Samuel Smith – November – 17, 2020

The rise of violent extremist groups throughout Africa, as well as the constant attacks against Christian communities in the continent’s most populated country, has religious leaders fearful that “the next jihad” is underway as world leaders seem to be rushing to address the problem.

“I know one thing has never really changed: No one gives a damn about Africa except for their natural resources or if there is going to be a big party because there is a peace treaty being signed,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, director of the global social action agenda of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization with over 400,000 family members.

“That’s just the truth and it’s a terrible truth. It might be one of the vestiges, frankly, of colonialism.”

Cooper teamed up with Rev. Johnnie Moore, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, to author the new book The Next Jihad: Stop the Christian Genocide in Africa.

The book was written after the unlikely duo traveled together to Nigeria earlier this year to meet with dozens of Christian victims of terrorism from five different regions.

In recent years, Nigeria, the continent’s richest country, has dealt with the rise of Islamic terrorist groups in the northeast (Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province) and an increase of deadly attacks on farming communities carried out by militarized radicals from the Fulani herding community.

In the past few years, it’s been estimated that thousands of Christians have been killed while millions of Nigerians have been displaced from their communities. Some human rights groups have warned that attacks against Christian communities in Nigeria have reached the standard for genocide

https://www.christianpost.com

Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. – October 9, 2020

The Manchester City Council has passed an order banning prayer vigils and peaceful protests around the Marie Stopes abortion clinic, the Christian Institute reports Friday.

The Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) has set up a buffer zone around the clinic in Fallowfield, within which people are forbidden to pray, distribute pro-life literature, or speak to anyone about abortion, measures pro-lifers have called “draconian” and an infringement on “freedom of speech.”

The one concession made by the council is a small designated space within the buffer zone where no more than three people may silently demonstrate with small placards.

Within the Restricted Area no person shall “protest, namely engage in any act of approval/disapproval or attempted act of approval/disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services by any means,” the PSPO reads. “This includes but is not limited to graphic, verbal or written means, prayer or counseling.”

People are also prohibited from displaying or distributing “any text or images relating directly or indirectly to the termination of pregnancy,” the order adds.

Within the small Designated Zone no person may “display any individual poster, text or image, singularly or collectively greater that one sheet of A3 paper,” it establishes.

The International Director at 40 Days for Life, Robert Colquhoun, said that up to now the pro-life vigils have always been “peaceful, prayerful, and legal.” His group will comply with the law, he said, but will continue praying outside the buffer zone.

Marie Stopes International, one of the world’s largest abortion providers, has been campaigning for buffer zones around all abortion clinics in Great Britain, insisting that “the UK is a pro-choice nation.”

“We are a firmly pro-choice nation, but sadly, a small minority of people believe otherwise and would like to see the country take a backwards step on abortion,” Marie Stopes UK Managing Director Richard Bentley wrote last year.

“These anti-abortion groups who gather outside clinics have a detrimental impact on women, our team members and residents, and whether their behavior is subtle or overt, it is a form of discrimination against women and targeted street harassment,” he said.

https://www.breitbart.com

Nicholas Rowan, Staff Writer – October 09, 2020

Catholic and Jewish leaders Thursday afternoon sued New York after the implementation of increased coronavirus restrictions on worship services.

Both groups argued that the new restrictions, which took effect Tuesday in “red zone” parts of New York City, imposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and enforced by Mayor Bill de Blasio, are unnecessarily harsh and violate the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. Jewish leaders, led by the Orthodox group Agudath Israel of America, added that the restrictions single out Jews for special treatment because they impede the celebration of a series of holidays beginning Friday.

The group argued that it’s possible to hold safe, socially distanced services, in contrast to the protests against the restrictions that many Orthodox Jews have taken part in over the past week. Rabbi Chaim Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel, added that the new 10-person limit on gatherings would make it impossible to celebrate the holidays Hoshana Rabbah, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah properly this weekend.

“Social distancing, masking, and all health precautions must, of course, be observed,” he said in a statement. “However, we think that it is possible to stay safe and at the same time have more than ten people in a Shul building that is meant to hold hundreds.”

Catholic leaders, led by Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, in their suit said that the new restrictions and the 10-person cap “arbitrarily reduce capacity,” even after the diocese followed the state’s previous coronavirus restrictions.

“This religious community will be denied its most fundamental right, the free exercise of religion, for no legitimate reason whatsoever,” said Randy Mastro, the diocese’s attorney.

https://www.conservativereview.com

Ricky Scaparo – September 29, 2020

(ETH) – China is so hell-bent on destroying Christianity that the Communist authorities in China have now reportedly abducted and tortured a 46-year-old priest in the southeastern province of Fujian for refusing to join the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, according to a report from the Christian Post.

Bitter Winter, which is a magazine publication that reports on religious liberty and human rights in China state that Father Liu Maochun from the Diocese of Mindong was ruthlessly tortured.  The details of the report indicated that Officers banged a “gong beside his ear and shone a bright light into his eyes for several consecutive days—a torture method known as ‘exhausting an eagle’ when people are deprived of sleep for a long time,”

Then Liu Maochun, who assists the diocese’s auxiliary bishop Guo Xijin, was then taken away by Chinese police on Sept. 1st while he was visiting patients in a hospital. He was then taken to a detention house in the county-level city of Fu’an. “The government claimed that Fr. Liu Maochun has disobeyed its rule and was ‘ideologically radical,’” the source was quoted as saying.

The Bishop also refused to join the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, This comes as the government had earlier pressured one of the deacons in the diocese, threatening to demolish his house and sack his children if he further supported Guo’s refusal to join the Patriotic Church, according to the shocking report. The report also stated that Fr. Maochun may have shared information with foreign media about another priest, Fr. Huang, who too was tortured for not joining the Patriotic Church. China continues cracking down on underground churches and Christian activists and has been for years.

https://endtimeheadlines.org

Ezra Dulis – September 20, 2020

Police in Moscow, Idaho, arrested three people Wednesday for violating social distancing rules as their church sang hymns and Bible psalms outdoors — an event held, in part, to protest the city mayor’s mask mandate, which runs to January 2021.

Officers arrested Gabriel Rench, Rachel Bohnet, and Sean Bohnet, according to Moscow Report, a local independent news outlet. A video uploaded to social media shows Bohnet, a local music teacher, and his wife telling officers they refused to comply with an inaudible order. Moscow Report says the apparent infraction is that they refused to show identification.

Update: The Moscow Police Department’s daily activity log lists the reasons for the arrests as “public health emergency order” violations.

Footage of the couple’s arrest shows the church body singing the hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” as officers place them in handcuffs.

Rench is a co-host of Cross Politic, a Christian political talk show, and a candidate for county commissioner. “You guys should not be doing this,” he told officers as they walked him to a squad car. “And doing this kind of crap for the mayor, this is embarrassing. You guys are stronger than this.”

Released that same day, Rench appeared on his talk show to discuss the arrest, playing extended footage of his conversation with officers. One of his companions is heard telling the officers “We backed you guys” at recent Black Lives Matter protests advocating to defund the police. “They didn’t send you [to enforce social distancing] with BLM to go do that when they said defund you guys. We backed you guys.”

“I got booked in jail; I was in jail for about two hours,” he said. “And as they were de-booking me, or whatever they call it, I’m walking out and I go by their office, which is right next to where I’m getting booked out. And there’s three deputies in the officer, and two of them aren’t wearing masks and sitting right next to each other. And I said, ‘hey, should they get arrested?’”

https://www.breitbart.com

Michael Foust – September 16, 2020

An Arkansas Kroger store violated federal anti-discrimination law when it reportedly fired two employees who refused to wear LGBT-themed aprons due to their religious beliefs, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

According to the Miami Herald, a dress code by the Conway, Ark., grocery store required employees to wear a rainbow-colored heart emblem on the bib of the apron. The women “believed the emblem endorsed LGBTQ values and that wearing it would violate their religious beliefs,” the EEOC said in a news release summarizing the suit.

Kroger disciplined the two women and eventually fired them, an action that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. The EEOC charges Kroger with religious discrimination.

Both women are Christian.

The two women “offered to wear the apron with the emblem covered and the other offered to wear a different apron without the emblem, but the company made no attempt to accommodate their requests,” the EEOC said.

“Companies have an obligation under Title VII to consider requests for religious accommodations, and it is illegal to terminate employees for requesting an accommodation for their religious beliefs,” said Delner-Franklin Thomas, district director of the EEOC’s Memphis District Office. “The EEOC protects the rights of the LGBTQ community, but it also protects the rights of religious people.”

The EEOC tried but failed to reach a pre-litigation settlement, the news release said. The lawsuit seeks “monetary relief in the form of back pay and compensatory damages, as well as an injunction against future discrimination,” the EEOC said.

https://www.christianheadlines.com

Milton Quintanilla – September 9, 2020

UK Pastor John Williamson of Newquay Baptist Church is facing violent threats from members of the LGBTQ+ community for insisting that homosexuality is a sin.

According to Christian Concern, a UK based watchdog organization, Williamson simply wrote, ”wonderful news!” in response to a news article that stated that the Cornwall Pride Parade was canceled. The festivities were originally scheduled to take place on August 29.

When an online user asked Williamson why he celebrated the cancellation, the pastor replied, “because I don’t think sin should be celebrated.”

Williamson proceeded to use Scripture to defend his stance on homosexuality. He cited the books of John, James, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

The pastor then shared the article on his personal Facebook page, noting that his church had previously prayed for the cancellation of the parade.

“We also prayed that the Lord would save the organizers. One prayer answered, now we wait for the second prayer to be answered,” he added.

But the parade organizers caught wind of Williamson’s page, took a screenshot of his post, tagged his church and posted it together with anti-LGBTQ+ comments by online users.

The names of the users were blocked out by Cornell Pride, in order to make it seem like Pastor Williamson was the one behind the negative comments.

Williamson’s wife received online threats as her husband’s head was superimposed upon an image of homosexual pornography, which was also shared online.

The pastor was then reported by Cornwall Pride’s followers to police for hate speech as well as committing a hate crime.

https://www.christianheadlines.com

Barnabas Aid – September 4, 2020

An Ethiopian Christian leader called for an international inquiry into the slaying of hundreds of Christians, including pregnant women, children and whole families, in ongoing Oromo Muslim extremist attacks in the parts of the Oromia regional state, extending south, south-east and east of Addis Ababa, since the end of June. According to reports, more than 500 were killed.

The coordinated killings, targeting Christians from a wide range of ethnicities including Oromo Christians, began soon after the alleged assassination of a popular Oromo singer, Hachallu Hundessa, who was shot dead on 29 June, while driving in the outskirts of the capital.

The attackers are from the Oromo ethnic group, which has traditionally been Muslim, and are members of Qeerroo (meaning, “bachelors”), an Oromo male youth movement.

In door-to-door attacks on Christian households the Qeerroo extremists arrived in cars and, armed with guns, machetes, swords and spears, sought out and slaughtered Christians. Children were forced to witness their parents being brutally murdered with machetes.

https://christiannews.net

Leah MarieAnn Klett – August 28, 2020

In the first half of 2020, over 900 crosses were removed from state-run churches across China amid Xi Jinping’s ongoing crackdown on places of worship, according to the Italian-based magazine Bitter Winter.

According to the religious liberty magazine, crosses were removed from over 250 state-run Three-Self churches in the eastern province of Anhui, which has the second-largest Christian population in China, in the first four months of the year. Additionally, 656 state-run Protestant churches in the province saw their crosses removed during the first half of this year.

A Three-Self church in the city’s Yingdong district, which lost its cross in April, was told by authorities that the cross-demolition campaign was part of national policy.

“If a church refuses to remove its cross, congregation members may lose their social benefits, like pensions and poverty-alleviation subsidies, and possibilities for their children’s future employment will be affected,” a church member explained.

United Front Work Department officials who removed the cross from a church in Hanshan county informed church congregants that any crosses taller than government buildings “must be demolished because they overshadow state institutions,” a church member told Bitter Winter.

“Only churches that look like enterprises are considered legal. To ‘sinicize’ Christianity, Xi Jinping does not allow churches to have Western crosses.”

The believer also revealed that government officials warned an elder in the church that “protesting cross demolitions means protesting against the government.”

https://www.christianpost.com

Raymond Ibrahim – August 19, 2020

The mass slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, which some international observers have classified as genocide, is reaching unprecedented levels.

According to an August 4 report, at least 171 Christians were slaughtered by Muslim Fulani herdsmen in the space of roughly three weeks:

And these are only those we know of. In reality, the toll is likely to be far higher. Many thousands are also being displaced by the violence from homes and such livelihoods as they had left after covid lockdown brought economic havoc…. Our news desk has been swamped by such stories for many months, yet this relentless and bloody toll of Christian lives is disturbingly absent from wider mainstream media.

In one of the recent raids, on July 10, Muslim herdsmen massacred 22 Christians — “mostly women and children” — and torched many homes in a farming community. “The Fulani came in and were shooting,” recalled Bilkisu James from her hospital bed. “They killed two of my children [and husband].” They also “hacked another five of Bilkisu’s relatives to death with machetes including a mother and her baby daughter and a mother and her two sons.”

A Muslim neighbor had apparently exposed the Christian family to his invading coreligionists: “Before I was shot,” Bilkisu continued, “I saw the Fulani man who is my neighbour, he even identified me. I surrendered to him on my knees” — to no avail. They shot her in the chest and back and left her for dead, even as she “heard them light the match and set the house on fire.”

The next day, a neighboring village was raided: “ten women, a baby and an elderly man were burnt to death in a house where they had taken refuge. Another seven villagers were injured and four houses burnt out.” On July 19, people attending a wedding celebration were among at least 32 Christians massacred in Fulani attacks.

In a separate “horrific night attack during a torrential rain storm on 23 July, at least seven Christians died… as militants brutally hacked unarmed men and women and children to death with machetes.” The report adds that “This was the second attack on the village within days, with seven murdered in an attack days earlier on 20 July.”

On July 29, Muslim herdsmen murdered another 14 Christians — 13 of whom belonged to one extended family. Only one member of the family remained alive; his wife, all his children, aunt, uncle, brother, and other relatives were slaughtered.

Most recently, armed jihadis stormed the Lion of Judah Church in Azikoro and opened fire on worshippers; four Christians were killed.

https://www.frontpagemag.com