Update (May 14, 2013): CT has posted a dispatch from Lagos correspondent Sunday Oguntola on the Christian debate over amnesty, as well as today's declaration of emergency rule in three predominantly Muslim states.

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Amid another surge of violence in Nigeria, the idea of an amnesty deal between the Nigerian government and militant Islamist group Boko Haram has the support of Christian president Goodluck Jonathan. But the proposal is firmly opposed by most Christian groups in the West African nation.

A recent Moroccan fatwa calling for the execution of those who leave Islam has left many Christian converts in turmoil.

There is still much debate over how the fatwa, which only recently came to light after the government’s top authority on Islam issued it last year, could change laws in Morocco. But a Moroccan Christian convert active in the house church movement said many former Muslims who are now Christians fear for their lives.

Update (May 3): Washington Post maps the USCIRF's world's worst religious freedom violators. The visual look reveals that all but one of the USCIRF's Tier 1 and 2 violators are in Africa, Asia, or the Middle East.
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Update: Religion News points out that the 2013 USCIRF includes non-state violators for the first time.

Knox Thames, USCIRF director of policy and research, told RNS in an interview, “USCIRF added a special emphasis on non-state actors, as their violent actions are a growing threat to religious freedom."
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Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, and North Korea are among the world's worst violators of religious freedom, according to the annual U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report released today.

Update (May 10): In response to the U.S.'s claims that North Korea was not transparent in its trial of American Kenneth Bae, the country has released more information about the charges against the detained missionary. According to the Wall Street Journal, "One thing that wasn’t a surprise was apparent confirmation of his involvement in missionary work, something that has seen other Korean-Americans detained in North Korea in recent years."

State news sources reportedly released confirmation that Bae was working with Youth With A Mission (YWAM), an international evangelical missions agency.

The YWAM press office was closed at the time of publication and could not be reached for confirmation.

"Bae is accused of preaching against the North Korean government in American and South Korean churches, of setting up covert 'plot-breeding bases' in China, of smuggling at least 250 of his supporters into North Korea under the guise of tourists, of producing anti-North Korea propaganda and bringing it into the country," Global Post reports.

Members of the U.S. government—as well other unlikely supporters—have issued repeated calls for Bae's release. Earlier this week, former NBA basketball player Dennis Rodman, who visited North Korea last month, tweeted the following:

I'm calling on the Supreme Leader of North Korea or as I call him "Kim", to do me a solid and cut Kenneth Bae loose.

— Dennis Rodman (@dennisrodman) May 7, 2013

Update (May 2): The Wall Street Journal reports that the North Korean Supreme Court has sentenced American Kenneth Bae to 15 years of compulsory labor. Though Bae could have faced the death penalty, he received the lesser sentence without explanation.

In addition, WSJ reports that "North Korea has provided no details of the alleged crime committed by Mr. Bae, but activists in Seoul say he was interested in bringing attention to humanitarian issues and may have been detained for possessing images of vagrant North Korean children. Groups of orphans, known as "kotjebi," or wandering swallows, are found throughout North Korea."
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North Korea has announced that it will try an American citizen who was arrested nearly six months ago for "crimes aimed to topple the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]." If convicted, China-based missionary Kenneth Bae could face the death penalty.

Update (May 10): Abedini has been released from solitary confinement. Supporters have sent more than 50,000 letters of encouragement to his prison.

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Update (April 29): Along with nine other prisoners, Iranian-born U.S. pastor Saeed Abedini has been placed in solitary confinement, the American Center for Law and Justice reports. The move is believed to be retaliation for prisoner-staged protest against poor conditions.

Abedini, who has been in prison for 215 days following his arrest last fall, faces badly deteriorating health, including severe internal bleeding and kidney issues.
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(BP) Iranian officials have pressured imprisoned pastor Saeed Abedini to renounce his faith in Jesus even as they have stepped up their physical abuse and psychological torture of him, including taking him to a hospital but denying him medical treatment, according to recent reports.

Citing stagnant church attendance and an increasing number of abandoned buildings, the Sudanese government has announced that it no longer will issue licenses to Christian churches.

British vegans and environmentalists should obtain the same special treatment in the workplace as Christians, according to new guidelines from Great Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

A decades-long conflict over burial sites for Christians in Nepal may finally be over.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that promote religious freedom generally think the U.S. Department of State and United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) are doing a good job promoting religious freedom. But they also offer ideas for improvement.

Tensions between the top international religious freedom advocates in the American government—the State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom and the United States' Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)—are longstanding. So the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined both groups and offers a new report with suggestions for fixing current problems.

The last good news CT noticed coming out of Chiapas, Mexico, was the local government had decided not to expel 65 evangelicals from their homes in 2007. Now, less than six years later, a nearby town has hosted 25,000 Christians to celebrate religious freedom.

Recent legal battles over nondiscrimination policies and religious freedom have prompted the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) to examine whether or not it is possible to reconcile the at-times conflicting principles.

Update (March 18): Last week, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman became the country's first Republican senator to formally announce his support for gay marriage.

Portman, a Christian whose college-aged son is gay, changed his former position on same-sex marriage and challenged his party's stance, the Religion News Service reported. Portman said, “The overriding message of love and compassion that I take from the Bible, and certainly the Golden Rule, and the fact that I believe we are all created by our maker, that has all influenced me in terms of my change on this issue."

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, also spoke out in favor of same-sex marriage for the first time in a video posted online Monday.

In the Human Rights Campaign clip, Clinton said she believes America must uphold and protect the dignity of all its citizens, including lesbians and gays. "I support marriage for lesbian and gay couples," she said. "I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law."

The recent announcements from these two politicians, one right and one left, come days after new research revealed higher support for same-sex marriage.
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Update (Feb. 27): The Star-Ledger takes a closer look at the decision, noting the eight refugees—including a few who have been living at the church for more than one year—are part of a group of 80 Indonesians seeking asylum in the area, as well as the status of a congressional bill that would resolve their situation.

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Eight Indonesian immigrants who have lived in a New Jersey church for months in order to avoid deportation can now leave the property thanks to a decision by immigration officials.

Update (March 1): AFP reports that 48 Egyptian Christians have been arrested in Benghazi on illegal immigration charges. They are accused of attempting to evangelize Muslims, but "the main charge was illegal entry into Libya."

A for-profit Christian school operated by a church in Southern California is suing two of its former teachers to prevent them from filing their own discrimination suit against the school—all over a questionnaire sent by the school asking the teachers to provide proof of their faith.

Update (April 4): According to a new report from Christian Solidarity Worldwide, religious freedom violations are on the rise in Cuba, tripling from 40 in 2011 to 120 incidents in 2012.

The report states, "After a period in which it appeared that the government was moving towards more subtle and refined pressure on church leaders, 2012 saw a return of the use of more brutal and public tactics."
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Recent headlines have noted the number of health workers refusing to get flu shots this year due to religious convictions. But in Ohio, chicken eggs—a little-known ingredient in manufactured flu vaccines—are causing a stir after a federal district court ruled that one vegan's refusal to ingest animal by-products—including eggs—could qualify as a religious belief.

Today, President Barack Obama continued the tradition of observing Religious Freedom Day with a presidential proclamation. But this year, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty critiqued his use of "freedom of worship" rhetoric—a debate that first arose in 2010.

Update (Jan. 16): Pakistan’s Supreme Court has dismissed a final appeal in against Rimsha Masih in her blasphemy case, effectively ending all legal proceedings on the issue. Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports, "The Supreme Court is the highest court in Pakistan so the prosecution has now exhausted its appeal options."

Asia News reports that Federal Minister Paul Bhatti told the news service that "he was satisfied by the decision, which confirms that 'Rimsha Masih is innocent.'"
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Update (April 22): The Telegraph reports that the three Christians who lost their high-profile cases before the European Court of Human Rights are appealing the rulings before the court’s Grand Chamber, opening “the way for a final ruling on what limits can be put on such displays, including wearing a cross and talking about belief in the workplace.”

They plan to file papers this week claiming that “British courts are applying double standards towards Christians for ‘political’ reasons.”
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Update (Feb. 19): Britain's equality commission has published new guidelines on how British employers should accommodate religious beliefs in the workplace in light of the ECHR's landmark ruling.

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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled today that the United Kingdom did not unjustly discriminate against three of four Christians who were dismissed from their jobs on the basis of their religious conscience.

Persecution of Christians is rising in at least eight African countries, according to the latest Open Doors USA list of the world's worst violators of religious freedom.

"Africa, where Christianity spread fastest during the past century, now is the region where oppression of Christians is spreading fastest," the group noted.

Three years after a Syrian Orthodox foundation applied to build a church in Istanbul, Turkey, the Greater Istanbul Municipality has granted them a large plot of land and a building permit.

The only catch? The land is actually a Latin Catholic graveyard.

French president Francois Hollande has announced plans to create a new government agency to monitor France's separation of church and state.

Update (April 10): The Globe and Mail reports that Russian lawmakers have green-lighted the first draft of a law that would "make offences against religion punishable by up to five years in prison ... in the mainly Orthodox country."

The bill comes one year after the band Pussy Riot staged a protest in the country's main cathedral and outraged many in the Russian Orthodox Church, which supports the proposed anti-blasphemy law.

The Moscow Times offers more details.

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Pakistan is no longer the only country making headlines for its blasphemy laws. Some European countries are now striking down laws that criminalize offenses against religion. But other countries are strengthening them.

Jamaica's government-run public transit system is banning evangelism to bus passengers because they are a "captive audience."

Following complaints from some passengers, Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) issued a directive to its bus drivers "to 'politely' tell preachers that they could no longer trumpet their divine messages on the state-owned buses," the Jamaica Gleaner reports.

Updated Jan. 11: The Star reports on persecution of Chin Christians in Burma's state-run Buddhist schools.

(Updated: President Obama's speech in Rangoon included this statement on religious freedom.)

On Monday, President Obama will become the first U.S. president to visit the long-isolated nation of Burma (Myanmar)—home to some of the world's longest-running persecuted Christians.

In response, leaders from the American Baptist Church, The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) urged the President to advocate for religious freedom in the Buddhist nation.

Restrictions on religious conversion have "become a human rights problem of great concern," according to the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.

Blasphemy cases—long common to Muslim nations such as Pakistan and Egypt—are now popping up in unexpected places. The latest: heavily Catholic Poland.

Poland's Supreme Court recently ruled that a blasphemy charge against Adam Darski, a member of the Polish rock band Behemoth, can proceed—nearly five years after Darski ripped a copy of the Bible during an on-stage performance.

Beginning next January, Cubans will be able to travel in and out of their island nation more easily—with just their passport and a visa from their destination country, instead of first needing to obtain permission from their government.

According to Wayne Pederson, president and CEO of HCJB Global, the change will facilitate "a circular flow of Americans and Cubans to meet not only with their families, but with their Christian family as well."

Update (May 8, 2013): A Texas state judge has determined that religiously themed banners displayed by cheerleaders at Kountze High School in Texas are constitutionally permissible. According to the Associated Press, "In a copy of the ruling obtained by Beaumont station KFDM, [judge Steve] Thomas determined that no law 'prohibits cheerleaders from using religious-themed banners at school sporting events.'"

The lawsuit, which became a high-profile case last fall, was scheduled to go to trial later this summer, but this summary judgment ends the case.
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When Kountze High School in Texas banned cheerleaders from using Bible verses on their banners, the ban sparked a national debate about students' freedom of religion and free speech rights. For now, though, cheerleaders will be free to wave their banners, according to a ruling by Hardin County District Judge Steve Thomas.

Yesterday, Thomas extended a temporary injunction against the school district's ban on religiously themed banners, saying that the ban appeared to violate the cheerleaders' free speech rights.

BP - Representatives from nine state legislatures have announced the formation of state-level religious freedom caucuses in a new nationwide effort to combat religious discrimination.

Conservative Christians in Russia have started using crosses to replace Apple's iconic "bitten apple" logo, a move that could cause problems for Apple product sales as the mostly Orthodox nation's parliament weighs a blasphemy ban.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against 16 immigrants who claimed that religious-worker visa rules violated their religious freedoms.

The court rejected a challenge to immigration policies that require religious workers to follow a different process from those with employment-based visas when applying to become legal permanent residents (LPR). The ruling upheld a 2011 decision in the case.

After seven years of litigation, two Illinois pharmacists who object on religious grounds to filling prescriptions for emergency contraceptives have had their objections upheld by a state appellate court.

A state high court recently ruled in favor of greater religious freedom in India's most Hindu state, striking down certain restrictions outlined in Himachal Pradesh's Freedom of Religion Act 2006 as unconstitutional.

The act previously required that individuals in the northern Indian state, which borders Kashmir, wishing to convert to a different religion give 30 days notice to the district magistrate. However, in response to a legal challenge by the Evangelical Fellowship of India, a two-judge panel ruled that every Indian citizen "has a right not only to follow his own beliefs but also has a right to change his beliefs."

The European Union (EU) will now grant refugee status to those who seek asylum on the basis of religious persecution, even when applicants are still able to practice their faith in private.

https://twitter.com/CSW_UK/status/244427312785940480

Youcef Nadarkhani, the Church of Iran pastor who became a worldwide cause celebre among religious freedom advocates after being sentenced to death for apostasy in 2010 yet repeatedly refusing to recant his faith, has finally been released after spending three years in prison.

Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old, mentally disabled Pakistani Christian whose blasphemy case has drawn worldwide attention, was granted bail today after lengthy court arguments.

Paul Bhatti, a leading Christian politician, expressed "joy and satisfaction" because "justice has been done," and has proposed an interfaith council to reduce the abuse of Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws. However, he noted that the problem remains of hundreds of Christian families who fled Masih's neighborhood to avoid retaliatory violence.

In an unprecedented gesture, a leading body of Muslim clerics expressed support for Masih as a "daughter of the nation" after Pakistani officials arrested the girl's accuser.

The U.S. State Department has released its 2011 International Religious Freedom Report, highlighting the abuse of blasphemy and registration laws and the treatment of minority religious groups as security threats.

"The world is sliding backwards," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, noting that "more than a billion people live under governments that systematically suppress religious freedom."

"It’s particularly urgent that we highlight religious freedom," she said, "because when we consider the global picture and ask whether religious freedom is expanding or shrinking, the answer is sobering."

A federal judge has granted the owners of a Colorado heating-and-cooling company a temporary injunction against the new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requirement that businesses cover emergency contraception in their insurance plans.

Parliamentarians in Iraq's Kurdish region are drafting a blasphemy law that, unlike those in other Muslim-majority nations, will protect Christianity as well as Islam from "insult."

Prompted by rioting after a controversial sermon by a Kurdish mullah in May, the bill would make acts of blasphemy –- broadly defined as offending God or the prophets, or deliberately damaging holy books or religious buildings –- against any religion punishable by up to 10 years in prison, according to Rudaw News. Any media organization found guilty of publishing or broadcasting blasphemous content would be closed down for a minimum of six months.

Opponents insist the bill, if passed, will unlawfully censor media in the Kurdistan region. Proponents deny that censorship would become a problem.

“It isn’t prohibiting any freedom. You’re free to say your opinion; you’re free to criticize mullahs, scholars, Islam, the history of Islam," Basher Hadad, head of the committee charged with drafting the bill, told Rudaw News. "What’s not OK and what’s not allowed is insulting Islam.”

Hadad says the law will protect Christians and other religious minorities in addition to Muslims. “The name of Islam is not mentioned in this law. What it does prohibit –- insulting God, the prophets, holy books –- is common to all religions. This law prohibits Muslims from insulting Christians, Yazidi or other religious minorities, too,” he said, according to Rudaw News.

CT has reported how "religicide" has caused Iraqi Christians to flee to Kurdistan, interviewed a missionary who moved to Kurdistan after spending 9/11 in a Taliban jail, and examined how Iraqi Christians were the church's center for a millennium.

Compass Direct News:

Pakistan’s rigid system of prohibiting Muslims from changing their religion status on their national ID cards nearly cost a Punjab politician his post –- even though he has always been a Christian.

Rana Asif Mahmood’s political opponents sought to disqualify him from the Punjab Provincial Assembly seat reserved for minorities in April, on the grounds that the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) identifies him as a Muslim.

Mahmood said that NADRA had mistakenly identified him as a Muslim because of his name and then refused to rectify the error. The mistake not only cost Mahmood a cabinet position, but also his part in proposing the provincial budget for 2012-13, he said.

The law establishing NADRA prohibits Muslims from changing the religion column on their Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC), though non-Muslims can easily obtain such changes –- especially if they are converting to Islam.

“The situation was revealed to me when my son applied for a CNIC a few months ago,” Mahmood said. “He was told that he could not put down Christianity as his religion because the records showed his father to be a Muslim.”

When he approached NADRA officials for corrections, Mahmood said, they told him that there was no provision for changing the religion entry. He said that his passport identified him as a Christian, and that twice he had his religion section corrected on his passport because of the NADRA error of listing him as a Muslim.

Mahmood’s political opponents filed a petition seeking his removal from one of the seats reserved for minorities based on the error. Opposition parties accepted Mahmood’s clarification only after he vehemently stated on the floor of the Punjab Assembly that he was born a Christian and appealed to them and the media not to indulge in propaganda against him that could incite Muslim extremists to kill him.

Story continues here.

A German appeals court has ruled that parents do not have the right to circumcise their sons for religious reasons because the parents' right to religious freedom does not justify the physical harm done to the human body.

The court, assessing a lawsuit brought against a Muslim doctor over a botched circumcision, said that circumcision "contravenes the interests of the child to decide later on his religious beliefs," as well as causes "serious and irreversible interference in the integrity of the human body." Despite the millions of Muslims and approximately 100,000 Jews that call Germany home, the court said religious freedom would not be impaired by its ruling because children could later decide on their own whether to be circumcised.

Germany's Jewish council condemned the decision as “an unprecedented and dramatic intrusion on the self-determination of religious communities.”

The ruling casts a legal cloud on doctors who perform infant circumcisions, but still gives male circumcision different standing in Germany than female circumcision because there is no law prohibiting it and the ruling isn't binding for other courts.

Prompted by a proposed ballot question in San Francisco last year, CT's David Neff has weighed in on criminalizing circumcision, arguing that America may have secularized the ancient Jewish rite but it is still inescapably religious.

WASHINGTON (RNS)

An appeal over Christmas sweets turned bitter on Monday (June 11) when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the so-called “Christian candy cane” case.

The case out of Texas has become a rallying point for conservative Christians concerned about free religious expression in public schools and students' ability to distribute religious literature.

The case, Morgan v. Swanson, kicked off nine years ago in the Plano Independent School District as principals prevented self-described evangelical students from distributing religious literature on school grounds.

In one instance, principal Lynn Swanson stopped third-grader Jonathan Morgan from distributing a Christian-themed bookmark at a winter break party. The boy wanted to hand out candy-cane shaped pens along with a card purporting to explain the holiday treat’s Christian roots.

The card read in part: “So, every time you see a candy cane, remember the message of the candy maker: Jesus is the Christ!”

In other instances, principal Jackie Bomchill prevented second-grader Stephanie Versher from passing out Passion play tickets and pencils with the message, “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so” on school grounds.

Last year, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the principals were within their rights in stopping the candy canes, but also found restrictions on student speech unconstitutional.

The principals were exempt under “qualified immunity,” which protects government officials from violating a law that is not “clearly established.” The Supreme Court's decision not to intervene means that ruling stands.

Hiram Sasser, who represented the families on behalf of the Texas-based Liberty Institute law firm, was disappointed in the latest decision.

“We were hoping to finally put this issue to rest: that government school officials should be held accountable when they violate the law and students’ First Amendment rights. No student should be subjected to religious discrimination by the government,” he said in a press release.

Dallas attorney Tom Brandt, who represented the two principals, said the case was never about First Amendment speech but rather protection for teachers. "Educators must be allowed to make decisions that are in the best interest of an entire school without fear of individual retribution when the law is unclear," he said.

While the educators' immunity question is settled, other parts of the case continue to work their way through the district and circuit court levels, and Sasser said there's still a possibility to win on students' rights.

“I’m concerned that some government school officials received the wrong message, which is that if they violate the law, no court is going to hold them accountable,” Sasser said in a telephone interview. “Hopefully the message is that from now on, government officials (teachers) will be held accountable.”

Chris Lisee - RNS

Religious freedom violations against Indonesian Christians are rising and on track to surpass last year’s increase.

Nearly two dozen churches have been forced to shut their doors this year, and violent attacks against Christians have increased since January, reports Compass Direct News. Most of the church closures occurred in Aceh Province, where local authorities have faced pressure from Islamist extremists.

In 2011, monitors tallied 64 known cases of religious freedom violations, up from 47 the year before. The Jakarta Christian Communication Forum already counted 40 reported incidents as of May, according to Compass.

The increase affects Indonesian Christians in the United States. In New Jersey, a pastor has drawn attention for harboring Indonesian refugees facing deportation in his church. In March, refugee Saul Timisela moved into a Sunday school classroom at the Reformed Church of Highland Park; within one month, two more men joined him.

Pastor Seth Kaper-Dale has pledged to help Timisela and nearly 80 other Indonesian Christians facing deportation, many of whom came to the U.S. in the 1990s on tourist visas to flee persecution in their homeland. Most were not aware of their time limits for applying for asylum; their visas expired, and they continued living in the U.S. illegally.

One of the refugees living in the church, Rovani Wangkoa, told the New York Daily News, “I’m scared to go to Indonesia.… Indonesia is no good for Christians.”

Kaper-Dale has been working with authorities to secure legal means for the refugees to stay. He told Religion News Service that he would continue to bring refugees into his church, despite the potential legal ramifications he could face, saying, “Our arms are open wide, as wide as the cross.”

Indonesia, long known for valuing religious pluralism and harmony, has made headlines in recent years for a Bogor mayor disobeying a Supreme Court order to reverse the forced closure of a church; a rare suicide bombing at a sister congregation of Rick Warren's megachurch; the banning of aid groups from hurricane-ravaged Aceh Jaya over charges of proselytism; and narrowly upholding its long-standing blasphemy law.

As Coptic Christians dodge blame this week for "betraying the revolution" after the first free presidential election in Egypt's history resulted in an unexpected runoff between the old Mubarak regime and the Muslim Brotherhood, CT offers an exclusive snapshot of new strategies Copts are testing to thrive under an Islamist government.

Are Christians fleeing Egypt? Some, yes. Nearly every church can name a family that has emigrated. Many more families desire to follow suit but cannot.

But the closer one looks, an irony emerges. Coptic leaders report that a significant number of Christians, especially in rural or poor communities, do fear the future. But many of the most ardently Christian—former Muslims who now follow Christ and have the most to lose under an Islamist government—are the most eager to stay. They hold to their love of country—and to their belief in God's promise in Isaiah 19: "Blessed be Egypt my people."

One case study is a Muslim-background believer turned human-rights activist who fancies himself the Christian version of Che Guevara. ... [He] sees the coming days as a blessing in disguise.

"I am glad we are moving into an Islamist era, because [Egyptians] are like Doubting Thomas; we don't believe until we see and touch," he said. "People believe [political] Islam is the best, but they need to be freed of this idea. Entering this era will be a chance to be freed from this illusion."

CT recently reported from Cairo on the host of new Christian movements that have sprung up since the revolution and their strategies to not merely survive but thrive in an increasingly Islamist Egypt.

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) is under fire once again for its treatment of applicants for religious refugee status.

Haixhin Zhang applied for refugee protection in 2008 after coming to Canada from China the year before on a traveler’s visa. He claimed he was first introduced to Christianity in China in 2005; he first joined a church while he was in Canada.

At Zhang's hearing, IRB adjudicator Leonard Favreau ruled Zhang joined a church in Canada to support a fraudulent refugee claim because Zhang only knew the names of two of Jesus’ apostles, two of the gospels, and one prayer—the Lord’s Prayer, which he recited incorrectly.

Federal judge Douglas Campbell recently ruled the IRB should abandon its policy of testing the religious knowledge of applicants like Zhang. Campbell called the policy “fundamentally flawed” and sent Zhang’s case back to the IRB to be reviewed by another adjudicator.

“First, religious knowledge cannot be equated to faith,” Campbell said at the hearing. “And second, the quality and quantity of religious knowledge necessary to prove faith is unverifiable.”
Campbell also pointed out the IRB’s questioning allows adjudicators to be their own experts, making the practice “highly subjective” and open to abuse.

This is far from the first time the IRB has been rebuked for its religious quizzes. Last September, the IRB was rebuked by the Federal Court of Canada after another adjudicator denied refugee status to a Catholic Chinese immigrant in part because the applicant did not know the name of Jesus’ grandmother and said the Communion elements were a representation of Jesus’ body (instead of the actual body). His case was also sent back for a hearing in front of another adjudicator.

Recently the Federal Court also twice chastised the IRB for its questioning of two separate refugee claimants who said their practice of Falun Gong would lead to persecution if they returned to China. Both cases were given new hearings.

Such cases have not been limited to Canada. Last year, Christianity Today reported a ruling from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that stated an immigration judge cannot quiz asylum seekers on religious doctrine to test the credibility of their faith. The case in question was a Chinese Christian who was denied asylum because he said Thanksgiving was a Christian holiday and “knew little about the difference between the Old and New Testaments.”

Less than three days after Pope Benedict XVI finished his visit to Mexico, the country’s Senate approved a constitutional reform guaranteeing the right to public religious events, provided they don’t involve electoral politics.

CT reported earlier that Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies had approved the amendment in December. Critics allege the measure could open the door to religion in public affairs and public schools; supporters argue it brings Mexico’s constitution into closer alignment with international treaties the government has signed.

The amendment had the support of both the governing National Action Party and the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party. It passed 72-35 in the Senate. Approval is still needed from at least 16 of Mexico’s 31 state legislatures for the amendment to take effect.

Update (Mar. 1): According to a Radio Free Asia report confirmed by ChinaAid, family members of imprisoned Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng once again were allowed to visit him in January at Shaya Prison, where he still is being held for "defending those oppressed by China’s atheistic government." This most recent visit confirms that Gao is still alive.

Since the family's first visit last year, U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) have begun a bipartisan effort to support Zhisheng's release and U.S. congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) personally wrote to Zhisheng in support.
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Lawyers for an Iranian pastor awaiting a final decision on his death sentence have not received communication from authorities that their client will be executed, despite reports that his death is imminent.

Rumors of an imminent execution of Yousef Nadarkhani were leaked this week after a source close to one of his lawyers contacted international media, informing them that a lower court had signed Nadarkhani’s execution papers and that his death sentence would be carried out soon, sources told Compass.

“The lawyer is waiting for confirmation, but he understood from a source that the execution was issued,” said Firouz Khandjani, a member of the council of the Church of Iran, Nadarkhani’s denomination. “Now we are trying to understand exactly what is happening. Because the information came from someone close to the lawyer, he took it seriously.”

Nadarkhani’s case had been sent to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei for a decision on his death sentence, but legally the lower court still has the authority to issue an execution order, Khandjani said. Khamenei may or may not make a decision, and if the court were to issue an execution order, Khameni would have the authority to block it, Khandjani said.

Though Nadarkhani’s lawyers have not received written confirmation of an execution order, Khandjani said he found it “worrying” that the government has repeatedly disregarded its own law and legal process in its treatment of Christians.

Though Christian Legal Society is still facing pressure from Vanderbilt University to comply with its nondiscrimination policy, the group isn’t leaving campus yet, said Kim Colby, senior counsel at CLS’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom.

CT reported in December that CLS and three other Christian groups were told they were in noncompliance with Vanderbilt’s discrimination policies, thus removing privileges given to registered student groups. All four groups require leaders to sign statements affirming Christian doctrines.

At least one Christian website had reported that despite revising its constitution to fit with Vanderbilt’s policy, CLS was still going to be “forced” off campus. However, some of the information in the article was misconstrued, Colby said. The resubmitted constitution had not been revised to fit with Vanderbilt’s policy; rather, it was an updated version of an outdated constitution, she said.

Carol Swain, professor of political science and law and advisor to Vanderbilt’s chapter of CLS, has said the group will leave campus at the end of the semester rather than change its constitution. But so far, neither the student groups nor the administration have changed their positions throughout the discussion progress, and no final decisions have been made, Colby said.

Last week, Vanderbilt Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos sent out an email to the campus, stating the administration will hold a town hall meeting on January 31 to explain the university’s stance on the policy.

Sudan and northern Nigeria saw the steepest increases in persecution against Christians in 2011, according to the annual World Watch List by Christian support organization Open Doors.

Sudan—where northern Christians experienced greater vulnerability after southern Sudan seceded in a July referendum, and where Christians were targeted amid isolated military conflicts—jumped 19 places last year from its 2010 ranking of 35th to 16th. In northern Nigeria, a rash of Islamist bombings, guerrilla-style attacks, and increased government restrictions on Christians contributed to the region leaping from 23rd to 13th place.

As it has the previous nine years, North Korea topped the list as the country where Christians are most persecuted. Egypt landed at 15th in the 2012 list after being ranked 19th last January, before political chaos loosened the grip on Islamic extremists. Ethiopia went from 43rd to 38th place, and Indonesia from 48th to 43rd place. Most of the countries on the list have an Islamic majority—38 out of 50, including nine of the top 10.

“As the 2012 World Watch List reflects, the persecution of Christians in these Muslim countries continues to increase,” said Carl Moeller, president and CEO of Open Doors USA. “While many thought the Arab Spring would bring increased freedom, including religious freedom for minorities, that certainly has not been the case so far.”

China moved from 20th to 21st on the list, “mainly due to other countries comparatively getting worse,” though it still has the world’s largest persecuted church of 80 million, the report notes. That China dropped out of the top 20 this year “is due in large part to house church pastors knowing how to play ‘cat and mouse’ with the government,” the report states—that is, knowing how not to attract the attention of authorities, such as not putting up church name signs, limiting worship attendance to no more than 200, and not singing too loudly.

A new addition to the list is Kazakhstan at 45th place; Colombia returned to the list at 47th after being absent in the 2011 and 2010 editions.

Kazakhstan moved onto the list due to the passage of “an invasive and restrictive religion law” requiring the re-registration of all religious communities, the report notes. The law will make youth work virtually illegal and put all religious acts under government scrutiny.

Colombia had been included on the World Watch List annually before 2010, with left-wing insurgencies as well as paramilitary groups targeting Christian pastors. During the reporting period, these movements “have branched into narco-trafficking, and Christian leaders that will not cooperate in the drug trade are targeted for assassination,” the report notes. “Five were killed this year, and it is thought the number could be as high as 20.”

Read the full story here.

CT has previously reported on persecution in China, Sudan, Nigeria, North Korea, and Kazakhstan.

This New Year's holiday, remember the Church of Egypt. The 'Two Saints' church bombing took the lives of 23 people in total.

Correspondent Jayson Casper for the Cairo-based Arab-West report observes:

It has been a difficult spell for Egypt as a whole, and for its Christians in particular. This year opened with a revolution holding great promise of Muslim-Christian unity, but has been largely displaced with liberal-Islamist political competition and attacks on Copts in Atfih, Imbabah, Maspero, and elsewhere. The nation is trembling, but some hopeful Copts see connections, in which God intervenes to avenge his children.

Click here for his full report.

Christmas Day was marred for Nigerian Christians after a series of church bombings killed at least 35 and wounded dozens more. In a suburb of Nigeria's capital, Abuja, more than 30 worshipers died at St. Theresa Catholic Church as they left Christmas mass.

Analysts largely agree that the bombings were an attempt by Boko Haram, a radical Islamist group in northern Nigeria, to stoke simmering tensions between Muslims and Christians, which evenly divide Africa's most populous nation of 160 million. Last year, dozens died in Christmas Eve bombings around Jos.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) warned that such attacks might provoke a "religious war."

"Enough is enough," said CAN secretary general Saidu Dogo. "We shall henceforth in the midst of these provocations and wanton destruction of innocent lives and property be compelled to make our own efforts and arrangements to protect the lives of innocent Christians and peace-loving citizens of this country."

CT reported on more Nigerian Christians abandoning the practice of "turning the other cheek" earlier this December, and has extensively covered Nigeria's long-standing religious conflict.

(Update: The White House has condemned Nadarkhani's conviction. Full text at bottom.)

Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani faces imminent execution after refusing to recant his Christian faith in court today for the fourth time this week. Nadarkhani is the first person to be found guilty of apostasy in Iran since 1990. Religious freedom groups are lobbying hard for his sentence to be dropped.

Nadarkhani, who was arrested in October 2009 related to his advocacy for greater freedoms in the religious instruction of children, was found guilty of apostasy and evangelizing Muslims in September 2010 by a court in Rasht. CT has noted that an appeal to the Iranian Supreme Court resulted in a partial retraction of the sentence, upholding the death sentence but allowing an annulment if Nadarkhani recanted. The Supreme Court also ordered the Rasht court to re-examine Nadarkhani’s faith practices before his conversion to Christianity.

After an investigation, the Rasht court determined this week that Nadarkhani had not been a practicing Muslim adult before his conversion. However, it upheld the apostasy sentence because of Nadarkhani’s Muslim ancestry.

In June, CT reported how Iran’s strategy of increasing persecution against Christian is likely backfiring.

For a more detailed explanation of the court proceedings, see this post at the New Statesman.

Below is the full text of the White House's condemnation of Nadarkhani's conviction:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 29, 2011

Statement by the Press Secretary on Conviction of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani

The United States condemns the conviction of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani. Pastor Nadarkhani has done nothing more than maintain his devout faith, which is a universal right for all people. That the Iranian authorities would try to force him to renounce that faith violates the religious values they claim to defend, crosses all bounds of decency, and breaches Iran’s own international obligations. A decision to impose the death penalty would further demonstrate the Iranian authorities' utter disregard for religious freedom, and highlight Iran's continuing violation of the universal rights of its citizens. We call upon the Iranian authorities to release Pastor Nadarkhani, and demonstrate a commitment to basic, universal human rights, including freedom of religion.

A third of the world -- about 2.2 billion people -- live in nations where restrictions on religion have substantially increased, according to a new report.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life study, released Tuesday, also shows intolerant countries growing more hostile to religious freedom, and tolerant ones growing more accommodating.

"There seems to be somewhat of a polarization," particularly in countries with constitutional prohibitions against blasphemy, said Brian Grim, the primary researcher of the report. "When you have one set of restrictions in place then it's easier to add on."

Among those nations with the greatest increases in government religious restrictions, ranked from most to least populous, were: Egypt, France, Algeria, Uganda and Malaysia.

Among those nations where government restrictions declined, ranked from most to least populous, were: Greece, Togo, Nicaragua, Republic of Macedonia and Guinea-Bissau.

The report, culling data from 198 countries and territories from 2006 through 2009, also measured social hostility toward religious groups. North Korea, one of the most repressive regimes, could not be included for lack of reliable data.

Chinese authorities sentenced Shi Enhao, deputy chairman of the Chinese House Church Alliance and underground pastor, to two years in a labor camp early this week. Charges of holding “illegal meetings and illegal organizing of venues for religious meetings” were levied without trial, and Shi was denied access to a lawyer.

Government pressure on Shi to dissociate himself from the house church movement began in May, shortly after 19 house church leaders connected with Shi's organization submitted a petition to China’s National People’s Congress requesting an end to the persecution of Shouwang Church and an amendment to religious freedom legislation. Shi was arrested May 31 by police in the Jiangsu province and served a 12-day administrative detention sentence.

During this time, his home was raided by Suqian city police, who removed papers and books. On June 12, just after police were due to release Shi from his administrative sentence, he was reported missing again and on June 21 authorities confirmed Shi had been detained indefinitely under suspicion of “using superstition to undermine national law enforcement,” a criminal offense. 

Shi’s two-year labor camp sentence is part of the Chinese criminal justice program, which in many areas still operates under the Communist-era mantra laogai, or “reform through labor.” Such punishment is reserved for those guilty of criminal charges and is frequently administered by police without trial. 

News of Shi's sentencing arrives as the Domestic Security Protection Department of China ordered Pastor Shi’s church to stop its underground meetings and confiscated church property, including a significant portion of the organization’s operating budget.

Meanwhile, members of the Shouwang Church continue to gather on Sundays in the Zhongguancun district of Beijing—an insider said meetings will continue until December—even as authorities make more arrests and increase crackdowns on house churches across the nation. Sunday marked the 16th week worshipers at Shouwang have gathered outdoors in protest of an April ban on renting indoor space.  

(Update: Compass Direct News has posted a fuller account and analysis of the letter.)

On Sunday, the leader of Algeria's network of Protestant churches was ordered by local authorities (full text after the jump) to "close down throughout the country all the Christian worship places, which are not designated for religious purposes." The order implements a 2006 law restricting non-Muslim worship that has been irregularly enforced yet long given Algerian Protestants (who number between 10,000 and 100,000) great concern.

More than half of the North African nation's then-50 Protestant churches closed in 2008 following a wave of similar orders from local authorities. Other churches remained open in protest.

The 2006 law, Ordinance 06-03, requires that churches register in order to legally operate, yet Protestant leaders have tried for years to have their church applications approved by the government without success. The Algerian government restricts the worship of Muslims also, given fears of radicalism which fueled waves of domestic terrorism in the 1990s.

Full text of the police letter, sent to CT by an Algerian church leader, is after the jump:

One of the largest unregistered Protestant churches in Beijing plans to risk arrest by worshipping in the open air this Sunday (April 10) after eviction from the restaurant where they have met for the past year.

The owner of the Old Story Club restaurant issued repeated requests for the Shouwang Church to find another worship venue, and authorities have pressured other prospective landlords to close their facilities to the 1,000-member congregation, sources said. Unwilling to subject themselves to the controls and restrictions of the official Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), the congregation has held three services each Sunday in the restaurant for more than a year.

Church members have said they are not opposed to the government and are not politically active, but they fear authorities could find their open-air worship threatening.

“Normal” (state-sanctioned) religious assembly outdoors is legal in China, and even unregistered church activity is usually tolerated if no more than 50 people gather, especially if the people are related and can cite the gathering as a family get-together, said a source in China who requested anonymity. Although the congregation technically risks arrest as an unregistered church, the primary danger is being viewed as politically active, the source said.

“For a larger group of Christians to meet in any ‘unregistered’ location led by an ‘unregistered’ leader is illegal,” he said. “The sensitivity of meeting in a park is not being illegal, but being so highly visible. Being ‘visible’ ends up giving an impression of being a political ‘protest.’”

The congregation believes China’s Department of Religious Affairs has overstepped its jurisdiction in issuing regulations limiting unregistered church activity, according to a statement church leaders issued this week.

“Out of respect for both the Chinese Constitution [whose Article 36 stipulates freedom of worship] and Christian conscience, we cannot actively endorse and submit to the regulations which bid us to cease all Sunday worship activities outside of [the] ‘Three-Self Patriotic Movement’ – the only state-sanctioned church,” according to the statement. “Of course, we still must follow the teachings of the Bible, which is for everyone to submit to and respect the governing authorities. We are willing to submit to the regulations with passivity and all the while shoulder all the consequences which . . . continuing to worship outside of what is sanctioned by these regulations will bring us.”

The church decided to resort to open-air worship after a prospective landlord backed out of a contractual agreement to allow the congregation to meet at the Xihua Business Hotel, the church said in its statement.

“They had signed another rental contract with another property facility and announced during the March 22 service that they were to move in two weeks,” the source said. “In spite of the fact that they had signed a formal contract, the new landlord suddenly called them on March 22 and refused to let them use the facility.”

Two senior judges have banned a Christian couple from any further foster care because they oppose homosexuality, a stance that the judges said has no place in the laws of a "largely secular" Britain.

Owen and Eunice Johns, of Derby, England, have already fostered 15 children, but the High Court in London ruled that they can no longer continue the practice because their anti-gay views are legally wrong.

In their decision delivered Monday (Feb. 28), Lord Justice James Lawrence Munby and Justice Jack Beeston said that under 21st-century British law, the rights of homosexuals "should take precedence" over the rights of religious faiths, including Christians.

The two judges decreed that Britain had evolved into a "largely secular," multicultural society whose laws "do not include Christianity."

Eunice Johns, a retired nurse, called it "a sad day for Christianity."

The judges said that "although historically this country is part of the Christian West, and although it has an established church ... which is Christian, there has been enormous changes to the social and religious life of our country over the last century."

The Pentecostal couple had fostered children since 1992 until taking a break. When they reapplied in 2007 to resume fostering, they were told that their attitudes toward gays violated Britain's new sexual equality laws.

Eunice Johns argued that "all we were not willing to do was to tell a small child that the practice of homosexuality was a good thing."

Gay-rights campaigners applauded the court's decision to put "21st-century decency above 19th-century prejudice."

The leaders of Egypt’s Christian minority increasingly are joining the calls for historic change and reform as protests in Cairo and other major cities this week demand the immediate resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

Until recently, many Christian leaders were guarded in their comments if not supportive of Mubarak. But in the past three days with Internet and mobile phone service restored, more are speaking out against injustice in Egypt and demanding political reform, though few are openly calling for Mubarak to resign right away.

Today by email, one prominent Protestant pastor said to his overseas supporters, “We stand united with our courageous young people who broke the barrier of fear and started to demand their basic human rights for a dignified life, freedom and social justice.”

Continued...

Transcripts of an interview with Gao Zhisheng, the Chinese Christian lawyer who has been missing since April 2010, have recently been released by the Associated Press. The summary story was reported in the Washington Post, among other outlets, earlier this week. The story begins:

The police stripped Gao Zhisheng bare and pummeled him with handguns in holsters. For two days and nights, they took turns beating him and did things he refused to describe. When all three officers tired, they bound his arms and legs with plastic bags and threw him to the floor until they caught their breath to resume the abuse.

"That degree of cruelty, there's no way to recount it," the civil rights lawyer said, his normally commanding voice quavering. "For 48 hours my life hung by a thread."

Gao has been described by the New York Times as "one of China’s most high-profile human rights lawyers." He has been disbarred, arrested and tortured by the Chinese secret police for speaking out about human rights abuses in China.

He has defended fellow activists, and religious minorities like Falun Gong and Chinese underground Christians. In his 2006 memoir A China More Just, he described his work and alluded to his Christian faith. He first disappeared in February 2009, resurfaced in March 2010, and has been missing again since April 21, 2010. The AP interview was conducted just before his last disappearance. According the AP story, Gao asked that "his account not be made public unless he went missing again or made it to 'someplace safe' like the United States or Europe."

Christianity Today originally told of his plight here in an extended story by Elissa Cooper.

The governor of Pakistan's largest province was assassinated Tuesday following his support of a pardon for a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy. Media reports are describing his death as the highest-profile killing of a Pakistani leader since Benazir Bhutto was killed three years ago.

One of the governor's security guards told police he was angered by Salman Taseer's support of the woman, according to the Washington Post.

In November Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old Christian mother of five, became the first woman ever sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy law. The police complaint against her said she called the Qur'an "fake," and she made comments about one of Muhammad’s wives and his declining health late in life. Taseer had said that Pakistan's president would pardon her.

"I was under huge pressure sure 2 cow down b4 rightest pressure on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I'm the last man standing," Taseer wrote on Twitter on December 31.

The Associated Press reports that an elite force police commando said he was proud to have killed a blasphemer.

The killing of Punjab province Governor Salman Taseer was the most high-profile assassination of a political figure in Pakistan since former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, and it rattled a country already dealing with crises ranging from a potential collapse of the government to a virulent Islamist insurgency.

The killing could also add to concerns about inroads by Islamist extremists and fundamentalists into Pakistan's security establishment and represented another blow to the country's Pakistan's embattled secular movement.

...Punjab is a major base and recruiting ground for Pakistan's powerful military and security establishment, which many fear is coming under the increasing influence of religious fundamentalists as Islamist movements have spread in Pakistan.

The New York Times reports on how thousands of Pakistanis rallied December 31 in support of the country’s blasphemy law, which rights groups say has been used to persecute minorities, especially Christians.

The human rights commission has documented scores of cases in which men have been harassed for being Christian or for being members of the Ahmadi sect, a minority group within Islam, and then accused of blasphemy. The mere fact of being a Christian or an Ahmadi in Pakistan makes a person vulnerable to prosecution, the commission says. Often the mere accusation of blasphemy has led to murders, lynchings and false arrests.

Frankfurt, Germany -- After police barged into the Busekros family home in Bavaria, the family's 15-year-old daughter, Melissa, was placed in a psychiatric facility, and later long-term foster care.

The police, the girl said, told her she had been brainwashed by her conservative evangelical parents, who home-schooled her. "They never even tested me to know for sure that I had a mental problem," said Busekros, now 19.

The moment Busekros turned 16 and could legally choose where she would live, she slipped through a window at her foster home and returned to her parents.

Earlier this year, Elke Schupp missed a court date to answer charges of home-schooling her two young boys. Later, when a police car with lights flashing pulled up behind her on a German highway, Schupp said, she panicked and slowed down long enough to send her boys running off
into a forest.

When police caught up with them, she said, she lost custody for good.

"I told them I wouldn't home-school again," said Schupp, a nonreligious woman who said she simply wanted to nurture her children on her own, without state interference, "but they don't believe me."

In Germany, home-schooling is a crime so serious that families who ignore the law have been fined into poverty, and parents have served jail time. Some families have staged stand-offs against the police, or hid their children with other families.

The home-schooling movement is a mix of religious conservatives and nonreligious families -- some call themselves "un-schoolers" -- who embrace a barefoot back-to-nature lifestyle that shuns traditional schooling.

Both want the practice legalized, but some religious families worry the movement's anti-establishment wing gives home-schooling a bad name and harms their bid for acceptance.

"If the majority of Germans see these alternative home-schooling families, they wouldn't accept home-schooling," said Uwe Romeike, a conservative Christian who, with his wife, Hannelore, home-schools his five children. "People would think that they are weird, or at least that they look weird."

Earlier this year, the Romeike family was granted political asylum in the U.S. when a federal judge in Tennessee decided that the family was persecuted by the German government for teaching their children at home.

In many ways, the Romeikes fit the standard profile of German home-schoolers: Conservative, evangelical Christian, and opposed to sex education, evolution and fairy tales, which in Germany are often built around witchcraft or paganism.

Germany is one of just a handful of nations that bans home-schooling. While home-schoolers argue about whether the constitution expressly forbids it, a Hitler-era law gave states the right to take custody of children who don't attend school.

The North Korean government says they will free a Christian activist they sent to prison in April—as long as former President Jimmy Carter is the one who comes to get him.

CNN reported that Carter is gearing up for a trip to North Korea to free Christian activist and American citizen Aijalon Mahli Gomes. North Korean officials say they will release Gomes to Carter.

Gomes received an 8-year "hard labor" sentence in April after crossing the border into North Korea from China three months earlier. Observers at the time said that North Korea wanted to use Gomes as bargaining leverage in the ongoing wrangle with the U.S. over their nuclear program. Officially, the Obama administration will only engage with North Korea if they come back to the table in the ongoing six-party talks over their nuclear program.

The White House characterizes Carter’s trip as “a private humanitarian effort” by a private citizen. Former President Bill Clinton undertook a similar effort to secure the freedom of two journalists who faced a hard labor sentence when they crossed over into North Korea last year.

Gomes is the fourth American in the last year to get caught crossing China’s border into North Korea the New York Daily News reported. CT previously reported on Robert Park, a 28-year-old Korean-American who visited the closed communist state over Christmas. While teaching English in South Korea, Gomes reportedly attended the same church as Park, Every Nation Church of Korea in Seoul.

Carter is expected to leave today and return to the U.S. with Gomes by Friday.

Update: According to current reports, President Carter is in North Korea, but North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is not. Speculation has it that Kim is taking his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-eun, to China to introduce him to the leaders of North Korea's strongest ally. There is no indication that Carter and Kim met before Kim left.

It's been a bad week for Christian aid groups in two of the world’s most challenging nations.

In Afghanistan, ten workers for the International Assistance Mission (IAM) were found shot in the northeastern region of Badakhshan. Beyond veteran ophthalmologist and team leader Tom Little, whose wife recently wrote for CT on the Christian call to suffering in mission, the now-identified dead include Glenn D. Lapp, who worked with the Mennonite Central Committee, and 32-year-old Cheryl Beckett, a pastor’s daughter from Tennessee and a graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University. Out of the 1,500 aid groups registered in Afghanistan, 17 aid workers have been murdered and 19 abducted this year.

Questions are flying about the circumstances of the murders. The Taliban have claimed responsibility, saying they killed the team because they were Christian missionaries. IAM denied the allegations, insisting that its workers do not proselytize and carried no Bibles. Local police suspect bandits. Only one member of the ambushed party survived—the driver says the attackers spared him because he insisted he was a Muslim and quoted passages from the Qur’an. However, there were two other Muslims with the party, and the driver remains in Afghan custody for unclear reasons. (Another Afghan member of the team traveled home separately and was unharmed.)

Meanwhile, the head of IAM says he expressed concern to the team leader over the size of the group and the number of foreigners in the party. He also pledged that IAM, active in Afghanistan since 1966, would continue its work despite the losses.

In Somalia, an Islamic militant group has ordered three Christian groups—World Vision, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, and Diakonia—to leave the country, claiming they are “missionaries under the guise of humanitarian work.” Al-Shabaab recently claimed responsibility for attacks in the capital city of Uganda which injured at least five American missionaries.

World Vision noted that their Somali offices are staffed by nationals who are mostly Muslim.

Update (Apr. 2, 2013): Indonesia's religious affairs minister has blamed Christians for bringing discrimination upon themselves, saying they have politicized a problem that is primarily administrative, not religious, in nature.

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Update (Mar. 21, 2013): A Protestant church near Jakarta was bulldozed this week after a 13-year struggle to obtain a permit. Members of the Batak Protestant Church (HKBP) in Setu, Bekasi, plan to file suit.

The Setara Institute expects further trouble, according to Agence France-Press, because only 10 of Bekasi's 39 HKBP congregations have permits for their buildings.

CT noted last September when a church in Bogor drew international attention for a similar struggle over its own building. The Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church (GKI Yasmin) was ordered to relocate, despite a Supreme Court ruling in its favor.

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Radical Muslim groups in Bekasi on the Indonesian island of Java have made the latest move in Indonesia’s ongoing religious tensions, reports Compass Direct News.

Leaders from nine groups announced on June 27 that the hard-line groups had agreed at a meeting of the Bekasi Islamic Congress to unite the city’s Islamic groups with a youth army and a joint mission center to halt what they see as a growing “Christianization” of the Jakarta suburb.

“We are planning to station members [of the group] in every mosque in the city,” said Tunggal Sawabi of the Bekasi branch of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) and one of the “field commanders” of the new movement, according to the Jakarta Post.

Christianity has been making significant gains in Indonesia, according to Time magazine, which reports that the number of evangelical Churches in communities like Temanggung in Central Java have gone from zero in the 1960s to more than 40 today. While Indonesia’s government and most of the nation’s Muslims are more moderate, more radical groups like the nine in Bekasi have become increasingly agitated.

According to the Post, Bekasi’s radical Muslim leaders say that area Christians have broken an unwritten rule against attempting to convert people who have already chosen a religion.

"If they refuse to stop what they're doing, we're ready to fight,” said Murhali Barda of the Islamic Defenders Front, according to the Associated Press.

A Christian street preacher in Britain will stand trial for telling a passerby -- in earshot of a policewoman -- that God views homosexuality as a sin.

Police arrested Dale McAlpine, a 42-year-old Baptist, under Britain's Public Order Act 1986, which forbids "using threatening, abusive or insulting words ... tending to and causing harassment, alarm or distress."

McAlpine told The Daily Telegraph newspaper that he was arrested after a part-time police officer said she heard him reciting a list of "sins" against God, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same-sex relationships.

The preacher denied mentioning homosexuality, but he did concede he had told a passing shopper that it was a sin in the eyes of God.

At a magistrates court hearing in Workington, England, on Friday, McAlpine pleaded not guilty to the public order offense charge but was arraigned for trial at an unspecified date.

"My freedom was taken away on the hearsay evidence of someone who disliked what I said, and I was charged under a law that doesn't apply," he said.

The newspaper report said McAlpine was fingerprinted, given a DNA swab and retina scan, and was locked in a police cell for seven hours on April 20.

"I am not homophobic," he insisted, "but sometimes I do say that the Bible says homosexuality is a crime against the Creator."

McAlpine's arrest comes days after a top British judge was criticized for ruling that Christian beliefs are not entitled to special protection under the laws of the nation.

Gao Zhisheng, the prominent Christian human rights lawyer abducted in 2009 who reappeared in late March after renouncing his activism, has disappeared again as of April 20.

CT covered the significance of Zhisheng's case here.

Religious freedom observers held their breadth in February when activists successfully got Indonesia to reconsider its blasphemy law. But on Monday the nation's top court voted 8-1 that the 1965 law, which restricts citizens to observing one of only six religions and prohibits some interpretations of those religions, is indeed constitutional amid concerns of "social conflicts and animosity".

Indonesia has long been considered a model of religious pluralism, but has started to manifest religious tensions similar to its neighbor Malaysia. However, reports indicate that Christianity is growing in the world's largest Muslim nation, though even Muslim human rights watchdogs say Christians are most affected by religious freedom violations encouraged by laws such as the still-in-place blasphemy law.

British newspapers are reporting "an unprecedented showdown" between the Church of England and the nation's second-highest court over whether U.K. Christians are discriminated against in the workplace for their beliefs regarding homosexuality, among other issues.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, and other bishops have demanded that certain Court of Appeals judges stand down from future religious discrimination cases because their recent rulings demonstrate a lack of understanding of Christian beliefs. The Anglican leaders want such appeals to be judged instead by a panel of judges with expertise on religious issues.

The next hearing will be this Thursday, when Christian relationship counselor Gary McFarlane will appeal his firing for refusing sex therapy to homosexual couples. Last week, Christian nurse Shirley Chaplin lost her appeal to wear a crucifix around her neck in hospital wards.

The Court of Appeals decided last December that under existing equality laws, the rights of homosexuals take precedence over the rights of Christians to express their faith. The ruling came during the failed appeal of Christian registrar Lillian Ladele over her firing for refusing to conduct civil partnership ceremonies.

In a March 28 letter, Lord Carey and five current and former Anglican bishops said that "the religious rights of the Christian community are being treated with disrespect." Current Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams countered soon after, saying that "we need to keep our own fears in perspective" compared to the persecution experienced by Christians in other nations. The BBC examined the issue Easter Sunday in a special report.

Even human rights activists and Muslims see a problem.

It hasn't been all bad news for U.K. Christians lately. Church leaders preserved exemptions for religious groups to discriminate when hiring; new regulations will allow Christian pharmacists to refrain from dispensing medicine against their conscience; and a Catholic adoption agency will be allowed to exclude gay couples from adoptions, though most of its peers were forced to close.

But with discrimination claims up nearly 25 percent and 60 percent of surveyed General Synod members agreeing there is discrimination against Christians, Thursday's ruling could generate some headlines indeed.

An American has been sentenced to eight years of hard labor and fined $700,000 for entering North Korea.

Reports suggest that Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, who had taught English in South Korea, was inspired by Robert Park, a Christian who walked into North Korea from China on Christmas day to "proclaim Christ's love and forgiveness" and call for leader Kim Jong Il to step down. Park was released in February without charge. The Associated Press reports that Gomes attended rallies in Seoul in support of Park, and Gomes was arrested one month after Park entered North Korea.

Former colleagues told the AFP that Gomeswas a deeply religious person. "He acted like an evangelist. He took the trouble to commute to Seoul to participate in Wednesday prayer sessions at a foreigners' church there," a teacher said. Senator John Kerry has called for his release, the Boston Globe reports.

Professor Sung-Yoon Lee, a North Korean expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said he viewed the huge fine for Gomes as a “signal that North Korea is willing to negotiate and get some money for releasing Mr. Gomes.’’

“A lot of North Korea watchers may criticize this foolhardy, risky move by Park and Gomes because it raises thorny issues of having to pay ransom or make some kind of concession,’’ Lee said.

“But people like Gomes and Park embody a powerful human presence — the willingness to take a great risk and sacrifice themselves. . . . I think this kind of daring move will come to be viewed as, if not heroic, then certainly courageous in the long run,’’ Lee added.

Gao Zhisheng is back in the news. Earlier this week, the Associated Press spoke with Gao in Beijing. He said he was going to abandon his campaign for better human rights inside China, hoping to be reunited with his wife and children, now in the US.

The AP report notes:

...Gao said the ordeal had taken a toll on him and his wife and two children, who secretly fled China for the United States early last year. "I don't have the capacity to persevere. On the one hand, it's my past experiences. It's also that these experiences greatly hurt my loved ones. This ultimate choice of mine, after a process of deep and careful thought, is to seek the goal of peace and calm," said Mr Gao. He appeared close to tears when he discussed his family, especially when he described seeing their shoes when he returned home for the first time on Tuesday.

Gao, who became a baptized member of a house church in China in 2005, wrote a stunning narrative of his career at a human rights attorney inside China. The book, "A China More Just: My Fight as a Rights Lawyer in the World's Largest Communist State," was published in 2007. The repressive government in China used this book and his many other public statements about grave injustice inside China as the pretext to his harassment, arrest and torture and 24/7 surveillance of his wife and two children. The evangelical agency, China Aid, was at the forefront of efforts to pressure China's rulers to account for their early 2009 abduction of Gao. China Aid president Bob Fu notes this week:

While international supporters have expressed concern in seeing such a strong figure agree to back down from his position, ChinaAid President Bob Fu says Gao's decision is understandable and one of strength. "Gao Zhisheng is a man of integrity and heart. Facing such enormous pressure and knowing that his family needs him, he has chosen to fulfill his duty as a father to his children, and husband to his wife. I understand that decision. He has faced a long and painful separation, and it is a tragedy that he still cannot see his family." With regard to Gao's comments during the meeting with AP reporters, Mr. Fu acknowledges Gao's words are actually an encouragement to his supporters and fellow Chinese lawyers. "Gao Zhisheng is a man of faith. In his interview, he spoke of others who willing to fight for truth and justice regardless of his personal fate. His testimony is an encouragement to those who respect and admire his courageous work." Mr. Fu spoke with Gao Zhisheng personally over the phone the morning of April 6.

Less than two weeks after an attack in Nigeria that killed 500 Christians, Muslim Fulani herdsmen today unleashed more horrific violence on two Christian villages in Plateau state, killing 13 persons, including a pregnant woman and children.

In attacks presumably over disputed property but with a level of violence characteristic of jihadist method and motive, men in military camouflage and others in customary clothing also burned 20 houses in Byei and Baten villages, in the Riyom Local Government Area of the state, about 45 kilometers (29 miles) from the state capital, Jos.

Christians in neighboring villages are living in fear of possible attacks by the herdsmen, who have not been deterred by the joint military and police security team enforcing curfew in the state. The ethnic Berom Christians, who live as farmers, have long faced off with Fulani nomads who graze their cattle on the Beroms’ land.

The slaughter comes after a similar attack on March 7 on Dogo Nahawa, Zot and Rastat, three villages in Jos South and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas where hundreds of villagers were struck with machetes and burned to death.

“The assailants armed with dangerous weapons attacked the two communities simultaneously at about 1 a.m. on Wednesday, March 17,” Brig. Gen. Donald Oji said in a press statement, adding that timely deployment of troops averted further carnage. “Seven of the assailants have been arrested, while troops are still on the trail of more of them. Items recovered from the assailants include three locally made short guns with cartridges, bow and arrows, machetes, knives and cutlasses.”

State Gov. Jonah Jang condemned the killings, alleging that some unnamed persons were fueling misunderstanding among communities in conflict. Because the style of killing is typical of jihadist fundamentalists, Christian leaders suspect Islamic extremists are encouraging the attacks, throwing religious gas on low-burning land and ethnic conflicts.

Gao Zhisheng, the Christian human rights activists, has gone missing since February 4 of last year. CT reported on his story in detail here. China has refused to let anyone make contact with him, so the fear has been that he has been killed--a threat prison officials made during his last imprisonment if he revealed how they had tortured him.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi's comments on Gao, though rare, were opaque at best.

Now, the BBC reports that Gao's brother in China says he spoke by phone with his brother on Feb. 28 or March 1. Read the BBC story for a complete update.

"Neighbors," shot on location in Jos, Nigeria, examines what happens when segments of a community oppose one another in a standoff that appears to have no solution. This is a story not only of Jos, but of places throughout the world where historical differences of tribe, race, and religion lead to violent conflicts.

Related Elsewhere:
Previous Christianity Today coverage of the January Jos riots includes:

• More Human Smoke Rises in Jos | This week's deadly riots struck home for the academic dean of ECWA Theological Seminary. By Sunday B. Agang (January 21, 2010)
• The Truth About the Religious Violence in Jos, Nigeria | It's not easy to state who started it or how many died. But the horror for those affected is clear. By Craig S. Keener (January 21, 2010)
• 'In Jos We Are Coming Face to Face in Confrontation with Satan' | The Anglican Archbishop of Jos speaks out on last week's deadly attacks and the media coverage that followed. By Benjamin A. Kwashi (January 26, 2010)

Previous Christianity Today coverage of the 2008 Jos riots includes:

• Fault Line of Faith | Six pastors killed, 40 churches razed in Jos's most recent violence (Jan. 15, 2009)
• Diagnosing Jos | Political problems don't always have political solutions. (December 23, 2008)
• Violence Smothers Jos in Smoke | Peace eludes us. (December 3, 2008)

Coverage of earlier violence includes:

• Mutual Mayhem | A plea for peace and truth in the madness of Nigeria. (Nov. 3, 2004)
• Religious Riots in Nigeria Leave Hundreds Dead | Leaders condemn the use of religion as a tool for violence. (Oct. 2, 2001)
• Nigeria On the Brink of Religious War | Northern states adopt Islamic law, increasing Christian-Muslim tensions. (Dec. 16, 1999)

Nearly one year ago in China, security officials took Gao Zhisheng, one of the nation's most prominent human rights lawyers and an active church leader, into custody. For months, his family and supporters have been demanding that government officials disclose his whereabouts.

But now, there are credible reports that Gao is "missing" and the government pleads ignorance about where he might be. As Christians, of course, prayer is always a good idea. But consider signing an online petition as 124,313 others have done: Click here for the petition details. The petition demands that the government of China account for Gao's treatment and release him immediately.

(Photo: Gao shows injuries from a police beating in 2006.)

China Aid has posted this update:

Since mid-December, 2009, ominous rumors have circulated about Gao Zhisheng, hinting that he has died after brutal torture in prison. However, no reports have been confirmed, and the Chinese government continues to refuse comment on his condition and whereabouts. A friend of ChinaAid in New York recently notified us about a serious development with Gao's daughter, Gege. Gege had been reportedly “pale and tired-looking” for months, fearing her father would be killed in prison. After hearing a rumor of Gao’s death just before Christmas, Gege became so emotionally distraught, she was forced to be hospitalized. She remains fragile and under medical care in a New York hospital. On Thursday, January 14th, Gao's brother Zhiyi said he had gone to Beijing searching out the policeman who originally detained Gao Zhisheng back in February, 2009.

Why are there fewer refugees settling in Sacramento County? The Bee has an answer:

Religious persecution of Christian evangelicals – Sacramento's largest refugee group – has almost disappeared since the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union in 1989-91, experts say.

Actually, what the expert (a singular Slavic radio show host) said was that religious freedom has improved in some parts of the former Soviet Union, which was a major source of refugees for the Sacramento area in the late 20th century.

"Ukraine now has as much freedom of expression as the U.S.," Michael Lokteff told the paper. "But in Central Asian republics and parts of Russia, there's still some persecution."

To extrapolate that and say that the era of Christian persecution is over is absurd in the extreme.

If you're really wondering what's happening with changes in refugee settlement and ministry to refugees, we've got you covered.

And by the way, according to our July issue article on refugee settlement, 2009 is set to see the highest number of refugee arrivals since 2001.

A mob in Pakistan went on a murderous rampage after a rumors spread that the Qur'an had been desecrated.

That was late last week. And again today.

Residents of Sheikhupura “attacked a factory and allegedly resorted to firing when words spread that one of its employees tore up a calendar inscribed with verses from the Quran,” Press Trust of India reported today. (PTI says the fighting may have actually been sparked by a salary dispute.)

The incident comes as international attention continues to focus on weekend violence that left between 7 and 14 Christians dead, again the result of a violent mob outraged at rumors of Qur'an desecration.

Officials today said police have questioned over 200 people over the Gojra violence. Police have arrested about 100 people so far, including members of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, a banned Sunni militant group. and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al Qaeda-affiliated group that broke away from Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan.

There seems to be a growing consensus among observers that the attacks were not a spontaneous outburst, but were planned.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which is not affiliated with the Pakistan government, said mosques in Gojra had urged local Muslims to gather and “make mincemeat of the Christians.” Police had been informed about the mosque announcements, but reportedly did nothing to stop the violence, the group said, according to summaries from Pakistan Christian Post and the Associated Press.

Punjab province Law Minister Rana Sanaullah also told the Associated Press that there was evidence that the attacks were premeditated, such as the many masks worn by the attackers to avoid identification.

At GetReligion, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway notes that no media coverage has included the perspective of Muslims who were involved in the violence. “If there were 20,000 people involved, surely we can talk to a few of them, no?” she asks.

Global Voices, meanwhile, compiles Pakistani condemnation of the attacks.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its lists of countries that egregiously violate religious freedom and those that it's keeping an eye on. The situation in these countries is not just bad; it must show "intent and a pattern of recurrent affirmative acts of abuse on the part of the government."

The annual report, released today, is put together by a bi-partisan group who send their recommendations to the State Department. Theoretically, this could lead to sanctions if the State Department declares them Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs). However, Condoleeza Rice signed off on the official list of CPC's in January - two years late.

USCIRF named 13 countries this year. Since 2008's list, they have added Nigeria (slightly surprising) and Iraq:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled yesterday that a California law school could lawfully bar the school's Christian Legal Society from being recognized as a student group for requiring its members to sign a statement of faith. The ruling could set a precedent for the way Christian organizations can or cannot retain their distinct religious beliefs at public colleges with nondiscrimination policies.

The CLS chapter at the University of California's Hastings College of Law filed a lawsuit in fall 2004 against the college for denying it status as a registered student organization. According to CLS's brief, it was denied official recognition for requiring members to sign a statement of faith, which, among other things, prohibits homosexual conduct. Hastings officials had said CLS's standards violated the school's nondiscrimination policy, which says all student groups "shall not discriminate unlawfully on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, age, sex or sexual orientation."

CLS's lawsuit claimed that Hastings was practicing viewpoint discrimination and violating CLS's right to expressive association. It claimed that Hastings was applying its policy inconsistently. CLS's brief, page 14?18:

Hastings allows other registered student organizations to require that their leaders and/or members agree with the organization's beliefs and purposes. . . . Outlaw [a pro-gay rights group] is free to remove officers if they fail to support the organization's pro-gay rights purpose; Silenced Right: National Alliance Pro-Life Group may require its members to support its pro-life purposes; . . . Hastings' nondiscrimination policy is viewpoint discriminatory, as it allows a vegetarian club to require that officers and members not eat meat, but prohibits an Orthodox Jewish group for requiring its officers and members to abstain from pork for religious reasons.

President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez (right) has proven himself to be no friend of Christians. But it seems the climate for religious freedom is taking a significant turn for the worse. Recently, the US Commission for International Religious Freedom put a spotlight on government-sponsored anti-Semitism.

The Commission sent letters earlier this month to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon Jr. and to U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief Asma Jahangir expressing concern about increasing incidents of anti-Semitism in Venezuela, including the attack on the Tiferet Israel synagogue in Caracas. The Commission is assessing the situation and ways in which the United States can respond to protect religious freedom in Venezuela.

"Over the past several years, the Jewish community has suffered as President Chavez and government-affiliated media publicly made anti-Semitic remarks and published anti-Semitic cartoons and opinions," wrote Commission Chair Felice D. Gaer to Shannon. "Last August (2008), President Chavez said he would work with Brazilian President Lula and Argentina President Cristina Kirchner to end anti-Semitism in Latin America. We urge the State Department to undertake efforts to ensure that President Chavez keeps his promise, and ceases fomenting anti-Semitism in Venezuela."

The letter to Assistant Secretary Shannon calls on the U.S. government to work with countries that may have influence with the Venezuelan government to press the Chavez administration to prohibit the use of anti-Semitism in officially-related media and fully investigate all reported incidents of anti-Semitism in order to bring perpetrators to justice.

Rainn Wilson, the actor who plays the hilarious Dwight Schrute on The Office, gets serious in an op-ed on CNN.com on religious freedom in Iran.

"Dear readers of CNN, I assure you that what I'm writing about is no joking matter or some hoax perpetrated by a paper-sellin', bear-fearin', Battlestar Galactica-obsessed beet farmer," writes Wilson, who is a member of the Baha'i faith.

Why write about all this now? Well, I'm glad you asked. You see there's a ?trial' going on very soon for seven Baha'i national leaders in Iran.

They've been accused of all manner of things including being "spies for Israel," "insulting religious sanctities" and "propaganda against the Islamic Republic."

... It's bad right now for all the peace-loving Baha'is in Iran who want only to practice their religion and follow their beliefs. It's especially bad for these seven. Here's a link to their bios. They're teachers, and engineers, and optometrists and social workers just like us.

Wilson asks readers to contact their representatives of Congress about a resolution on the situation.

"This thought has become kind of a clich?', but we take our rights for granted here in America," he writes. "Imagine if a group of people were rounded up and imprisoned and then disappeared not for anything they'd done, but because they wanted to worship differently than the majority."

Yes, this is the same person who plays Dwight. He ends by saying, "Thanks for reading. Now back to bears, paper and beets!"

(h/t Mollie)

Open Doors has released its list of countries where Christians are most persecuted. Their 50-question survey asks both about Christians' legal status and what actually happens to them.

North Korea is at the top of the list for the seventh year in a row. It scored a 90.5, putting it in a category by itself, 32.5 points beyond Saudi Arabia and Iran. "The North Korean regime believes that it will collapse if it fails to stop the spreading of Christianity," Open Doors explains.

They list Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, Mauritania, Algeria, India, Nigeria (North), Indonesia, Bangladesh and Kazakhstan as countries where Christians' freedom has deteriorated.

Countries that improved include Bhutan, China, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Sudan (North), Zanzibar Islands, Cuba, Turkey, and Colombia.

Freedom House, which has been tracking global civil liberties and political rights since 1972, released its 2008 survey (of the world in 2007). For the second year in a row, the news isn't good.

Freedom House puts nations and regions (such as Tibet, Palestine, and Kashmir) into three broad categories: "not free," "partly free," and "free," based on levels of political competition, civil liberties, independent media and civil activities, strife, and corruption. Religious freedom fits under a number of those factors.

46 percent of the world's population lives in "free" countries, while 36 percent lives in "not free" countries.

Of course, there's a wide range within each category. In 2007 only one country dropped down a category, and it would be possible for many countries to improve greatly and not be bumped up - but that didn't happen. Freedom House saw degeneration within the categories. The bad got worse, and so did the okay.

Countries that seemed to be taking steps towards greater freedom - Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Palestine, Lebanon, Nigeria, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia - backed away.

The survey also contains a warning for Westerners: "The flawed response to an upsurge in immigration in Europe and the U.S. has revealed potentially serious imperfections in these countries' democratic systems, especially in Western Europe. Furthermore, they continued to grapple with problems posed by the continued threat of Islamic terrorism."

There are some results that stand out on the map: Mongolia is a "free" island sandwiched between influential, "not free" Russia and China; Afghanistan is more free than Pakistan; Kosovo is the westernmost "not free" nation in Europe.

On a related note, Compass Direct, a news service focusing on international religious persecution, has put out its list of top stories of 2008. Among the annual roundups still to come: the Open Doors list of worst persecuting countries (last issued in February 2008) the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's annual report (last issued in April 2008) and the U.S. State Department's annual report (which was last issued in September 2008).

Hu Jia, who was among those named in our map of pre-Olympic arrests in China, was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

The European Parliament gives out the prestigious annual award. Their press release says:

Hu Jia is a prominent human rights activist and dissident in the People's Republic of China. He has embraced a wide range of causes, including environmental issues, HIV/AIDS advocacy and a call for an official enquiry into the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. He has also acted as a coordinator of the 'barefoot lawyers movement'.

Having already been arrested several times, he spoke to MEPs in November 2007 from house arrest via conference call during a public meeting of the EP Human Rights Subcommittee on human rights in China in the run-up to the Olympic Games. As a result he was charged by the authorities with "inciting subversion of state power" and sentenced on 3 April 2008 to three-and-a-half years in jail.

The prize puts China - which is reportedly pretty steamed - in the awkward position of having an internationally recognized lawyer in prison.

The U.S. State Department and other organizations are demanding Hu's release: "We are deeply concerned about the imprisonment of human rights activist Hu Jia and have pressed the Chinese authorities for his immediate release on many occasions and at the highest level," State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told The Age.

Although the European Parliament statement, the Wikipedia page, and reports by The New York Times, BBC, and others don't mention it, Hu is a Christian and one of many Christian human rights activists fighting for human rights in China.

* * *

While one source listed Hu Jia as a Christian, he is a Buddhist, according to China Aid and others. My apologies.

Taliban soldiers killed a Christian aid worker from South Africa in a drive-by motorcycle shooting. Gayle Williams, 34, had been working for the UK ministry SERVE Afghanistan for two years and had recently moved to Kabul for safety. One of her colleagues found her on the pavement at 8 this morning.

Zabiullah Mujahed, a Taliban spokesman, told The Times "The reason that we killed her was because she was spreading Christianity." The Taliban took credit publicly, "saying on its Web site that it killed the ?foreign woman' for preaching Christianity in the country and adding that it had been following the woman for some time," CNN reported.

SERVE Afghanistan's chairman of the board, Mike Lyth, emphasized to The Times that the organization is not involved in evangelism. "We have a policy of not (preaching Christianity), so she certainly wasn't involved in that. She was only doing missionary work, if that means living a Christian life and helping disabled people. She spoke only a little Pashtun and Farsi."

The Times reports 28 killings of aid workers, 72 kidnappings, and 146 security incidents involving NGOs this year (the 2007 count was 135 for the whole of last year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office).

The Guardian also spoke to Lyth about the future of SERVE Afghanistan:

Lyth said the charity would now have to take a "long, hard look" at its operations.

"I personally have been very concerned about security for a long time, but we have tried to take all possible measures to reduce the threat."

"We train our people really carefully. We are in daily touch with the security authorities to find out which roads we shouldn't be on, which parts of the country we shouldn't go to."

"Each time something like this happens, you wonder: do you go on exposing people to unnecessary risk? Yet at the same time, you have got the cry of many, many of the Afghans saying, 'Please help us'. You're caught between a rock and a hard place."

Bolivian television stations are repeatedly playing a clip of a pastor being shot on September 12 by the country's military in the capital of Pando.

In the video (warning: very disturbing - it's 3 minutes of people being shot), it's unclear what is going on. A soldier is shouting into a crowd of civilians, women begin screaming, and then the shooting starts. Some soldiers fired into the air, but some shoot into the crowd. Several people fall to the ground. Some don't get up.

Christian World News (a Christian Broadcasting Network affiliate) reports that soldiers were re-taking the airport from a group of civilians in the terminal. EntreChristianios says evangelical pastor Luis Antonio Rivero Shiguekuni was one of those protesting the presence of troops in their city; CWN describes him as "a visiting Christian evangelist."

After most of the shooting ends, the cameraman focuses on Rivero, who seems to have been shot to death. Two men hold him in a sitting position. He is unresponsive. The clip cuts out as a jeep pulls up beside them.

Rivero's brother has appeared on television to explain the incident and demand justice. He praised the local media, saying they were the reason he knows as much as he does about this murder. A partially translated transcript by CT senior writer Deann Alford reads:

It took 20 hours to return the body of our brother. Now we want justice to be done. We are not political, militant people. Politics doesn't interest us. What we went is that the manner be clarified how our brother was murdered.

We received his body?.He was shot at 6:30 p.m., and the coroner said 8 hours later he was shot with the second bullet. [Rivero] lived 4 more hours after that. What happened to the body of my brother during this time? Why was there a 16-hour delay before the military returned his body?

We don't know why or the reason for the treatment/behavior of the military toward my brother. He was an evangelical pastor, a man of peace.

The only thing we want is justice.

Pando's governor, Leopoldo Fernandez, has been accused of overseeing the shootings, according to the The New York Times, and has been arrested by Pando's army. The Wall Street Journal says he "is being investigated on genocide accusations."

We will continue to update this story as new information comes in.

On the final morning of the Muslim-Christian conversation held last week at Yale, Christian participants eagerly anticipated what Christian speakers would have to say. Several Christian speakers had grounded their messages in explicitly Christian teachings, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. But there was a general sense that Muslim speakers had more pointedly articulated their beliefs during the nearly three days of meetings. (See earlier reports here and here.)

Early in the conference, reports circulated that when Regent College theologian John Stackhouse had used the parable of the Good Samaritan to present a clearly Christian viewpoint during the closed-door pre-conference workshop, some Muslim leaders had complained that Stackhouse was trying to evangelize them. Perhaps other Christian speakers were instinctively treading more softly.

During coffee breaks, several Christian participants told me they felt the Muslim speakers had been more carefully chosen to represent Islamic views. A Wednesday morning session which featured two famous preachers intensified this feeling.

Filed: 7:05 AM, July 30, 2008

Senator John Kerry kicked off the "Loving God and Neighbor in Word and Deed" conference (also known as the "Common Word" conference) Monday night with a largely unsurprising, but welcome speech. He was, after all, preaching to the choir: Christian and Muslim leaders from around the world who want to find a way to live together peacefully.

Kerry began by telling his roughly 150 listeners that the meeting they were attending at Yale University "can help change the world," while warning that pessimism about future relationships between the Muslim world and the West hands demagogues who play to pessimism about the inevitable violent clash of cultures and religions. "You have placed yourselves among those who are on the right side of the debate," he told them. "We must love one another or die."

Tonight at 9pm Eastern, PBS's Frontline/World will air a documentary (a joint project with the Tribune) on Christianity in China.

The Chicago Tribune today published its second cover story in a row on "Jesus in China." Their articles this week hit on many of the recent issues in Chinese Christianity, including the rapid rise in attendance, the compromises of membership in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (the state church), and the fact that this wave of Christianity is not led by foreign missionaries.

Evan Osnos, the Tribune's Beijing bureau chief, draws a lot of material from Zion church in the first installation, "Jesus in China: Christianity's rapid rise":

Rev. Jin Mingri peered out from the pulpit and delivered an unusual appeal: "Please leave," the 39-year-old pastor commanded his followers, who were packed, standing-room-only on a Sunday afternoon, into a converted office space in China's capital. "We don't have enough seats for the others who want to come, so, please, only stay for one service a day."

A choir in hot-pink robes stood to his left, beside a guitarist and a drum set bristling with cymbals. Children in a playroom beside the sanctuary punctuated the service with squeals and tantrums. It was a busy day at a church that, on paper, does not exist.

The piece also gets into some of the Chinese church's cultural aspirations, such as encouraging basically ethical behavior.

"Jesus in China: Life on the edge" began by showing Christians taking the offensive in claiming religious rights in China. "Christians form a diverse lobby that is rare in a nation split by class, opportunity and geography" and are often inspired by the American Civil Rights movement, Osnos reports. (CT covered this movement - and its admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. - in 2006) One non-Christian rights advocate even called Christianity "China's largest non-governmental organization."

The Tribune also posted videos on church life and China's "Bible Empire."

Our recent coverage of China includes a May cover story on urban Christianity.

Today's Wall Street Journal comments on China's inability to control religion. The recent protests in Tibet underscore that the Communist Party's attempts to subdue spiritual structures have little effect.

Bret Stephens writes:

The regime banned religion -- one of the so-called Four Olds -- during the Cultural Revolution. Once it figured out that that didn't work, it sought instead to turn clergy into bureaucrats, and replace the idea of the divine with the mechanics of political control. The results have been, at best, a partial success.

The Party created state sponsored religious groups that do, indeed, have a following. But the official religious groups pale in comparison to the underground ones.

Unofficial Protestants, who attend unsanctioned "house churches," are said to number anywhere between 70 million and 130 million; one prominent Chinese pastor puts the count closer to 300 million. That latter figure is probably exaggerated, but there's no question that Christianity of the unofficial kind is winning Chinese converts in huge numbers. Not only that, it's winning them among every class of Chinese: farmers, urban migrant workers, professionals and intellectuals.

Stephens argues that in "smashing" religion, the country also smashed traditional social structures. That was, of course, the point, as the state was to take over that role. But of course, it couldn't then, and in today's China can do even less.

The Party destroyed the traditional relationships between neighbors, young and old, farmer and villager. But it also destroyed morality. "To a degree that alarms even Chinese rulers, morality and ideology have been replaced by corruption, opportunism and widespread indifference to life's ordinary decencies. Religion offers a corrective to this, too, as it does to the quandaries of 21st century existence."

Ironically, it was this destruction of religion that allowed for the massive growth in Christianity that will be the subject of CT's next cover story. If people's traditional views of religion and society had not been so utterly smashed, Christianity would never have been able to get its foot in the door.

Religion coverage in The Atlantic is typically well done. The magazine's coverage of the neutering of religion from The Golden Compass was interesting for the way it treated both Hollywood and the anti-religious themes of the book on which the movie was based. Though the magazine retains the secular, above the fray, attitude toward faith of its New England founding, it also put Philip Jenkin's article on the New Christendom on the cover in October, 2002, when his book describing the phenomenal growth of non-Western Christianity debuted.

So, the magazine's March cover story (not yet online) on the literal battle between Christianity and Islam in Nigeria is equally well done, despite some mistakes.

We reported last November on the raids on Grace Church, a network of Korean Presbyterian church-plants, in Kazakhstan. The country’s secret police (formerly KGB, now KNB) are back at it, Forum 18 reports. Last weekend they raided the Grace Church in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan.

Leaks through the media allege that church members are engaged in spying, appropriating church members' property, failing to file financial information, inciting inter-religious enmity and holding illegal drugs, even though no-one has ever been brought before a criminal court.

Vyacheslav Kalyuzhny, the Deputy Human Rights Ombudsperson, says the Church has not complained to his office. "People are not persecuted on religious grounds in Kazakhstan," he claimed.

The claim, while absurd, has worked in the recent past. In November, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) elected Kazakhstan to be the chair, beginning in 2010:

Minister Tazhin also emphasized that religious tolerance is highly valued in Kazakhstan, and that the country "enthusiastically supports the establishment of the three CiO personal representatives on religious tolerance: for Anti-Semitism, Muslims, and for Christians and Other Religions."

In 2009, Kazakhstan will host the third Congress on World and Traditional Religions in Astana.

Kazakhstanis are wonderfully welcoming and friendly people (I lived there for a couple years), and Central Asia has a long tradition of tolerance going back to the Silk Road. But the government has pretty much scrapped that tradition. It seems far more worried about Borat than the possibility of censure from the international community over degenerating religious rights.

Last summer, Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company denied the West Adrian United Church of Christ in Michigan insurance because its denomination supports same-sex marriage and the ordination of practicing homosexuals. Wall Street Journal reporter M. P. McQueen writes,

"Based on national media reports, controversial stances such as those indicated in your application responses have resulted in property damage and the potential for increased litigation among churches that have chosen to publicly endorse these positions," Marci J. Fretz, a regional underwriter for Brotherhood Mutual -- one of the nation's largest insurers of religious institutions -- wrote in a letter to the church last summer.

McQueen writes that churches have sometimes been denied or have had coverage revoked because of specific acts of violence. "Some churches in the South reported cancellations after a wave of arson attacks in the mid-1990s." But this would be the first instance of the denial of a claim due to fears that a controversial stance would provoke a violent backlash.

Founded in 1917 as a mutual-aid organization by evangelical Mennonites, Brotherhood Mutual is now the largest provider of insurance to churches in the country. A spokesperson "didn't have any examples of violence attributable to a church's support for gay clergy or same-sex marriage," McQueen writes. She did note that disputes over gay marriage have led to church splits and resulted in costly lawsuits.

Michigan banned same-sex marriage in 2004. The church has not specifically endorsed the denomination's position on same-sex marriage and ordination of homosexuals. The article says that as long as insurance companies abide by non-discrimination and other laws, they are free to set their own guidelines for accepting or rejecting applications.

A couple of things to note: Brotherhood Mutual rejected the church's application not because of moral or religious opposition to the church's stance, but because the stance might increase risk to the insurer. So this is not precisely a religious freedom issue. One wonders if the company didn't want to do business with supporters of same-sex marriage and risk seemed a better explanation for its refusal. But are churches that support same-sex marriage really more prone to being victims of vandalism? The article says there is no evidence one way or the other. The story doesn't mention any other ways in which Brotherhood Mutual does business with supporters of same-sex marriage. Does it screen its investments of companies that offer benefits to partners of employees? Presumably, if/when same-sex marriage and homosexual ordination became less controversial, Brotherhood Mutual would then accept applications from churches that supported that stance.

Also, there is no lawsuit. West Adrian didn't sue Brotherhood Mutual over the denial, so the situation would set no legal precedent in regards to religious freedom. If same-sex marriage does gain national legal acceptance, there will probably be exceptions for clergy and churches to discriminate according to their religious teaching. The real test, however, will lie with for-profit companies like Brotherhood Mutual.

Hindu nationalists began burning churches and Christian houses in the east Indian state of Orissa on Christmas Eve. The violence continues, although today it seems to have abated somewhat.

Dozens are injured, many buildings have been destroyed, and the death toll is at 4 (three Hindus killed by police as they burned down the police station, and one Christian killed in the riots).

Compass Direct is reporting higher numbers than those confirmed by the police:

Jacob Pradhan, a Christian leader in Kandhamal district, told Compass that at least four Christians have been killed and more than 50 churches and 200 houses razed or damaged.

Telephone outages and VHP roadblocks made confirming reports "extremely difficult."

The Associated Press reported that,

On Thursday a mob of Hindus defied a curfew and burned down the house of Radhakant Nayak, a member of India's upper house of parliament and a Christian leader in the area, Nayak told the CNN-IBN news channel.

Also, 11 churches were ransacked and burned in Kandhamal district of Orissa state, the Press Trust of India quoted unnamed police officials as saying.

Meanwhile, in the village of Brahmangaon, a group of Christians burned down several Hindu homes in an apparent retaliation for the attack on churches. Angry Hindus then burned down the village police station, complaining of a lack of protection, a local police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

At least 25 people - both Christian and Hindu - have been arrested so far, and the federal government has announced that it will send in paramilitary troops.

The perpetrators claim that they were defending a Hindu leader who heads an anti-conversion campaign; Christians in Orissa say the attacks were to prevent a Christmas Eve performance that could have led to conversions; AP says it boils down to controversy over thousands of conversions to Christianity in the past few years, "Hindu groups have long charged Christian missionaries with trying to lure the poor and those who occupy the lowest rungs of Hinduism's complex caste-system away with promises of money and jobs."

The Orissa government has ordered a judicial probe into the attacks, in response to claims that the violence was not spontaneous but sponsored by saffron activists.

Time warns against chalking it all up to religion:

As with most communal violence in India, this latest explosion of hatred is the result not only of religious differences but of a tangled intersection of political power, communal prejudice and the injustices of Hinduism's archaic caste system.

However, in a place where religion permeates everything, it's not helpful to try to separate religion from political power, prejudice, or the caste system - especially as the hard-line Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is gaining power. Orissa is currently governed by a BJP ally.

The stakes and the rhetoric over last spring's murders of three missionaries in Turkey continue to get higher. While some are suggesting the victims have PKK connections, others are demanding the defendants be tried for genocide.

Five young plaintiffs are being tried for the killings of Tilman Ekkehart Geske, Necati Aydin, and Ugur Yuksel in Malatya, Turkey. Seven others are not in custody but have been charged with aiding in the murders.

The trial itself opened November 23 with quite a crowd in attendance and has already stalled. The Turkish Press reports that:

The prosecutor demanded life imprisonment for five suspects on charges of setting up an armed terrorist organization and killing people. The suspects and their lawyers said they are not ready to defend themselves. Then, the judge adjourned the court till January 14, 2008.

One of the major concerns about the defense is that, in an appeal to anti-missionary sentiments, it will portray Geske, Aydin, and Yuksel as apostates who had it coming to them. Orhan Kemal Cengiz, one of the attorneys for the complainants and a Turkish Daily News columnist, wrote:

There are 31 files in this case and just 15 of them comprise information about the murder and the perpetrators. What about the other 16 files?

The prosecutor retrieved all documents from the computers of the victims and put them in the case file as "evidence." If a prosecutor sees missionary activities as criminal then it is not difficult to understand how some people can become crazy and kill these missionaries!

Furthermore, these files, which are public now, may lead to new murders because they include many details on other Protestants who reside in different parts of Turkey. The addresses, emails, telephones of many other Turkish Protestants are in the files, which have already been in the hands of the murderers. The prosecutor failed to make a thorough investigation and he has also put many other lives in danger.

I would like to give you some specific information, but if I went into all details of the weirdness of the files, this article would turn into a small booklet.

It probably won't be difficult to convince the court that the victims were at least partly to blame, Cengiz says, "From the communications sent to the file we understand that Necati Aydin, one of the victims, had been under constant surveillance and in his police record he has recorded as a former criminal for the ?crime' of ?missionary activity.'"

There has been much hand-wringing in the Turkish press over these murders and what they mean about tolerance and teen violence in their society. But the country - or at least its press - continues to choke on the distinctiveness of people of faith.

Forum 18 published an op-ed that probes the source of the anti-Christian violence. In it, G?zide Ceyhan concludes it's a result of "disinformation about Christianity in statements by public figures and through the media, the rise of Turkish nationalism, and the implicit and explicit approval both of the marginalization of Christians from Turkish society and also of actions - including murders - against them."

Keep a lookout for our January cover story, "Jesus in Turkey."

Many news outlets, including CT, have covered the Department of Homeland Security's refusal to grant refugee status to anyone who gave "material support" to terrorists under the 2001 USA Patriot Act.

The law was riddled with problems: many who are seeking refugee status are doing so because they were forced to give ransoms and temporary housing at gunpoint.

And then there's the problem of governments that operate much like terrorist groups, including Myanmar's military junta. Chin Duh Kam, a Burmese pastor in America, told me about government officials forcing Christians in Chin State to make ropes and transport military equipment. The New York Times referred to another UN report that

3,000 villages of the Karen and nearby tribes have been destroyed, and more than 500,000 people have been driven from their homes. Government troops are accused of systematically raping girls and forcing children to join their ranks.

So the law's broad ban on everyone giving "material support" unfortunately includes those who are victims of terrorists.

But there is good news for some refugees: Homeland Security has begun to issue waivers for those who were clearly forced to give material support to terrorists, said Jenny Hwang of World Relief.

The Associated Press reports that the U. S. State Department also "waived provisions of the Patriot Act that barred 9,300 ethnic Karen from entering the U.S. because of their association with Myanmar rebels." These Burmese refugees fled their homeland long ago; they are not among those who participated in the August to September protests.

The AP story says the exponential growth in refugee immigration to U. S. cities such as Utica, St. Paul, and Minneapolis is overwhelming aid groups:

Resettlement agency Exodus Refugee has doubled its Indianapolis staff to eight people over the past 11 months but still can't keep up, job specialist Zach Tennant said recently while handing out envelopes with $25 spending money to each adult refugee arriving at Indianapolis International Airport.

In Utica, the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees has received 300 people over the past 11 weeks, including 109 one week, before the end of the federal fiscal year brought a respite. Director Peter Vogelaar said the biggest challenge is finding them safe, clean homes and jobs. He's finding work for 30 to 40 refugees per month.

"Refugees are survivors and they are incredibly resilient," Vogelaar said.

* * *

I wondered whether "Burma" or "Myanmar" was more proper, so I asked.

Chin Duh Kam prefers "Burma," which he pronounced with great warmth. "I use the old name," he told me. Pastor David says he uses "Myanmar" in the country and "Burma" outside it.

It turns out that as far as Burmese grammar goes, "Burma" is the colloquial name of the country; "Myanmar" is the formal, literary name. But the names took on a political cast when the government decided in 1989 that it wanted the country to be officially known as the Union of Myanmar. The U. S. State Department still calls it the "Union of Burma."

As far as adjectives go, "Burman" is usually the majority ethnic group, and "Burmese" refers to nationality.

To celebrate my 60th birthday yesterday, I had dinner with the Secretary General of the United Nations. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank covered the event in his puckish (my wife called it "snarky") style.

Okay, so I had dinner with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and 300 other people. And the Washington Post didn't even mention me. Secretary General Ban and I were only sitting at adjacent tables. But I did get a grip-and-grin photo op with him before the banquet, and after his speech I was one of three evangelical leaders invited to give a brief response.

The banquet itself was a joint effort of the National Association of Evangelicals and the Micah Challenge. It was the closing event of the NAE's semi-annual board meeting and the opening event of the Global Leaders Forum. Organizations involved in the Forum (beyond the NAE and Micah Challenge) included Bread for the World, World Relief, Frontiers, The Salvation Army, Tearfund, the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Korean Church Coalition, and the UN Foundation and the UN Millennium Campaign.

Attendees at the sold-out event got this message loud and clear:

A story in today's Chicago Tribune illustrates one of the tensions of living in an increasingly secular society. The article, "Religious-based education on trial: Christian high schools sue University of California, alleging bias in admissions," discusses a lawsuit that an association of Christian schools is suing the University of California because "the admissions policy at the university unconstitutionally discriminates against them because they teach from a religious perspective."

More specifically the plaintiffs claim that "UC follows the policy of rejecting any course in any subject, even if it teaches standard content, if it adds teaching of the school's religious viewpoint."

The University denies it, of course: "That statement simply is not true," said Christopher Patti, counsel for UC. "There is no prohibition on religious content in UC a-g courses," he said. "If the course adequately teaches the subject matter and adequately teaches the skills that students need in that subject, then the fact that it may also make reference to other theories doesn't disqualify it, even religious theories."

Without knowing more the details of the case, on the surface it seems like another battle in the culture wars than in cultural confusion.

The University, for example, refused to give credit for a course called, "Course: Special Providence: Christianity and the American Republic," the text of which was "American Government for Christian Schools" (Bob Jones University Press). The reason rejected was that " Content was not consistent with the "empirical historical knowledge generally accepted in the collegiate community."

Now this could indicate that the University has a narrow, Enlightenment understanding of what constitutes history--it may, for example, rule out miracle a priori as an explanation for an event.

Or it could mean that the textbook and class have not prepared students to participate in classes and conversations that will take place in a modern, secular university on the topic of history. A university has the right and obligation to ensure that when students step on campus, they are familiar with terms, theories, and perspectives that constitute the conversation on campus on any given topic.

Christian schools have an obligation not only to teach from a Christian perspective, but to thoroughly immerse their students in the worldview and perspective of the secular university if they expect them to attend there. This strikes me as a reasonable requirement of the university, but a necessary requirement of those who hope to bring Christ's salt and light to academia. If we demonstrate that we have not listened to or thoroughly understood the point of view of those with whom we disagree, why would they ever give our point of view a hearing?

The federal Bureau of Prisons will return religious materials that were removed from prison chapel libraries to prevent religious extremism, according to the Associated Press.

The purged books that were removed included Christian discipleship materials (see CT's first story).

The material removed since June will be returned to prison chapel libraries unless it is found to be radicalizing or inciting violence. By June 2008, "what comes off the shelves will be a very, very small number, because the vast majority of material will be on the 'that's OK list,'" bureau spokeswoman Judi Simon Garrett told the AP.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Tex., still expresses concern:

"There's probably a limited universe of materials that incite violence, and I understand that perhaps those need to be banned," said Hensarling. "Instead, what the Bureau of Prisons appears to be doing is really censoring religious texts, deciding what is acceptable."

From reporter Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra:

English Language Institute China (ELIC) denied that any of its English teachers have been expelled from China for illegal religious activity, as reported today by the China Aid Association Inc.

China Aid released a statement accusing the Chinese government of systematically deporting more than 100 suspected foreign missionaries since February 2007. Two of them were English teachers sent to Tibet by ELIC, the statement said. ELIC is a Christian organization that sends English teachers to China.

"We haven't had anyone who was asked to leave," said Gary Lausch, Vice President of Human Resources for ELIC. "We did call China Aid and let them know that was not accurate and they said they would correct it."

The story of government expulsion came as a surprise, Lausch said. He said ELIC has not been feeling any unusual pressure from China lately.

Christians remain at risk inside Gaza, not to mention the other 1 milion plus Gazans, due to renewed violence between Hamas and Fatah. The situation is being likened to a 'civil war.'

Until recently, it was not clear if militants were targeting Christians or churches. But the Jerusalem Post is reporting that a Roman Catholic church was desecrated and a Catholic school damaged late last week. A Catholic priest is calling for better protection for Gaza's Christians, who number about 3-7,000 people.

Jerusalem Post has updated their story on the church attack with a report that Hamas has condemned the attack and placed the blame on a local criminal gang.

Christianity Today has heard more from an Egyptian-German Christian leader still inside Gaza. He has been living in Gaza since 2004 for Christian mission and ministry.

Here is his personal account:

On Friday people in the Gaza Strip awoke to a new reality.

Over the previous few days Hamas, an Islamic party had routed the opposition Fatah forces, a secular-nationalist movement, and Hamas took full control of the Gaza Strip.

What led to these sudden events?

In February 2006, Hamas was voted into power in democratic elections that were largely imposed by the U.S. and its policy of democratic reform in the Middle East, yet the unexpected outcome seemed to have thrown a monkey wrench in the U.S.’s reform plans.

By March of this year the U.S. and Western countries still had not recognized the Palestinian unity government containing both Fatah and Hamas representatives. An economic embargo stifled not only the government but it also collectively punished the entire people. This economic stranglehold was felt especially in the Gaza Strip, which is enclosed from all sides.

Israel, in one form or another, controls all its borders.

Trade was brought to a slow trickle, after what the World Bank reported to be an economic decline greater than America’s experience during the Great Depression.

Soon Hamas became fed up with not being recognized and being economically crippled despite having come to power through a fair democratic process. Furthermore, with U.S. funding entering Gaza to strengthen Fatah, the election loser, Hamas got impatient and decided to take control of the territory.

The ensuing military takeover of the Gaza Strip that took 80 lives, was bloody and dreadful for many. It took only five days before all opposition headquarters were taken and control was fully in Hamas’ hands.

After the fighting ended I made a trip to the Gaza Baptist Church building with my hosts and the pastor. Minimal damage had been done to the building structure and some equipment, including a laptop used for Sunday worship had been stolen from the building.

A clampdown on lawlessness, which has been widespread in recent months, is one of the few positive prospects of the new political reality in Gaza. With the world not recognizing the Hamas government, the former political power, Fatah, stayed in control in many areas of government. The result had been two parallel government structures in Gaza, one democratically elected by the people, the other voted out by the people and yet only the latter was accepted and recognized by world leaders.

During the past two years I have lived here I have found that it is this meddling of outside powers in Palestinian affairs that has over and over again caused so much suffering for a people so desperately seeking to live a normal life in peace.

Generally people are very concerned about what the near future holds. Despite the Hamas amnesty of Fatah activists, many of them remain scared and are staying home or are in hiding.

By Saturday the streets were relatively back to normal until reports started to spread that Israel was closing the borders and people started scrambling for their basic needs, bread, sugar, flour, and gas. Cars are moving about, people are walking the streets, talking and laughing.

Along the walls of the main hospital in town [Gaza City] I saw old men sitting in the shade playing backgammon. The combination of the normalcy of life and fear of the unknown of the future makes for a strange atmosphere.

Ever since last October's special series titled "In God's Name," the New York Times has increased its reporting on what it sees as the excessive entanglement of government and religion. The first article in that series complained, for example, that a retirement home near the University of Notre Dame for aging Catholic priests (who, let us be clear, worked for a pittance and never built up equity in a home) receives property-tax breaks that an architecturally similar retirement complex across town doesn't.

Well, the Times is back today, with an article complaining that the Justice Department defends the free exercise of religion too much - and doesn't pursue as many race-related cases as it did in the past.

The increase in the Justice Department's attention to religious-freedom cases is hardly news. On February 20, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez gave a widely reported speech to the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, in which he "unveil[ed] a new Department of Justice initiative aimed at educating Americans about their religious liberties and to ask for the Southern Baptist Convention's help in identifying and reporting abuses of those liberties." (See the Baptist Press account here.)

The same day, Justice released a "Report on Enforcement of Laws Protecting Religious Freedom: Fiscal Years 2001-2006." Clearly, the Justice Department was seeking publicity for its new focus on religious freedom cases.

Nevertheless, the Times manages to completely avoid references to the Justice Department's report and offer only oblique references to speeches by the AG. The paper appears to pretend that it is digging up buried information.

The article's main complaints seem to be that:

The conservative Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, in his latest missive--entitled "Family Values or the Liberal Status Quo?"--weighs in on tomorrow's vote in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on the "hate crimes" bill. Perkins opposes the bill, saying it contradicts the "family values" image many Democrats ran on and won with last year. I agree.

But the following passage from Perkins is curious:

"This bill creates a caste system within American society where those who fit a certain category - ranging from race, disability, gender to sexual orientation and transgendered - would be seen as deserving special legal protection. The bill is most notable for the millions of Americans it leaves out, meaning if you or I are a victim of a violent crime - we matter less." (emphases mine)

Perkins seems to say that those he represents do not belong to "certain" categories, ranging from race to disability, to sex to sexuality. Does he mean the FRC only represents healthy, straight white males? I hope not.

Mexico City's decision to legalize abortion, and the local Roman Catholic reaction to that decision, is getting all kinds of press this week. But don't miss the other big religion story coming out of Mexico, which you're unlikely to see in your local paper. Compass Direct reports, "Local political bosses who had voted to expel 65 Christians from [the Chiapas town of Los Pozos] grudgingly signed an agreement yesterday to let the evangelicals stay in their homes. ... It remains to be seen, he added, whether the Los Pozos town bosses will follow through on the accord’s stipulation that they restore water lines and electricity cut off from some evangelical families since January 30."

Evangelical pastor and attorney Esdras Alonso Gonzalez tells the religion watchdog news service that (in Compass's words) "the signing of the accord could prove to be a watershed moment in Mexican human rights in that it sets a precedent for state authority to head off conflicts before they fester into decades-old, major confrontations."

AFP goes with "Russia bids farewell to flamboyant Yeltsin." For Reuters, it's "Russians pay respects to flawed hero Yeltsin." The Associated Press (probably wisely) decided not to use an adjective. And it's the Associated Press that hits the religion angle the hardest:

Yeltsin, who died Monday at age 76, sometimes appeared at church services but was not seen as overtly pious. Nevertheless, the Russian Orthodox Church credits him as a key figure in its changed fortunes after decades of the Communist-era's official atheism.

"By his strength, he helped the restoration of the proper role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the life of the country and its people," church spokesman Metropolitan Kirill said in a statement.

That "proper role" is quite a loaded statement. The religion watchdog news service Forum18 and the Russian press agency Interfax have markedly different articles on Yeltsin's legacy on religious freedom. Forum18 summarizes the former president's mixed legacy: "While Yeltsin lifted some state controls over churches following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he eventually signed a controversial Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations."