The persecuted church

Christians

Christian funeral-goers in India are attacked by Hindu extremists. A private Christian prayer meeting in India is disturbed.

A Holocaust denier makes a propaganda film, in order to justify the sentencing of a Muslim-background Christian to death, in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A group in Forest Gate funds a group in Pakistan, who have successfully pressed for a Pakistani Christian to be sentenced to death by hanging, for blasphemous words she is alleged to have said, at a well where Christians were prohibited to go.

You will recall the 35 Ethiopian believers arrested at a private prayer meeting in Saudi Arabia. Are they part of a large smuggling ring? Or guilty of “illegal mingling of the genders”? Saudi justice cannot quite recall.

An Egyptian man faces 6 years in prison for disagreeing with his co-worker, about Jesus and Mohamed.

Nigeria’s Boko Haram is growing in confidence:

“The Nigerian state and Christians are our enemies and we will be launching attacks on the Nigerian state and its security apparatus as well as churches until we achieve our goal of establishing an Islamic state in place of the secular state.”

Freedom ebbs away in northern Mali, as Christians suffer the consequences of discrimination and intimidation.

Indonesian Christians, meanwhile, also have cause for concern:

22 churches have been forced to close down by the Indonesian government this year. 18 of those occurred just within the last month in the Aceh Province after the election of a hard-line Islamic governor.

Christians in Aceh protest, likely in vain.

All this might appear to be a gradual process, if you are observing these events from a country where Christians are safe, vocal, confident and numerous.

For the victims, such events are swift and sudden, and life-changing.