman for dressing inappropriately or being in a certain place at a certain time: these are just not constructive, not helpful attitudes."

UPHEAVAL IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD POSES THE GREATEST THREAT TO CHRISTIANS IN 2013, SAYS RELEASE INTERNATIONAL

Continued upheaval in the Islamic world will pose the greatest threat to Christians in the coming year while those living in totalitarian states and India also face a "growing risk" of persecution, according to Release International.

The UK-based organisation - which offers support to the persecuted church in 30 countries around the world through a network of partner groups - says its partners identified the three key contexts in which Christians will face a growing risk of persecution in 2013.

In the Islamic world, it identified Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and northern and central Nigeria as countries where Christians face growing threats.

Christians in autocratically ruled Kazakhstan and neighboring Kyrgyzstan face church closures and state c ontrol over Christian materials amid a fresh crackdown by authorities on faith groups in the region, BosNewsLife has learned.

In Kazakhstan, where President Nursultan Nazarbayev has ruled virtually unchallenged since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, several Protestant churches were reportedly closed down in recent weeks.

Members of a Protestant Church in southern Kazakhstan said in published remarks that a regional court "liquidated" their congregation along with "five or six more Protestant Churches".

Rights group Forum 18, which is in contact with the Christians, told BosNewsLife that church members refused to reveal their exact location amid fears of state reprisals.

Egypt's minority Christians faced new tensions on Sunday after the president annulled degrees giving him sweeping powers following deadly protests, but refused to cancel a referendum on a new constitution.

On Sunday, the liberal opposition called for new street protests to pressure President Mohammed Morsi to also halt plans for the 15th December referendum.

Critics say he the constitution was hurriedly adopted by his Islamist allies during an all-night session late last month.

The opposition National Salvation Front therefore urged supporters to rally against the referendum.

Reporters said the size of Sunday's turnout, especially at Cairo's central Tahrir square and outside the presidential palace in the capital's Heliopolis district would determine whether Morsi's concession chipped away some of the popular support for the opposition's cause.

Thousands of Hungarians braved winter temperatures to attend an anti-Nazi rally in Budapest on Sunday, protesting against a far-right leader's proposal to draw up lists of Hungarian Jews who may "represent a security risk" for the nation.

Márton Gyöngyösi of the Hungarian Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), the country's largest far-right party, told parliament last week that it was time "to assess...how many people of Jewish origin there are here, and especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who represent a certain national security risk for Hungary."

He said the lists, resembling similar measures during the Nazi-era, "were necessary" because of heightened tensions after a brief conflict in Gaza and should include lawmakers and other officials.

As politicians wrangle ahead of an early December deadline over the still-disputed status of the oil-rich region of Abyei, straddling the border of Sudan and South Sudan, local church leaders appeal for help in the face of a potential humanitarian crisis.

Both governments have been asked to approve an African Union proposal to resolve the status of the Abyei region. Sudan is stalling, keen to avoid the proposed referendum next year on self-determination for an area the size of Lebanon, a referendum which has already been previously postponed.

While arguments over nationality drag on, thousands of people face near-starvation in villages devastated by the conflict - particularly since May 2011 when a combination of northern militias, led by tanks and 5,000 Sudanese Army troops, destroyed roughly 90 per cent of Abyei town.

Militant Islamist group Boko Haram, which is waging war against Christians in Nigeria, has been responsible for an estimated 3,000 deaths since 2009, according to an army chief.

Barnabas Aid says that the figure given by Azubuike Ihejirika on 6th November, 2012, of the total number of Boko Haram victims is the highest reported by an official source.

The group has been carrying out deadly attacks on churches and Christian communities as well as the security forces and official targets in its campaign to establish an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria.

The Czech Parliament has approved a plan to return billions of dollars in church properties that were confiscated by the previous Communist regime. The Catholic Church in the Czech Republic has welcomed the deal, after years of negotiations.

Under the legislation, churches will receive lands, properties and compensation worth some $US7 billion over a period of 30 years.

It includes about six per cent of the country's forests and fields that once belonged to mostly Christian churches.

That land, which was confiscated by the previous Communist regime after 1948, could in future be developed, rented or sold to help pay for the church's mission.

MASSIVE CHRISTIAN RALLY IN EGYPTIAN DESERT BRINGS ESTIMATED 25,000 TO CHRIST

According to a news release from Open Doors ministry, during the first weekend in October, 10,000 young people gathered in the desert 60 miles north of Cairo to sing, pray and worship the Lord.

The youth gathering was followed up with an even larger event at the same location; an 25th to 28th October "Count It Right" Christian rally which drew 45,000 people. Hundreds of buses brought in people of all ages to the conference grounds, which also hosted art and sports activities.

Attacks on Christians in the south Indian state of Karnataka are being reported almost every other day. And now, with the state assembly election not too far away, the frequency and the intensity of attacks might further increase. For, the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appears to be consolidating its Hindu votebank in the wake of a new crisis.

Attacks on Christians shot up in the state after the BJP came to power on its own in May 2008, after being part of a ruling alliance with a regional party, the Janata Dal-Secular, for about 20 months. While Hindu nationalist groups had been working in Karnataka for decades - due to the presence of some highly influential Hindu shrines in the state, those groups began to freely implement their agenda only after the BJP's rise to power.

FERNANDO PEREZ, of the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission, reports... | more... |

More than 72 million people around the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes, according to a report released last week by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The 2012 World Disasters Report shows that more than one in every 100 people on earth have been forced into migration by a series of complex factors including conflicts, disasters, political upheaval and large scale development projects. The cost to the international community is estimated at $US8 billion.

Of the 72 million people, an estimated 20 million are living in what the report calls "prolonged displacement". The report shows that as many as 15 million have been displaced by development - the same figure as those displaced by technological or natural disasters, while 43 million have been displaced due to conflict or violence.

In a re-election to another six-year term, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez defeated Henrique Capriles by a 10 per cent point margin in the presidential election.

The win marks Chavez's fourth presidential election victory since 1998. It also means more of the same leftist-leaning policies. Some of these have earned Venezuela a dubious reputation.

In fact, the 2012 US Commission on International Religious Freedom Watch List includes Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, and Venezuela. Venezuela has been on USCIRF's Watch List since 2009.

According to the USCIRF, "The Watch List provides advance warning of negative trends that could develop into severe violations of religious freedom, thereby providing policymakers with the opportunity to engage early and increasing the likelihood of preventing or diminishing the violations."

Life for Christians in the Middle East has "never been worse" and their future is acutely endangered, according to the leader of an evangelical church fellowship.

Rosangela Jarjour, general secretary of the Beirut-based Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches, spoke at the 7th General Assembly of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE). The assembly met in Florence, Italy from 21st to 26th September.
"We don't want to become refugees, but to live in peace and with full citizens' rights and duties in our own land," she said on 21st September, according to a CPCE news release.

Wembley stadium was overtaken by a wave of prayer and praise when over 32,000 gathered for the National Day of Prayer and Worship on Saturday.
Tens of thousands more were able to join the day through live broadcasts and streams via GOD TV, Revelation TV, OHTV, Premier Radio and UCB.

During one of the key moments of the day as 300 young Christians in red hoodies were being commissioned to carry on the baton of prayer into the next generation, a Mexican wave of united prayer engulfed the whole stadium as tens of thousands were believing for a new wave of revival to hit the UK.

Tens of thousands have heard the Christian "Good News" in Albania's capital Tirana and "many" made "public decisions for Jesus Christ" at an evangelism festival of American evangelist Luis Palau, organisers said.

The announcement came as thousands gathered at Tirana's Mother Teresa Square on Sunday for the second and final day of 'TiranaFest', the first evangelistic gathering of its kind in this formerly atheistic nation.
Palau called the event "historic" as in 1967 the Albanian leadership closed all religious institutions and declared Albania the world’s first "purely atheistic state."

As violent protests against an anti-Islam film spread to much of the Muslim world on 14th September, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Lebanon to a warm welcome from Christian and Muslim leaders.

The pontiff's appeal for peace and reconciliation in the region, however, stood in jarring contrast with violent clashes in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, which left one dead and 25 injured, Religion News Service reports.

Landing at Beirut's airport in the early afternoon, Pope Benedict praised Lebanon as an example of "coexistence and respectful dialogue between Christians and their brethren of other religions." Without referring expressly to the unrest, the pope warned that the country's "equilibrium" is "extremely delicate."

Public figures from the fields of politics, sport, culture and entertainment in Germany presented a statement in Berlin on 5th September making an urgent call for unity between the Catholic and Protestant churches.

"Today, the church schism is neither wanted nor justified politically," the statement entitled 'Ecumenism Now -- one God, one faith, one Church' reads. "Will theological factors, institutional habits and ecclesiastic and cultural traditions sustain the schism between the churches? We don’t think so."

The statement calling for an end to the 500-year-old schism between the churches was signed by politicians including the head of the German parliament Norbert Lammert, Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere, and head of the opposition Social Democrat Party Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

More than 12,000 youngsters from some 100 nations have concluded Central and Eastern Europe's first-ever 'Genfest', a youth summit, with a call for a more united and peaceful world.

After three days of exchanging ideas on how to realise that utopia, they prayed and listened in front of Budapest's Saint Stephen's Basilica, one of Hungary's largest Roman Catholic Church buildings.

During the open air Mass they were encouraged not to give up their hope and dreams

The Vatican's ambassador to Hungary, the Apostolic Nuncio Alberto Bottari de Castello reminded participants of this year's Genfest theme: 'Let's Bridge'.

He said, "Christ is the true bridge between people and God," and that "the Lord wants us to carry" out that message as "bridges of love towards all people."

More than a quarter of water used around the world is directed towards growing food that no-one eats, a global conference in Stockholm marking World Water Week had heard.

Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), says that more than a quarter of all water used worldwide is employed to grow more than a billion tonnes of food which simply ends up "sent down the drain".

“Reducing the waste of food is the smartest and most direct route to relieve pressure on water and land resources," he says. "It’s an opportunity we cannot afford to overlook."

GLOBAL POLL SHOWS AFRICANS MOST 'RELIGIOUS' AND NORTH ASIANS LEAST WHILE 13 PER CENT SAY THEY ARE ATHEISTS

More people in Africa profess to be religious than in any other region around the world while globally only 13 per cent of people say they are atheists, according to the latest Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism.

The latest global poll released by WIN-Gallup International shows that 89 per cent of Africans say they are religious - well above the global average of 59 per cent. Africa was followed by Latin America (84 per cent) and South Asia (83 per cent) while the areas where the least number of people claimed to be religious were Western Europe (51 per cent), East Asia (39 per cent) and North Asia (17 per cent).

An umbrella organisation of US-based Baptist churches have urged the United States government to designate Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram as "a terrorist group" and to support religious minorities in the Middle East, North Africa and South-Central Asia.

That designation would allow more funding and policy initiatives towards combating Boko Haram and related groups.

The distributed appeal by the Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC), seen by BosNewsLife on 10th August, came just days after suspected Boko Haram fighters opened fire at an evangelical church in central Nigeria killing at least 19 people before Bible study began and, in a separate attack, shot and killed a colleague of a Nigerian evangelist and BosNewsLife stringer.

ISLAMIC LEADERS IN NIGERIA URGE BOKO HARAM TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST CHRISTIANS

Islamic scholars and leaders in Nigeria have urged militant group Boko Haram to end its violent campaign against Christians and other targets in the country.
According to UK-based Barnabas Fund, Boko Haram is fighting to establish an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria.

Speaking at a lecture as part of the National Council of Muslim Youth Organizations’ Ramadan activities, they called for a ceasefire from the group.

One of the speakers, Sayid Bagher Seyed Jaradi, the Acting Cultural Consulate of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said this was “urgently expected for the sake of humanity, credibility of the Islamic religion and peaceful co-existence among Nigerians”.

Greece has had its share of adverse publicity in the past few years. Many are fearful that it will default on its financial obligations. Others feel that it might withdraw from the Euro and head back to the bad old days of the drachma. There are also concerns that a Grecian collapse could cause a domino effect and draw other countries down with it.

But a group of 323 volunteers from 22 countries around the world, have spent the seven days recently bringing good news to the people of northern Greece.

Together they have distributed 126,207 Bibles in modern Greek. In addition each New Testament included an audio MP3 version of the Greek NT and a challenging personal testimony from a Thessalonian Greek who came to Christ after overcoming his addiction to gambling.

NICO BOUGAS reports in an article first published by Assist News Service... | more... |

Patriarch Kirill I of the Russian Orthodox Church spoke at a service on 15th July to consecrate a church near a forest where thousands of Polish army officers and intelligentsia were massacred by Stalin's secret police in 1940.

Patriarch Kirill also remembered the thousands of Russians who were slaughtered there, many for their religious faith, and said the site should serve as a place to unite Russians and Poles.

The Katyn Massacre - in which about 22,000 people were killed - is named after the forest in the Smolensk region near the Polish border where it took place.

Many of the Poles killed in 1940 were Orthodox Christians, of which the country has a large minority.

The lower house of the Czech Republic's parliament narrowly approved a government plan late Friday, 13th July, to return property seized from churches during the 1948-1989 Communist era, and to pay billions of dollars in compensation.

Supporters view the move as a major step to end the legacy of Communism, but the opposition has pledged to block the legislation in the Senate.

Under the plan agreed by the ruling parties and 17 religious groups led by the Catholic church, the state will give back most properties confiscated under Communism, mainly land and buildings, worth some $US4 billion.

Prague also pledges about $US2.8 billion in cash compensation to the churches, split into 30 yearly payments.

Church leaders in Brazil have been debating the results of the nation's latest census data that show declines in numbers of Roman Catholics and an increase of people identifying as evangelical.

While most say they are not surprised by the results, they expressed frustration at the lack of specifics within the data, the Latin America and Caribbean Communication Agency (ALC) reports.

During a roundtable discussion broadcast on Rádio Gaúcha of Porto Alegre, Rev Walter Altmann, a Brazilian Lutheran pastor and moderator of the World Council of Churches' Central Committee, expressed concerns at the statistics.

Christians in Indonesia's semi-autonomous province of Aceh faced a tense Sunday after local authorities ordered the demolition of 20 churches.

Razali Abdul Rahman, the acting regent of Aceh Singkil Regency in Aceh, signed the letter already on 30th April, but details recently emerged.

He ordered the closure of 17 Protestant churches, two Catholic churches and one place of worship belonging to followers of a local nondenominational faith, The Jakarta Post newspaper said.

Rights activists said the announcement came after 16 smaller Christian places of worship were recently closed in the same district.

Several faith-based organisations said they were disappointed with the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20, which took place 20th to 22nd June in Rio de Janeiro.

The Geneva-based Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA) said that while the conference's final document, addressing the theme "The Future We Want," acknowledged that access to food is a human right, it did not pay adequate attention to needed changes in agriculture that favor the small farmer over big corporations.

The document "leaves the door open for greater intensification of industrial agriculture -- a system that has proved unsuccessful in eradicating hunger sustainably and has led to near-collapse of ecosystems and communities," said executive director Peter Prove, according to an EAA news release.

Disciples of Christ leaders in Mexico are calling for Christians to put political rancor aside as citizens prepare to vote on 1st July in what has been a contentious presidential campaign season.

Political fanaticism and intolerance during the presidential election process have damaged relationships among families, communities and the people, and also those between brothers and sisters in the church, said Pastor Josué Martínez Cisneros, president of the Confraternity of Disciples of Christ Evangelical Christian Churches of Mexico.

HUNDREDS OF UK CHURCHES PUT FAITH INTO WORDS AND ACTION THROUGH DIAMOND JUBILEE PARTIES

What will you bring to the table? That was the question from the Eden Project’s Big Lunch team when they asked community outreach ministry HOPE to help to get churches involved in local Big Jubilee Lunches across the UK.

As a result thousands of churches were inspired by HOPE to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee by helping with or hosting a Big Jubilee Lunch for people in their neighbourhood.

Peter Stewart, the Eden Project’s campaigns and communications director said: “At the heart of many communities, churches are fantastically placed to bring people together. The Big Lunch offers the chance for members to reach out to others in the community and put their faith into action.

The number of violations of Christians’ religious rights in Indonesia reached 40 in the first five months of the year, nearly two-thirds the amount of anti-Christian actions in all of last year, according to the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum.
The Christian minority in Indonesia faced 64 cases of violations of religious freedom last year, up from 47 in 2010, said Theophilus Bela, president of the group. Bela said he was worried about the growing incidence of violence and church closures, as his group recorded just 10 anti-Christian incidents in 2009. There were 40 such incidents in 2008, he said.

VISHAL ARORA and VICTOR AMBARITA report for Compass Direct News... | more... |

Korean churches are developing plans for a "peace train" that would travel from Berlin through Moscow and Beijing to Busan, South Korea in time for the World Council of Churches' (WCC) global assembly in October 2013.

The plan is to draw attention to the need for peace and reunification in the Korean peninsula, the churches said, and North Korea also would be on the route of the train, which would carry church and civil society representatives.

"Peace Together 2013, a committee of the National Council of Churches of Korea (NCCK), is working with the governments on the plan," said Chae Hye-won, Director of the Committee of Reconciliation and Reunification of the NCCK.

Faith-based and civil relief groups are providing aid to more than 4,000 victims left homeless by an earthquake that struck the northern Italian region of Emilia Romagna on 20th May, killing at least seven people and wounding dozens.

The Italian news agency ANSA said a number of historic churches and castles were destroyed or damaged by the quake, which measured 5.9 on the Richter scale, and its aftershocks.

"We're close to the people in prayer and in particular the families of the victims. We will support the local church in providing aid," said Don Francesco Soddu, director of Caritas Italy, part of an international Catholic aid network. The Italian Red Cross was also responding.

In Uganda, faith leaders are joining citizens in demanding openness in the handling of recently-discovered crude oil, which is inspiring hope for a better future for the East African country.

The faith leaders, who are uniting under the Inter-religious Council of Uganda, are warning that the laws governing the sector are too weak to guarantee transparency and accountability.

With the government announcing that the oil is potentially worth $US13 billion, the council's chair, Roman Catholic Archbishop John Baptist Odama, said the group wanted a quick review of the laws governing the sector, in order to reflect the interest of citizens.

GROWING NUMBER OF CHRISTIANS IN AFGHANISTAN, SAY ACTIVISTS, DESPITE DEATH THREATS

A growing number of Afghans, including politicians, are embracing Christianity and meet in "house churches" despite death treats and attacks by Islamic militants, according to Christians rights activists and news reports.

Mohabat News, a Christian news agency, quoted "informed Afghan authorities" as saying that Christianity has obtained a special place" among youth and other "layers in society." House churches "are growing tremendously," the officials reportedly said.

Voice of the Martyrs Canada (VOMC), an advocacy group assisting Christians living in difficult areas, explained that it learned from an "independent Shi'ite website" that an Afghan official concluded "There is evidence of widespread Christian propaganda in Afghanistan".

Extremist Islamist forces in Syria's opposition movement have attacked local Christians reportedly due to the belief that they back the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

According to a report by Fernando Perez of the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA-RLC), the country's largest denomination, the Syrian Orthodox Church, recently highlighted “an ongoing ethnic cleansing of Christians.” The action was allegedly by members of an al-Qaida-linked militant Islamist group, Brigade Faruq, in the city of Homs, an opposition stronghold.

There was concern over the plight of several Iranian Christian asylum seekers in Sweden this week after Swedish authorities decided to deport them despite fears they may be jailed or even executed there, Christians said.

It comes after Swedish authorities reportedly already deported one asylum seeker, identified as Mohammad-Reza Hamedi on 15th February this year.

"We are four Iranian human rights activists who object to the racist politics of the Swedish government towards the asylum seeker's community and strongly condemn the deportation of Mohammad-Reza Hamedi on February 15, 2012," said activists in a statement distributed by Mohabat News, an Iranian news agency of Christians and activists.

I had known Nadia (an Urdu name for females) for a long time. Every month "she" would visit our locality, ring doorbells and ask for money.
Then Nadia disappeared for a long time and, after a few months, another member of her "clan" visited our home and told my mother that "Nadia has been murdered by a gang of guys who were mocking her on the street and, upon her cursing them, they were offended and took her life. But no police case was registered as her murder does not matter to them; neither did her life."

Nadia was neither a male nor a female. She belonged to the neglected and underprivileged outcast group known as the "Third Gender" who live lives of squalor in the slums of our society, such as in many underdeveloped and developing countries including Pakistan and India.

Sentiment against Christians in Turkey has persisted long enough for a US religious rights monitor to recommend it as a “Country of Particular Concern,” and pastor Orhan Picaklar knows such anti-Christian hostility first-hand.
Picaklar, of Agape Church in Samsun, lives in the Black Sea region, a bastion of Turkey’s unique Islamic-imbued nationalism, where Christians live under increasing pressure. He has seen his building attacked and his family and congregation threatened.

“Just as it is difficult to belong to Jesus all over the world, unfortunately it is the same in Samsun, if not worse,” Picaklar said. “We have been here for 10 years, and people here still treat us like cursed enemies. Our families feel anxiety. On the hour my wife calls me and I have to say, ‘There’s no problem,’ as if to say, ‘I’m still alive.’”

CHURCHES CAMPAIGN FOR TREATY TO TACKLE ILLICIT ARMS TRADE, OFTEN A NORTH-SOUTH BUSINESS

After July, arms used to commit atrocities and serious crimes may become harder to buy, and harder to sell, internationally. That is if governments already agreed on the need to regulate the arms trade can agree on a treaty that is fit for the task and covers all conventional weapons.

Diplomats from nearly 200 countries will spend July at the United Nations to negotiate the proposed Arms Trade Treaty.
Their challenge lies in keeping the arms trade open to militaries, police forces and other groups who are judged to use arms legally and responsibly, and closing the trade to those who don’t. Arms manufacturers, gun enthusiasts, as well as civil society organisations and churches are seeking to influence the outcome.

Burma's military ransacked a Baptist church and broke up a Christian conference of the predominantly Christian Chin community in the latest confrontation between government forces and ethnic minorities, Christian investigators told BosNewsLife on 26th March.

A legislator trying to halt the violence was reportedly threatened at gunpoint.
Chin Human Rights Organisation (CHRO), which represents the community, said the Burma Army attacked the Sin Lum Pang Mu Baptist Church in Pang Mu village, in Bhamo district, on 13th March.

The church pastor Jangmaw Gam Maw said soldiers "from the 33rd battalion of the Burma Army’s 88th Infantry Division burned Bibles, destroyed church property, and stole a video player, loudspeakers and villagers’ belongings."

For years, advocates for greater unity among Christian churches have wrung their hands amid talk of an "ecumenical winter." But now, 10 years after leaders took the first steps toward forming the broad-based group Christian Churches Together in the USA (CCT), some have hopes that US churches may be entering a new season of closer relations.

At a recent CCT meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, 85 Christians - Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, white and nonwhite - made pilgrimages to historic sites of the civil rights movement, Religion News Service reports. They also made plans to use next year's 50th anniversary of Rev Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to pursue anti-poverty projects with houses of worship unlike their own.

Christian rights activists claim they have detected an "increase in religious freedom violations" in Cuba ranging from preventing people to attend church services, to the seizure of church land, harassment, beatings and imprisonment of church leaders.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) said it recorded 20 separate incidents targeting Christians, compared with 28 in all of 2011.

CSW said the incidents seem to have increased ahead of Pope Benedict XVI's planned 26th to 28th March visit.

"A number of Catholic human rights activists, primarily affiliated with the Ladies in White movement, have been arrested or violently prevented from attending church services," the group added.

The Assemblies of God church in Nicaragua is in the middle of a three month centennial celebration that will culminate 21st April with an official commemoration in Managua.

A two-day caravan of 170 vehicles set out on 28th January from the Pacific port city of Corinto, where Rev Benuz Shoneckey set foot on Nicaraguan soil in 1912. The caravan retraced the route Choneckey and his wife, Yegui, used in establishing a mission in the Central American nation, ending up 145 km to the north in the capital of Managua.

Pastor Roberto Rojas Moya, the national secretary of the Assemblies of God in Nicaragua, told a national television audience that the commemoration caravan, which included motorcycles, cars and buses, took only two days on the route that Shoneckey negotiated on horseback and ox-drawn carriages, the Latin America and Caribbean Communication Agency reported.

As Christians worldwide marked the beginning of Lent, New Zealand church leaders gathered with Christchurch residents to mark the first anniversary of the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that devastated the city one year ago.

Some who attended commemorative church services on Ash Wednesday received ashes marked on the forehead in the form of a cross, symbolising undying hope in the midst of loss and suffering. Others scattered ashes of loved ones.
At the main outdoor service at Hagley Park, attended by 20,000 people, the names of 185 people who died in the quake were read by police, fire and hospital chaplains and other emergency services personnel.

The 'Arab Spring' opened the door for long-repressed Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi forces to rise up and seize power locally and challenge the balance of power regionally. Faced with escalating persecution and decreasing security, Christians are increasingly opting for flight. The alternative is to exist as dhimmis: subjugated second-class citizens forced to live with crippling inequality and profound insecurity under Islamic domination.

In Egypt, Iraq and Syria - homes to the region's largest and most ancient Christian communities - the security situation is critical. Furthermore, the conflict in Syria has the potential to inflame sectarian tensions in neighbouring volatile Lebanon, which is also home to several large and ancient Christian communities.

PROGRESS IN BURMA BUT "GROSS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS" MEAN THERE'S STILL A LONG WAY TO GO, SAYS HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP

Burmese troops are committing "grave human rights violations" against the predominantly Christian Kachin people, according to a new report from Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

The report, released on Sunday to mark Burma's Union Day - the 65th anniversary of the Panglong Agreement under which the Burmese Government accepted full autonomy in internal administration in 'frontier areas' and envisaged the creation of a Kachin State - concluded that while "a window of opportunity for change in Burma after decades of oppression and conflict may have now opened,” the situation in Kachin and northern Shan States illustrated that “there is still a very long way to go”.

Farsi speaking missionaries are targeting Iranian ship crews in Christian countries to give them Bibles.

That's according to the Iranian Christian news agency, Mohabat News, which is reporting that missionaries "have taken advantage of the presence of Iranian ships and their crews in ports of Christian dominant countries...by giving away cultural items such as books and Jesus films in Farsi."

Mohabat News said this news followed on the heels of Islamic regime websites criticising missionaries for not leaving Iranian passengers alone in neighboring countries.

It is harvest time for strawberries in the northern Philippine town of La Trinidad, so strawberry farmer Alice Rivera will start repaying a loan extended by a Geneva-based ecumenical church loan fund.

"This is what we appreciate...we can start repaying our loans only immediately after the harvest season starts," said Rivera, who is 45. She is just one of 7,000 clients being served by the Ecumenical Church Loan Fund-Philippines (Eclof-Philippines), whose initial seed fund was provided by Eclof International, a non-profit micro-finance organisation.

Rivera, a widow and mother of a nine-year old son, has started harvesting strawberries from a 500-square-meter lot that she leases from the farm of Benguet State University, an agricultural school.

In a bid to reduce tensions with other religious groups and to highlight challenges, the Protestant Federation of France has turned the spotlight on chaplaincy this year.

At the group's General Assembly on 21st and 22nd January in Paris, members examined the issues chaplains face in hospitals, prisons and the military and urged member churches to take steps to support chaplains' work.

Pastor Claude Baty, president of the federation, told ENInews that a key concern was the tensions in some sectors between Protestant chaplains and those from the Catholic Church. He said that as the number of practising Catholics decline in France, the Catholic Church was "worried" about losing its traditionally dominant position, including in the area of chaplaincy.

Leaders of Christians in Zanzibar, Tanzania's semi-autonomous archipelago, have appealed for more religious freedom in the heavily Islamic region, after Muslim extremists allegedly destroyed at least two church buildings, while elsewhere believers were detained or harassed.

"All people should enjoy religious freedom,” including Christians, who comprise less than three per cent of Zanzibar's mainly Muslim population of roughly a million people, said church leader Dickson Maganga of the Tanzania Assemblies of God (TAG) in Zanzibar.

He spoke on Sunday, 15th January, after weeks of reported attacks against churches and Christians.

Christians said in one of the latest incidents a Muslim mob torched the building of the Pentecostal Evangelical Fellowship of Africa in Mtufani Mwera, about 12 kilometres from the capital Zanzibar City.

The (Lutheran) Church of Norway in the next five years will be implementing a plan to enhance the role of the indigenous Sami people in church life.

"We want Sami church life to be an equal and natural part of the church, and the Church of Norway to be a multicultural fellowship," said Jens-Petter Johnsen, director general of the Church of Norway National Council. He spoke with the Church of Norway Information Service.

The Sami are an indigenous people in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, and on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. There are an estimated 50,000 to 65,000 Sami in Norway, leading their traditional life in rural areas, but also living in Oslo and other cities. The Sami language belongs to the Finno-Ugric family.

CHURCHES AROUND THE WORLD INVITED TO SEND MESSAGES OF SUPPORT TO CHILDREN AFFECTED BY IRANIAN CHURCH RAID

The brutal attack on the Assemblies of God (AOG) church of Ahwaz on 23rd December, 2011, seems to have psychologically affected the children who were arrested in a harsh manner by security authorities. In this connection, Iranian and non-Iranian Christians and churches are invited to reassure these children by sending cards of encouragement.

According to the Iranian Christian news agency, Mohabat News, following the attack by security authorities on the AOG church of Ahwaz at Christmas, the Hamgam Council of Iranian Churches is inviting all Iranian and foreign churches to send cards of encouragement to the children who were mentally affected during the raid.

In the Dadaab refugee complex in northern Kenya, the concept of Jesus as a refugee is gaining relevance, as Christians and refugee churches celebrated Christmas.

In the settlement, Pastor Ancent Muisyo of the Dadaab International Worship Center said church leaders were encouraging refugees from conflict and famine in the Horn of Africa to be hopeful, even as the government on 21st December issued a security alert for churches across the country. The centre brings together members from 50 Christian denominations, including Anglicans, Presbyterians and Baptists.

Leaders from Philippine Roman Catholic and Protestant groups have joined non-government and indigenous peoples' organisations in a renewed campaign against big mining firms.

"The campaign against large-scale mining is also a campaign against greed," Rev Eduardo Solang, a retired priest of the Episcopal Church of the Philippines, told ENInews on 14th December.

Rev Solang was among 150 delegates to a 13th to 15th December mining and human rights summit convened in the northern Philippine city of Baguio by the Cordillera Peoples' Alliance and the Ecumenical Bishops Forum.

Authorities in eastern Uzbekistan have warned local churches not to allow youngsters and children to attend their worship services and not to carry out missionary activities or "proselytism", the word for evangelism, local Christians and activists said.

The news emerged last week after Deputy Head of Administration Saidibrahim Saynazirov spoke with church leaders in the city of Angren, 110 kilometres east of Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent.

He reportedly met with officials of the Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Presbyterian, Seventh-day Adventist and Baptist churches, but not with representatives of non-registered communities, observers said.

Leaders from five world religions gathered in Toronto just ahead of World AIDS Day on 1st December to encourage their peers to deepen their engagement and action on HIV-AIDS "by addressing the difficult issues raised by the pandemic, in dialogue with people living with HIV."

At the same time, the faith leaders expressed "dismay at the recent drop in funding for the AIDS response just as recent statistics show the effectiveness of prevention and treatment approaches."

The 29th to 30th November conference brought 15 Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim leaders together to assess faith communities' progress in fulfilling earlier commitments on HIV activism and awareness. They were joined by organizations representing people living with HIV and global agencies on the front lines of the battle against the disease, including the United Nations agency UNAIDS and the World AIDS Campaign.

Lutheran churches in Indonesia have approved several steps to revitalize their commitment to fight the AIDS epidemic.

Two conferences on HIV/AIDS called "Embracing Life: Our Common Responsibility" were organised by LWF (Lutheran World Federation) Indonesia from 6th to 10th November. Sixty youth delegates and church leaders attended.

Among the steps they announced: setting up HIV/AIDS desks in each of Indonesia's 12 Lutheran churches, including HIV/AIDS in the curriculum of theological colleges, confirmation classes and even Sunday schools and raising funds in congregations to support HIV campaigns and those infected with the virus.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited earthquake victims in eastern Turkey last Saturday, where evangelical Christians and Armenians are among those helping survivors of two deadly quakes in this predominantly Muslim area.

The 23rd October tremor killed 604 people and destroyed at least 2,000 buildings in Ercis and in the city of Van, which was hit again by a magnitude 5.7 quake on 9th November.

Yet, "a small evangelical church in Van is helping victims who are sleeping in tents around the church," explained Ava Thomas, a writer for the International Mission Board which supports missions around the world.

Churches in Britain and Ireland participated in the 'International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church' (IDOP) last Sunday, ahead of a similar global event this week.

"Every five minutes a Christian is martyred for (his or her) faith", Christian advocacy group Christian Freedom International (CFI) said in a presentation.

Organisers say they have been motivated to organise a worldwide IDOP on 13th November by Bible verses such as Hebrews 13: 3 - "Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering," - and Psalm 10: 17 - "You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry."

STEFAN J. BOS reports ahead of this week's International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church... | more... |

REMEMBERING IRAQ'S CHRISTIAN REFUGEES ONE YEAR AFTER BAGHDAD CHURCH MASSACRE

Monday, 31st October, 2011, marks the anniversary of last year's four-hour siege on a Syriac Catholic church in that ended with al-Qaida linked militants massacring 58 worshippers. The attack was the worst against Iraqi Christians since the US-led invasion in 2003 and enticed many of the already dwindling Christian population in Baghdad to leave the city permanently.

Jowaneh Benjamin lost three daughters as a result of religious based violence targeting Christians in the Iraq war. Fleeing the country with her daughter Miriam, Jowaneh spent two years as a refugee in Syria and Turkey before being approved to immigrate to the United States.

"We've had enough now. Leaving Iraq has become a must," Jamal Habo Korges, a Christian mechanic and father of three, told the United Nation's humanitarian news outlet IRIN. "We've been suffering since 2003 and we can't take it anymore. The latest carnage is the final warning."

In an article first published by Assist News Service, AIDAN CLAY reports on the situation for Iraq's Christians... | more... |

A Bible teacher has returned to his native India after being deported from the island nation of Maldives for having a Bible in his house, Christians with close knowledge about the situation said.

Shijo Kokkattu, a 30-year-old Catholic, was deported last week following two weeks of detention, BosNewsLife has found.

The teacher at Raafainu School in Maldives' administrative division of Raa Atoll was detained in late September after police found a Bible and rosary in his house during a raid, Christians said.
While Kokkattu was relieved about his release, he reportedly expressed concerns in statements about other "innocent detainees" who are allegedly kept in police custody "on flimsy grounds or fabricated charges".

Religious denominations have boosted efforts to provide families fleeing famine and drought in the Horn of Africa with insecticide treated bed nets, a mechanism experts say is most effective in halting the spread of malaria in Africa.

In the US, the United Methodist Church and the Union for Reform Judaism on 12th October separately pledged contributions that will provide more than 12,000 nets through the Washington, DC-based UN Foundation's Nothing But Nets campaign.

"Malaria is a leading cause of death among refugees," said Paul Spiegel, Chief of Public Health at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) , quoted in the foundation's news release on 12th October. The foundation is supporting the refugee agency's appeal for 150,000 bed nets. "In addition to food and water, we need bed nets to keep these families safe," Spiegel added.

"Mental illnesses affect people of all ages, in all societies, from the boy soldier in Sierra Leone traumatised by years of bloody civil war, to the mother affected by HIV/AIDS. Therefore it is crucial for the churches to challenge the stigma attached to mental illness,” Rev Kjell Magne Bondevik reminded churches at a service in Switzerland earlier this week.

Speaking at a morning prayer service on World Mental Health Day held on October 10th, Rev Bondevik, a former Norwegian prime minister and minister of the Lutheran Church of Norway who is now moderator of the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, and president of the Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights, underlined the importance of fighting the stigma which often surrounds mental illness.

In an historic move, the Anglican diocese of Rupert's Land appointed a Lutheran pastor, Rev Paul Johnson, as dean of the diocese and incumbent for St John's Cathedral in Winnipeg, reports the Anglican Journal.

This is the first time a Canadian Lutheran pastor has been appointed dean in an Anglican cathedral in Canada. A dean is the priest in charge of a cathedral ("mother church") and occupies a senior position in a diocese.

The Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) have been in full communion since 2001, which means their clergy may serve in one another's churches.

A suicide bomber has attacked a Protestant church in Indonesia's Central Java province which has close ties with one of America's largest congregations.

Pastor Rick Warren of the 20,000 strong Saddleback Church in Southern California confirmed the attack, in which the bomber died and over 20 others were injured.

On his Facebook website and Internet messages service Twitter he wrote: "Purpose Driven Network Alert: Our sister church in Solo City, Indonesia, Bethel Full Gospel Church, has just been bombed."

In Argentina, as in many Latin American countries, September is a month to celebrate the Bible. Churches coordinate lectures, workshops and conferences for youth, according to a news release from the World Council of Churches.

"Spending a month each year focusing on the Bible helps us to affirm the Word as an essential nutrient to our faith and our commitment to life and justice," said Pastor Gerardo Oberman, from the Reformed Churches of Argentina associated with the Evangelical Church of the River Plate (IERP), the WCC reported.

People of faith in Japan on 11th September marked the six-month anniversary of the 11th March earthquake and tsunami with prayer services, bell ringing and chants, many at 2:46pm, the time when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck.

About 20,000 people are dead or missing, with an estimate 400,000 people displaced, according to the Japanese Red Cross.

In Tokyo, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan and the National Christian Council in Japan held a joint worship service "to keep in mind the 11 March disaster, remember the dead, and seek comfort for the survivors and the restoration of the affected areas," according to organisers.

Karachi is an economic hub, seaport, and the largest city in Pakistan, as well as the capital of the province of Sindh.

The city, which has an estimated population of 13 to 15 million, while the total metropolitan area has a population of over 18 million, is home to a variety of people of different religions and ethnicity, and was once called 'a city of peace and lights'.

But, for the last few years, the crime rate has been mounting with every passing day and over the past six months, due to various kinds of crimes, thousands of innocent people have been killed.

As the smoke dies out at the bombed United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, faith leaders are seeking urgent government action to end a recurrent and bloody cycle of religious violence in Africa's most populous nation.

In the latest incident, Christian youths attacked Muslims gathering to celebrate the last day of Ramadan on 29th August in Jos city. At least 13 people were killed, property destroyed and cars burnt. This occurred barely a week after a radical Islamic group carried out a suicide car bomb attack at the UN complex on 26th August, leaving 23 people dead and several others injured.

"We urge the relevant authorities to decisively act to permanently bring this trend to an end...to save precious lives and hard-earned properties," said Roman Catholic Archbishop Ignatius Ayau Kaigama of Jos diocese, quoted in media reports on 30th August. Archbishop Kaigama serves in the region between Nigeria's mainly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south.

AIRBORNE MINISTRY HELPS FIGHT CHOLERA AND MEASLES EPIDEMICS IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

As cholera and measles sicken thousands in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), a faith-based relief organisation that brings aid to needy people in remote areas of the world, is providing desperately needed flight services to assist medical agencies in their efforts to combat these deadly diseases.

A measles epidemic has threatened the DRC for the past nine months. MAF has been flying medical workers and supplies into the areas most affected.

According to a media release from the US-based ministry, in the past month the organisation has carried some 100 medical staff and 14,000 pounds of vaccines and medical supplies to support 24 mobile clinics that Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) has launched to fight measles.

An evangelical pastor who faces execution in Iran for refusing to abandon his Christian faith has urged fellow believers to remain faithful to Jesus Christ and the “Word of God” despite persecution, according to a letter obtained by BosNewsLife.

Youcef Nadarkhani, 33, whose first name is also spelled as Yousef, was told last month by Iran’s Supreme Court that he can be executed if he does not recant his Christian faith and returns to Islam.

But in a letter written behind bars earlier this year, Nadarkhani makes clear the Bible tells Christians to expect persecution and that he remains hopeful whatever the outcome of his trial in this strict Islamic nation.

Christian leaders in Hungary have given mixed reactions to a restrictive new law on religion, with larger denominations welcoming its curbs on church activities and smaller groups voicing fears for their future.

"We wanted a new law to make it more difficult to establish churches here - and we're happy the present government has now done something," said Zoltan Tarr, general secretary of the Hungarian Reformed Church, which claims around a fifth of the country's 9.9 million inhabitants as members.

"We're very much for freedom of worship and believe everyone should have the right to practice their religion. But this law represents a positive step, since it excludes quite a few communities here which don't legitimately qualify as churches."

Rights activists and religious groups in Armenia say new legislation will increase intolerance towards the country's evangelical Christians and other minorities, some of whom already face prosecution for their church activities.

In statements obtained by BosNewsLife last week, they criticised a proposed new 'Religion Law' as well as changes to the 'Law on Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian Apostolic Church' and to the Criminal and Administrative Codes.

"In practice they would be used to repress religious organisations," warned Stepan Danielyan,who represents the Yerevan-based Collaboration for Democracy Center..

High prices for gold on world markets have triggered a gold rush without equal in the history of the Amazon basin. In just a decade, gold has more than tripled in value. The ensuing rush is endangering the lives of thousands of native Indian people.

A gold rush that accelerated with the onset of the 2008 global recession is compounding the woes of the Amazon basin, laying waste its rain forests and spilling tons of toxic mercury into its rivers. All the way down the Amazon River in Brazil, the Ticuna Indians see their children sickening and dying because of the mercury in the water they drink.

The government of Peru estimates that the number of illegally operating small-scale hydraulic miners has climbed to 40,000 in the country's Madre de Dios province alone. The jungles of Madre de Dios are home to a score of unprotected Indian tribes.

In an article first published by Assist News Service, DALE W. KIETZMAN reports on how a Latin American gold rush is impacting Indian tribal societies... | more... |

Iran's secretive Supreme Court has reportedly overturned a death sentence handed down to an evangelical pastor for leaving Islam, surprising trial observers who were earlier informed about an execution ruling.

However concerns remained about the future of 33-year-old Yousef Nadarkhani, as he remained under pressure to recant his faith in Christ, his lawyer and Christians said.

"The Supreme Court has annulled the death sentence and sent the case back to the court in (his hometown) Rasht, asking the accused to repent," said his lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, in a statement to French news agency AFP.

The verdicts can be overturned if the convicted person "repents" and "renounces" his conversion, experts say. Evangelicals argue it's impossible to renounce their faith as the Bible teaches they have become "born again" and a "new creation" after they "accepted" Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.

At least four incidents of Christian persecution were reported from the former Soviet country of Uzbekistan this week. A Christian woman was beaten into concussion, another woman was fined $US1,465 by a court for giving the New Testament to a child, a Christian man was threatened with axe attack by a police official and another man was assaulted by police.

The spurt can be linked to renewed attempts to maintain hold on power and the communist legacy in this most populous country of Central Asia by its president, Islam Karimov, who has remained in office through controversial referendums since 1991. Karimov’s objectives can be met only under an authoritarian rule where the executive has powers over all other state institutions including the judiciary and that’s what best describes the government of Uzbekistan.

In a report written for the World Evangelical Alliance's Religious Liberty Commission, FERNANDO PEREZ looks at the issue of religious freedom in Uzbekistan... | more... |

CONCERN OVER REPORTS THREE US CHRISTIANS ASKED TO LEAVE INDIA FOR EVANGELISING

An international advocacy group urged the US government to condemn Indian authorities for reportedly asking three American Christians to leave India because they allegedly participated in evangelism.

"We urge the US government to look into this matter and take appropriate measures to pressure India to respect the religious freedom of Christians and other religious minorities," explained Jonathan Racho, regional manager for South Asia of US-based International Christian Concern (ICC).

The influential newspaper Times of India said 50-year-old Shelly Louise Deeds, a nurse from Pennsylvania, her daughter Katelyn Heather Deeds, 15, and Diane Gean Harrington, a teacher at Wisconsin, were "asked to leave" the country after Hindu organisations "complained" they "tried to convert poor families" in India's southern state of Kerala.

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S COMMENTS ON KEY POLICIES PROVOKES SHARP RESPONSE FROM GOVERNMENT

In a strongly-worded opinion piece in the 9th June issue of The New Statesman, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, took a stand against recent economic, criminal justice, and healthcare reforms proposed by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Archbishop Williams, launching his broadside as guest editor of the weekly journal, said Britain's coalition government is forcing through "radical policies for which no one voted."

He questioned whether democratic legitimacy existed for flagship policies on welfare, health and education, which we he said were causing "anxiety and anger." He also dismissed Mr Cameron's "Big Society" initiative for the voluntary sector to play a greater role in providing services as "painfully stale" and condemned what he described as punitive action against alleged abuses of the benefit system.

The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) said this week it would help organise "the return of the last 8,700 Ethiopian Jews to Israel" by sponsoring what are known as "Aliyah" flights, the coming months.

The Jerusalem-based organisation told BosNewsLife it was asked for urgent assistance by the Jewish Agency, which claims to have brought more than three million Jews to Israel since the state's establishment in 1948.

Howard Flower, ICEJ's director of Aliyah operations, called the Ethiopians' Aliyah -- the Jewish religious word for immigration to Israel -- "urgent given the current drought and political turmoil in the region."

He said Jews face food shortages and the prospect that the chaotic revolutions in the Arab world might spread to Ethiopia.

Participants at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) have released a message expressing their unified experience of a week-long exploration of a just peace.

Their commitment is to navigate a path forward in implementing what they have discussed and discovered, as they return to their homes and churches across the world.

Attempting to take into account each other's contexts and histories, IEPC participants were unified in their aspiration that war should become illegal and that peace is central in all religious traditions.

The message states: “With partners of other faiths, we have recognised that peace is a core value in all religions, and the promise of peace extends to all people regardless of their traditions and commitments. Through intensified inter-religious dialogue we seek common ground with all world religions.”

A report from Ekklesia on the closing of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation meeting in Kingston, Jamaica... | more... |

Tuvalu, a Polynesian island nation in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Australia, is home to more than 11,000 people, whose very existence, which at one time was tied to the ocean and its bounty, is now threatened by rising ocean water levels.

The world's fourth-smallest country – at 26 square kilometers – is shrinking, and the people of Tuvalu are facing a future as environmental refugees. The injustice in this situation – and others like it worldwide – were at the heart of discussions at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) on Friday, when the daily theme was “Peace With the Earth.”

A report from the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation meeting in Kingston, Jamaica... | more... |

A Christian member of the European Parliament has urged the European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, to make more rights for Egyptian Christians, also known as Copts, a policy priority and to develop an EU strategy for religious freedom.

Peter van Dalen of the Dutch ChristenUnie, or 'ChristianUnion' party, told BosNewsLife he made his appeal after meeting some 60 Copts in the European Parliament. "They cried for help," the parliamentarian said about the February talks.

Copts claim they suffer discrimination and violence. At least a dozen people died over the weekend in the latest attacks by Islamists against Copts, who comprise about 10 per cent of Egypt's mainly Muslim population, according to officials and Christians.

Churches in India were called upon to tackle "institutional casteism" at a conference organised by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in collaboration with Indian churches and groups.

Attended by over 70 delegates, the 1st to 4th May conference on "Caste, Religion and Culture" was organized by the WCC Commission for World Mission and Evangelism in collaboration with the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI). The Student Christian Movement of India and the Centre for Social Studies and Culture based in Kerala state also participated.

"Institutional casteism has not been properly discussed in India...and the colloquium has drawn attention to the need for addressing the issue at all levels," said a statement released at the end of the conference.

Since the embattled Beijing Shouwang Church had its first outdoor public Sunday service in a snowstorm on 1st November, 2009, the world has been watching. Now Beijing's largest underground "house" church is making headlines again. Some 300 parishioners have been arrested these last two Sunday's for worshiping outdoors, without state permission.

Why would its members insist to pray in the open air and risk being detained, fired, threatened, or forced to move out of their rented homes?

The question was raised by church leaders. Bloggers soon followed. "Was Shouwang Church right to meet publicly?" "What is the good for the church to disobey the government?" "Why can't Christians be good citizens and law-abiders?", they asked. Others said the church must compromise to stay out of trouble.

In an article first published by BosNewsLife.com, ELIZABETH, a member of the Beijing Shouwang Church, gives her view on recent events during which several hundred of the church's parishioners were arrested... | more... |

Chinese police detained "over 100 members" of one of China's largest unregistered Protestant churches on 10th April, after its members tried to hold an open-air prayer meeting in the capital Beijing, a Christian rights group said.

The US-based China Aid Association (CAA), which has close ties with Christians in China, said members of the Shouwang Church were met by scores of police, including plain clothes officers, when they gathered in a square outside a commercial complex in Beijing's Zhongguancun district.

Reporters put the number of those detained slightly lower saying police forced "scores" of parishioners into buses and blocked church leaders from leaving their homes. The New York Times newspaper said among those detained was its photographer, who was later released. It was not clear how many Christians had been freed and Chinese officials did not reveal more details.

EVANGELIST LUIS PALAU JOINS VIETNAM'S FIRST PROTESTANT CELEBRATIONS IN DECADES

International evangelist Luis Palau will travel to Vietnam to participate in the first celebrations of the establishment of the country's Protestant church since the end of the Vietnam War.

The gatherings in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, Hanoi, and Danang, mark the 100th anniversary of Vietnam's Protestant church in the Asian nation, said the Oregon-based Luis Palau Association in a statement.
"The gatherings will be the first of their kind since the country's reunification in 1975," the group said.

Palau, who was born in Argentina before moving to the United States, will travel to Vietnam for a series of region-wide celebration events, starting with gatherings in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in April, organisers said.

Humanitarian and advocacy groups are marking the 22nd March commemoration of World Water Day with renewed focus on the need for "water justice."

"The global water crisis is going to be one of the 'hot topics' and key issues of the 21st century," Luciano Kovacs, the North America regional secretary of the World Student Christian Federation, told ENInews. "Water could become the oil of the 21st century."

The Geneva-based federation has initiated a global water justice campaign that begins on 22nd March. It is asking its local movements of ecumenical student groups to participate in an international effort to take action against the problems of "water scarcity, water pollution and water commercialisation and privatisation," viewing them as "serious threats to our fellow people of Earth, the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalised, with whom we are called to walk in solidarity."

Thousands of Christians are fleeing violence in western Ethiopia where Muslim extremists killed several Christians and burned dozens of churches, rights activists and officials said this week.

Advocacy group Barnabas Fund, which supports Christians in the Muslim-majority area, told BosNewsLife that 55 churches and dozens of homes are reported to have been torched in recent days near the city of Jimma, in western Oromia region, "with many more properties looted by the mob."

Ethiopian government spokesman Shimelis Kemal said in a radio interview that two Christians had been killed in the incidents in the town of Asendabo and surrounding areas and that police reinforcements had moved in to restore order.

A Catholic prison ministry leader, Cheng Tao, has called on the Taiwanese government to abolish the death penalty, as the justice minister indicated another round of executions may take place in a few weeks.

“Our government should replace the death penalty with lifetime imprisonment to show to the world that Taiwan cherishes human life,” said Cheng, who is president of the Association of Chinese Catholic Prison Ministry.
Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jeou siad recently that the government would reduce the number of executions before society reached a consensus on the controversial issue.

Tensions remained high in Nigeria's Plateau State this week where up to eight people were killed and more injured in sectarian clashes sparked by the stabbing of a police officer.

Witnesses said Tuesday's violence in the city of Jos included a gang setting up a roadblock in one neighborhood, leading to up to four deaths. Others, including Christians, said up to four more people were murdered and their bodies set ablaze elsewhere, including in the Gada-Biu area.

Christian rights activists this week launched an international petition urging Afghanistan to release detained converts to Christianity amid fears they may be executed.

Barnabas Fund, an advocacy group closely following the case, told BosNewsLife that among Christian prisoners in "immediate danger" are 45-year-old Said Musa, a father of six, and another Christian, identified as Shoaib Assadullah, 25. Both men could face execution on charges of apostasy, or abandoning Islam, a crime punished by death under Islamic law and upheld by Afghanistan's constitution.

The world's Muslim population is expected to rise by about 35 per cent by 2030, according to projections from the US-based Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The figures show that the Muslim population, currently at 1.6 billion, is expected to rise to 2.2 billion in the next 20 years, making up 26.4 per cent of the world's total projected population of 8.3 billion.

The data also shows that if current trends continue, 79 countries will have a million or more Muslim inhabitants (up from 72) with the largest number of Muslims - 1.3 billion - living in Asia-Pacific region (up from one billion today).

Almost 99 per cent of southern Sudanese who voted in the country's recent referendum have backed the secession of the south, according to preliminary results.

Figures from the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) show that as at 21st January, 98.6 per cent have voted for secession. The official results are expected to be released in early February.

Almost 3.2 million votes were cast in the election with the turnout well past the minimum number of people required (60 per cent of the four million voters) for the referendum to be ruled valid.

Pakistan's controversial blasphemy law must be reformed to avoid more bloodletting of Christian minorities in Pakistan, the country's Minorities’ Minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, has told Assist News Service.

“The blasphemy law has to be amended. We cannot condone contempt of any religion or religious personality, but this law is being abused by Muslim extremists to victimise minorities,” Bhatti, a Catholic, told ANS.

Bhatti’s comments came the same day an anti-terrorism court in the central Pakistani town of Muzafarghar said that it had jailed two Muslim men for life on blasphemy charges.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has urged citizens of all faiths, including Christian Copts and Muslims, to resist "terrorist acts", after a church bombing killed at least 21 people and injured nearly 80 others.

Witnesses said a powerful bomb, possibly from a suicide attacker, exploded just a half hour into the New Year in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria where worshipers had gathered to celebrate Mass on New Year's Eve.

Egypt's Interior Ministry said a foreign-backed suicide bomber may have been responsible.

Christmas should be a time of great joy for all Christians. But festivities appear unlikely this year for believers living in Iraq.

In a news release, Barnabas Fund said it received a heart rending report from a senior church leader who assists Iraqi Christian refugees in Syria.

Barnabas Fund said the report reveals the desperate plight of the Christians still inside Iraq. That plight has worsened since the October attack on a church in Baghdad, and Al-Qaeda's statement that all Christians and Christian institutions were “legitimate targets.”

Barnabas Fund called the report a message that needs to be heard urgently by governments and Christians in the West.

Six out of 10 people around the world believe corruption has increased, according to the findings of the 2010 Global Corruption Barometer.

The report, released by Transparency International earlier this month, also found that one in four people said they had paid a bribe in the past year. Police are said to be the most frequent recipient of bribes with 29 per cent of people who said they’d had contact with police reporting paying a bribe.

More than 91,000 people living in 86 different countries and territories were surveyed for the report.

The Swiss church-backed group Bread for All says numerous human rights violations are being committed in certain Zimbabwe's diamond mines by state security forces and the minerals should be labelled "blood diamonds".

Bread for All (Switzerland) is calling on the government of Switzerland, as a member of the Kimberley Process, to demand the exclusion of certain Zimbabwean diamonds tainted by links to human rights' violation from international trade.

Marlon Zakeyo, who heads the Zimbabwe Advocacy Office in Geneva, told ENInews, "Switzerland is an important jewellery centre, but it is also known as a country that is a centre for human rights. The Swiss government is also a key partner in the Kimberley Process, which deals with international diamond trading."

Malawi's Roman Catholic bishops have called on their government not to use its numerical parliamentary strength to suppress minority views about the way the country should be run.

"When we emerged from the 2009 elections, our hopes were high for peace, stability and development for all. Somewhat more than a year later, our hopes are slowly fading away," said the Catholic bishops in a pastoral letter made available to ENInews.

"The majority the ruling party enjoys in parliament was meant to facilitate government business and progress, but unfortunately it has bred a spirit of overconfidence on the part of government," said the bishops.

Cuba's Catholic bishops have inaugurated the country's first major church-related construction in the half century since Fidel Castro's revolution.

President Raul Castro was a guest of honour at the ceremony to mark the launch of the San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminary.

Cuba's bishops and representatives of the Vatican and the Catholic Church in the United States, Mexico, Italy and the Bahamas were among those present in Havana on 3rd November, 2010.

Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino of Havana reminded the gathering that the late Pope John Paul II blessed the first stone of the new seminary at a Mass during his January 1998 visit to the island.

Christians in Sudan, especially the southern part of the country, are soliciting prayers in respect to the forthcoming referendum that will be held on 9th January, 2011, which will determine whether south should become independent from the north.

Open Doors UK and Ireland said in a report that its co-workers in southern Sudan explained that conflicting views between the political leaders pose a serious concern for the church, and have asked Christians around the world to lift them up in prayer.

More than 4,000 invited guests from nearly 200 nations have descended on Cape Town, South Africa, this week to strategise how to evangelise the world for Christ in the 21st Century.

Tens of thousands more around the globe tuned in via GlobaLink to the opening day of the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization when it opened in Cape Town last Sunday.

The congress is the brainchild of evangelist Dr Billy Graham, who founded its parent organisation known as The Lausanne Movement, which is uniquely placed to reaffirm the primary truths of Biblical Christianity.

Hong Kong Christian leaders have urged the government in Beijing to release 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo, who was honoured for his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China".

Representatives from the Roman Catholic Justice and Peace Commission of Hong Kong and the Christian Concern Hong Kong Society joined activists in petitioning the Chinese government's liaison office in Hong Kong soon after the announcement of the prize in Oslo on 8th October.

They asked Beijing to release Liu, who initiated the "08 Charter" that asked for greater democracy and respect for human rights. More than 10,000 people in China and overseas had signed the charter.

Christian leaders in Nigeria have joined in marking 50 years of independence in Africa's most populous nation but have also called for divine intervention because of their concern for the state of the nation.

"Though it might seem like there is not much to jubilate about in the nation, prophetically and by faith, we celebrate Jubilee. We believe that as God sees our faith, He will give us cause to be jubilant as we begin the journey of another 50 years," said the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor.

He was speaking at a media conference in the country's capital Abuja on 1st October, 50 years to the day since Nigeria achieved its independence from the Britain in 1960.

A Catholic bishop in Romania has deplored the mass expulsion of Roma from France, and he has urged European governments to do more to integrate the continent's Gypsy minorities.

"There are substantial Roma communities in all European countries, not just Romania and Bulgaria," said Virgil Bercea, the Greek Catholic bishop of Oradea. "When the French drive them out, all they do is return to visit their families and then travel somewhere else, whether back to France, or on to Italy, Spain or Germany."

Pope Benedict XVI is likely to focus on religious freedom during the first official State visit by a pontiff to Britain, where secularism is growing and Christianity declining.

The Pope is also likely to face scrutiny at a time of global questioning of secrecy in the Roman Catholic Church and the attitudes of its hierarchy on social issues that are seen as out of step with the norms of many people.

Benedict will arrive in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh on 16th September for the first papal visit to Britain since 1982, when his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, drew big crowds on a six-day trip that was described as a pastoral, rather than a State, occasion.

After some 60 years, the oldest synagogue in Hungary's capital Budapest will reopen for the public on 8th September, just in time for the Jewish New Year.

The synagogue was forced to close its doors following the Holocaust, when Hungary became a Communist nation. Israel has described the event as proof of a revival of Jewish culture and religion in the country, despite concerns about anti-Semitism here.

Ahead of this week's Jewish New Year prayers, a huge crowd, including Holocaust survivors, attended a dedication ceremony where a scroll of the Torah, the Jewish scriptures, was carefully carried into the 190-year old Obuda Synagogue.

World Christian leaders are paying tribute to the ecumenical community of Taizé in eastern France, which is marking its foundation in 1940 by Brother Roger Schutz, who died in 2005.

In a message in advance of the 14th August commemoration to Brother Alois, who now heads the community, Pope Benedict XVI described Schutz as a "pioneer in the difficult paths toward unity among the disciples of Christ".

"Seventy years ago, he began a community that continues to see thousands of young adults, searching for meaning in their lives, come to it from around the world, welcoming them in prayer and allowing them to experience a personal relationship with God," Pope Benedict said.

The new president of the World Alliance of YMCAs has said the movement will do more to provide services to people in need, and must "work urgently" to help young people take up leadership roles in global affairs.

"For the first time in our world's history, most of our global population will become urbanised, primarily in the world's poorest countries, where safety, sanitation and health care are often scarce," the new president of the world alliance, Kenneth B. Colloton, told the 24th July closing session of the YMCAs' world council in Hong Kong.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has announced his intention to wind down his public engagements, when he turns 79 in October.

"I think I have done as much as I can, and I really do need time for other things that I have wanted to do," Archbishop Tutu told a 22nd July media briefing at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town. He also thanked South Africans for their contribution to the world.

Tutu became the first black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches in 1978, and then in 1986 the first black Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, a post from which he retired in 1996.

THOUSANDS MOURN SREBRENICA VICTIMS, CRITICISE UN, ON MASSACRE'S 15TH ANNIVERSARY
Tens of thousands of people have commemorated the 15th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since World War II in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Survivors have expressed frustration over the United Nation's perceived failure to prevent the killing of more than 8,000 Muslims by Serb forces in July, 1995.
      In the summer heat, huge crowds of mourning Muslims attended the biggest funeral near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica.
      A hillside was dug out with graves for 775 green-draped coffins of recently identified victims of Europe's largest mass killing since the Holocaust. The youngest victims were two boys, aged 14, who were laid to rest alongside thousands of bodies already in the graveyard.
      STEFAN J. BOS, of BosNewsLife, reports... | more... |

Christians in this vast, drought-prone country on the edge of the Sahara desert, are among those facing starvation after aid groups described the food situation in Niger as "extremely desperate".

Save the Children warned that up to 380,000 children under five are at risk of death by starvation. Christian aid and advocacy group Barnabas Fund told BosNewsLife Christians are "particularly vulnerable during this time of crisis," as they comprise just 0.3 per cent of the predominantly Muslim population of over 15 million people.

A Native American leader has challenged a global Protestant body to create a truth and reconciliation commission to redress the injustice of church involvement in cultural assimilation against indigenous peoples.

Richard Twiss, a member of the Rosebud Lakota/Sioux Tribe, said the church had been, "a willing partner", in the oppression of Native Americans.

He spoke at the founding meeting of the World Communion of Reformed Churches, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Native Americans had numbered 50 million in 1,400 but by 1895 accounted for barely 230,000, as a results of war and disease, Twiss said on 22nd June.

As the constant humming sound of trumpets are heard in stadiums across South Africa during the world cup, worship and fervent prayers echoed around West Ham stadium on Sunday 13th June at the Global Day of Prayer London's national day of prayer.

"We stand on turf consecrated to the beautiful game at the beginning of the World Cup and today as Christians we are celebrating the beautiful life through the power of the Holy Spirit," said the Bishop of Barking Rt Revd David Hawkins from the stage.

He added: "We want to thank you for coming together to pray in unity for the transformation of the city and our nation."

An influential evangelical organisation, which claims to represent over 400 million Christians worldwide, has expressed concerns about police raids on Protestant congregations in Uzbekistan and the detention of several Christians in the former Soviet republic.

The Religious Liberty Commission (RLC) of the World Evangelical Alliance said last week it was especially concerned about a recent police raid on one of the largest Protestant churches in the capital Tashkent where police "without a warrant" detained eight church members and seized properties.

REPRESSION AND INJUSTICE 'FLOURISHING' SAYS AMNESTY IN ANNUAL HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT

Governments are blocking advances in international justice by “standing above the law on human rights, shielding allies from criticism and acting only when politically convenient”, according to Amnesty International.

The organisation, which this week released its annual State of the World’s Human Rights report, says this power politics is widening a “global justice gap”.
"Repression and injustice are flourishing in the global justice gap, condemning millions of people to abuse, oppression and poverty," said Claudio Cordone, interim secretary general of Amnesty International, in a statement.

Twenty-three foreigners have been notified of expulsion from Morocco since 10th May, marking a second wave of Christian deportations from the country, according to International Christian Concern (ICC).

A spokesman for the US Embassy in Morocco in an interview with ICC said, "We are very concerned about this. While there were fewer Americans in this round than there were in the first round of this in early March, we're still following it very closely, and we have expressed concern, as have other diplomatic missions here, to the Moroccan authorities about this."

Christians in Kenya have held a national prayer rally in support of their campaign for a "No" vote in a pending constitutional referendum.

At the 8th May event, organised by Protestant, Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, Christians waved red cards, singing and dancing to gospel music to signal their rejection of the proposed draft constitution. The referendum is scheduled for August.

"I urge you to have a dream; to have a dream of another Kenya founded on justice and equality before the law, to have a dream where all people embrace and practice their religious beliefs without inference," said the Rev Peter Karanja, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya.

US National Council of Churches' officials have asked their national authorities to take steps to protect Christians in Iraq as well as members of other threatened minority groups due to continuing violence and political uncertainty.

Leaders from the biggest ecumenical agency in the United Sates sent a letter on 26th April to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

The NCC officials asked Clinton and Gates to urge Iraqi authorities and commanders of US-led forces in Iraq to take steps to minimise violence affecting the beleaguered Iraqi Christian community and others who continue to face threats and acts of violence.

Hundreds of Christians have held their first public vigil in the Nepalese capital to pressure the government into implementing a new, secular constitution within a stipulated deadline.

Their vigil comes during a period of growing anxiety that the country's political parties may bungle their task on the basic law of the country and that Nepal could become a Hindu State again.

BACKGROUNDER SPECIAL: WATCHING KYRGYZSTAN - AN OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY BUT THREATS ABOUND

In the late 1980s, President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced social and political reform to the Union of Soviet Social Republics (USSR) through perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). By 1990, Communism had fallen and the Cold War had ended. At that point, various megalomaniacs - that is, men who wanted to be presidents rather than prime ministers, governors or generals - set about exploiting ethnic nationalism in order to tear the centuries-old Russian Federation apart.

By the end of 1991, Kyrgyzstan was independent under the leadership of Askar Akayev, an intellectual and scientist appointed by Gorbachev. Kyrgyzstan was unique amongst its neighbours in that it was the only Central Asian former Soviet Republic not under the control of a former Soviet apparatchik (that is, not a professional functionary of the Communist Party).

ELIZABETH KENDAL explains the background to recent events in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan... | more... |

The death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and an entourage in a plane crash in western Russia has united Poles as well as Christian leaders from the country who lost nine clergy in the accident.

"Poland is experiencing its greatest tragedy of post-War times," bishops from the minority Evangelical Augsburg (Lutheran) church said in a pastoral letter dated 10th April.

"The post-Easter Annunciation gains a profound character in the context of this experience. For we are forced to contemplate the joyful Easter message which, in the face of death, allows us through our faith to look beyond the grave towards eternity," the bishops stated.

African religious leaders meeting in the Rwandan capital of Kigali have called on their governments to support calls for a strong and comprehensive treaty against arms trading so that funds can be redirected into development.

After their 23rd to 25th March meeting, Christian, Hindu and Muslim leaders said such an agreement would reduce the human cost associated with the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, and control illegal dealing.

"When you manufacture guns, you have to find a market. When you find a market, you cause trouble, you cause conflict, so it becomes an endless cycle. We shall never stop it until we say enough is enough of killing ourselves," Anglican Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda told Ecumenical News International in Kigali on 24th March. "But now that has to stop, so that we can build a peaceful Africa."

CHRISTIANS URGED TO JOIN GLOBAL DAY OF PRAYER FOR SUDAN AHEAD OF DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS

The people of Sudan will participate in the country's first democratic elections in 24 years this April.

According to international Christian relief organisation Samaritan's Purse, it is an historic time for a nation that has endured decades of civil war, and also a time of fear and anxiety.

Free and fair elections could help lay a foundation for lasting peace, but if violence erupts, it could rekindle a civil war that has already claimed the lives of millions.

The poor are becoming poorer and the rich need to step in and redress the balance, the Salvation Army said this week, during a debate in London.
The comments came as a representative spoke up for the Robin Hood Tax campaign during a discussion at the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).

Keynote speaker Professor Jeffrey Sachs international economist and author of The End of Poverty, actor Bill Nighy, fellow campaigner and screenwriter Richard Curtis, and Dr Clare Melamed, head of policy co-ordination Action Aid were joined by Major Ivor Telfer, The Salvation Army’s secretary for programme for the UK and Ireland territory. Alan Beattie, World Trade editor at the Financial Times, chaired the event.

The World Student Christian Federation and its Zimbabwe Advocacy Office say they are shocked at recent attacks on trade union leaders by police and security forces in Zimbabwe during a period when the southern African country is trying to reconcile bitter divides.

In a statement sent to Ecumenical News International on 4th March, the general secretary of the student federation, the Rev Michael Wallace, and the coordinator of the Zimbabwe office in Geneva, Marlon Zakeyo, said that three days earlier, police raided and ransacked offices of the General Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union of Zimbabwe in Harare.

The leadership of the World Council of Churches has welcomed "with great hope and deep satisfaction" the news that a Council of Christian Church Leaders of Iraq has been established.

"In our view, it is a development that augurs as much for the future of the churches in Iraq as it does for Iraq as a nation," the WCC General Secretary, the Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, wrote in an 18th February, 2010, congratulatory message to the members of the new body.

The council includes all patriarchs, archbishops, bishops and heads of churches in Iraq from the 14 Christian communities registered in Iraq since 1982, belonging to the Catholic, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox as well as Protestant traditions.

BIBLEFRESH CAMPAIGN TO ENCOURAGE CONFIDENCE IN THE SCRIPTURES LAUNCHES WITH UK TOUR

Biblefresh, a movement to help the church gain appetite and confidence in God's word last week launched a 13 city tour in cities across the UK, including Belfast, Manchester, Liverpool, Bournemouth, London and Exeter.

The tour will be exploring the theme of "The Bible: Tedious, Taboo and Toxic, or Transforming, Treasured and True?" and sharing the vision for practical ways churches can re-engage with the Bible.

The Biblefresh partnership of over 50 agencies, festivals, colleges and denominations have joined forces to see churches grow their confidence in the scriptures during 2011, coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the King James version of the Bible.

Last year was the worst period of persecution against Christians in Pakistan in the last decade, with attacks, arrests and detentions that reportedly killed some 130 Christians across the Islamic country, an advocacy group has claimed.
In one of the bloodiest single incidents, in August, eight Christians were shot or burnt alive in the town of Gojrain Punjab province when he Christian community was attacked by a mob of 3,000 Muslims over alleged blasphemy ofIslam, said the Center for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS).

Malaysian police said Tuesday, 12th January, they have identified their first suspect in attacks on some 10 churches and Christian buildings amid a dispute over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims.

Deputy Inspector-General Ismail Omar told reporters in the capital Kuala Lumpur that police received information "from a photograph", without providing details, citing the ongoing investigation.

Anti-Christian violence began last Friday, 8th January, after a court ruled that Catholic newspaper The Herald could use the word Allah, in reference to God, in its Malay-language editions.

Devoted Christians in several areas of Tajikistan faced uncertainty over the future of their churches after the former Soviet republic introduced a new religion law that the United States has criticised as highly restrictive.

The Religion Law, which came into forces on New Year's Day, empowers the government to impose stricter control of religious groups in the former Soviet republic that tolerates only the state-approved version of Islam.

Under the legislation groups that choose not to register with authorities or fail to gain re-registration will become illegal. All Christian and other “religious organisations” need to provide the national government with written confirmation of their existence from their local administration.

Faith Comes By Hearing Audio Bible ministry has a goal of implementing two million Bible listening groups, and recording the New Testament in 2,000 languages by 2016.

This international Audio Bible ministry is teaming up with like-minded organisations to reach and disciple the world’s poor and illiterate people with the Word of God.

According to a news release from Faith Comes by Hearing (FCBH),among the Bench people in southwest Ethiopia, there are more than 580 groups regularly gathering for a time of Bible listening and discussion. Local leaders say God’s Word has been a transforming factor: bringing understanding, instruction and hope.

Church of England churches welcomed back 53,000 people on Back to Church Sunday 2009, a 71 per cent increase on 2008, as part of a growing initiative that saw more than 80,000 people come back to church across the UK on one Sunday in September.

Statistical returns from participating churches suggest that an average of 19 people returned to each church after receiving a personal invitation.

They were greeted with an especially welcoming Sunday service on the day, fuelled by resources such as red 'welcome' T-shirts and subsidised 'party packs' of fairly-traded catering products, produced in partnership with Traidcraft.

A 79-year old Irish priest, who was released unharmed one month after being kidnapped in the Philippines by a militant Islamic group, says he wants to continue serving as a missionary.

The Rev Michael Sinnott, a Roman Catholic priest, was abducted outside his home in Pagadian on 11th October and was freed on 11th November by a group called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

"In the immediate future I hope to stay on here in the Philippines, to go back to do my work. I don’t know what the superiors are going to say about that, but that is my own wish," he told the Irish national broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Éireann, on 12th November.

Christians are celebrating after the Colombian Supreme Court ruled its citizens can opt out of obligatory military religious service because of religious, moral or philosophical objections.

Prior to the decision, which was handed down on 16th October, only young men studying to be Catholic priests were guaranteed the right to conscientious exemption.

The Colombian Mennonite Church - which maintains a pacifist tradition - is among religious and human rights groups which have been advocating for the right to be guaranteed by the courts.

Representatives of international and faith-based relief organizations are emphasising that widespread public awareness is necessary in order to tackle the problems of forced labour and human trafficking.

The comments came from those attending the Council of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

‘Upholding Human Dignity: Confronting Human Trafficking,’ has been the theme of the October meeting of the LWF governing body, attended by around 165 participants at Chavannes-de-Bogis near Geneva, Switzerland.

Roger Plant, head of the Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour at the International Labour Organization (ILO), called for concrete legislative measures and stricter enforcement of the existing laws of individual countries.

Russian Ministries is appealing for Western Christians to help provide a message of hope to needy children across Russia this Christmas from war-ravaged South Ossetia to the remote far north to the crowded streets of Moscow.

The charity’s senior vice-president Sergey Rakhuba launched this year’s Project Hope appeal by setting an ambitious target: “Last year we distributed 30,000 gift-filled boxes, which include children’s Bibles. This year we’re planning to deliver 50,000 that we can make available together with the evangelical churches to at risk children throughout Russia."

The head of the World Council of Churches, the Rev. Samuel Kobia, is to lead a delegation to North Korea, in the latest of several recent visits from Christian groups to the communist-ruled state.

"We will be meeting with the churches, government officials and learning about the life and witness of churches in North Korea," said Mathews George Chunakara, director of the WCC Public Witness programme, in a 15th October statement announcing the visit.

The WCC said Kobia, a Kenyan Methodist who steps down at the end of 2009 as general secretary of the world's biggest church grouping, would preach at the Bong Soo Church in Pyongyang.

Fourteen years after the end of a war in which thousands of women were raped, Amnesty International has called on the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina to provide victims with access to justice and reparations.

In a report launched in Sarajevo late last month, the organisation says the human rights of survivors have been violated by authorities who have failed to comprehensively investigate and prosecute crimes of sexual violence.

In a statement, Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty International's Europe programme director, says that thousands of women were raped during the 1992-1995 war, “often with extreme brutality”.

Germany's senior Protestant bishop has urged Christians in officially atheist North Korea to obey God "rather than man".

Bishop Wolfgang Huber, the council chairperson of Germany's Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD), spoke during a service in the Bongsun Church in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, according to a statement made available to Ecumenical News International on 15th September.

Without alluding to Kim Jong-il, who in 1997 succeeded his father as leader of North Korea, Huber quoted from the Bible's book of Acts of the Apostles (5: 29), when he said, "We ought to obey God rather than man."

Anglican Archbishop Ian Ernest of the Indian Ocean Province, who is based in Mauritius, is calling on political leaders in Madagascar to set aside their political agendas, and put people first.

"I know it is difficult because of the delicate situation, but as a church we are calling on the leaders to see it at the level of God," Archbishop Ernest told Ecumenical News International in Nairobi on 2nd September after a meeting with regional Anglican leaders.

The world's fourth largest island, in the Indian Ocean, is trapped in a political standoff between Andre Rajoelina, the former mayor of Antananarivo, the capital city, and ousted President Marc Ravalomanana, the senior lay leader of the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM).

European and American leaders gathered to observe the 70th anniversary of the German military invasion of Poland, which is generally regarded as the start of World War II. Tuesday's ceremonies came amid controversy between Poland and Russia over the war, in which some 50 million people died.

At a somber ceremony Polish leaders met at dawn on Gdansk's Westerplatte peninsula, where 70 years ago German forces began to attack Poland.

An honorary guard looked on as officials placed wreaths at the foot of the monument to the defenders of Westerplatte at 4:45am local time, the exact time that the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein began shelling this tiny Polish military outpost.

The armed conflict in Angola ended seven years ago, but the consequences of four decades of war are felt still today. And women seem to be bearing most of the brunt.

"We do not have an open conflict right now", says Josefina Sandemba, a pastor from the Evangelical Congregational Church in Angola (IECA) who was briefing a Living Letters team visiting the country on behalf of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in late July, "but guns keep taking their toll within communities still today".

Orthodox church leaders from Russia and Georgia called for peace while their political counterparts lobbed charges of aggression in marking the one year anniversary of the South Ossetia war.

The Russian and Georgian patriarchs also commemorated the victims of the short, brutal war over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Patriarch Kirill I of the Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch Ilia II of the Georgian Orthodox Church stressed the common spiritual heritage of the warring sides, continuing the line taken last year by Ilia and the late Patriarch Aleksei II of the Russian Orthodox Church, who had sought reconciliation as the conflict raged.

Christian leaders in northern Nigeria fear a fresh crackdown on evangelical activities after local authorities announced plans to control “religious preachers” as Islamic violence left at least a dozen Christians dead and destroyed some 20 churches.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), which represents churches, criticised governors of 19 northern states for setting up a committee to regulate the activities of “religious preachers” in the mainly-Muslim region, saying it could lead to more tensions and bloodshed.

"This forum has resolved to constitute a preaching board that will screen and approve competent Muslim and Christian clergy for evangelical activities," Niger state leader Babanginda Aliyu explained after a governors' meeting in the northern city of Kaduna last week.

Charles Wesley, the great Methodist hymn writer, may have penned his famous words "O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer praise" almost 270 years ago, but it seems just singing these words today in strife-torn Fiji could destabilise a whole government.

The military government of interim prime minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama has agitated the normally harmonious voice of Fijian Methodists by attempting to stop the church's conference from taking place in late August.

Dispelling the myth of "a little peaceful country", an international ecumenical Living Letters team visited Uruguay and discovered how violence manifests itself at the levels of family life, the state and youth, and how the churches in this South American country seek to overcome it.

"Some of the members of the Living Letters team had the idyllic vision that they had brought with them changed when they met the actual situation here," said Pastor Oscar Bolioli, President of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Uruguay, who hosted the visit.

Germany's senior Protestant leader has praised the role European churches played in the 1989 political changes that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall but says they need to find new ways of making their voice heard in today's Europe.
"We can now together declare our faith and carry out our task of reconciliation, and testify to the peace of Christ that is given to us," said Bishop Wolfgang Huber, who heads the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). He was speaking on 17th July to the once-every-six-years assembly of the Conference of European Churches taking place in Lyon, France.

Protestant churches in Kenya have dispatched one of their leaders to the International Criminal Court at The Hague to deliver a one-million signature petition urging investigations of post-election violence.

"I will execute the instructions given to me as soon as possible," said the Rev Peter Karanja, the general secretary of National Council of Churches of Kenya, on 2nd July in Limuru, near Nairobi, while receiving 500 000 of the signatures.

The European Union and dozens of countries have pledged to speed up social support for Holocaust survivors and the search for art and other items that were stolen during World War II by the Nazis.

At a meeting in Prague, they agreed to establish a special European institute to deal with these issues and education. As the number of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust rapidly declines, there is a sense of urgency among delegates that the world must provide them with adequate social assistance and compensation for stolen goods.

The five-day meeting - attended by Holocaust survivors, members of Jewish organisations and delegates from nearly 50 nations - was a follow-up to a conference more than a decade ago in Washington that led to agreements on recovering art looted by the Nazis.