Breaking Christian News on The Gospel Herald

China's crack-down on state-approved churches continued last month with a harsh sentence given to a pastor of an official church in Zhejiang Province after he criticized authorities' demolition of church crosses.

In a pre-dawn raid on a predominantly Christian area in coastal Kenya on Sunday (Jan. 31), Islamic extremist Al Shabaab rebels killed at least four Christians, beheading one of them, area sources said.

Civil suit results in order to pay damages to relatives of victims.

Pakistani police last week tortured a devout Catholic to death in Punjab Province after the victim's employer singled him out for a theft charge because of his faith, family members said.

Muslims in a town in Pakistan's Punjab Province who seized a church property have disrupted a prayer meeting at a private residence, sources said.

Unknown "thugs" who wrote a jihadist slogan on a church building in the center of this city on the Algerian coast on Thursday night (Jan. 7) looted and damaged the property, sources said.

A pastor in eastern Uganda was hacked to death on Wednesday (Dec. 23) as he and other church members resisted an effort by Muslims to take over their land, area church leaders said.

Police hostility toward Christians in India continued this year as officers in Tamil Nadu reviled two Christians for their faith and seriously injured them, sources said.

Muslim Fulani herdsmen on Dec. 13 attacked two households and a compound of displaced people in this village near Jos, killing 15 Christians, including two small children.

Christians on the Philippine island of Mindanao believe Maoist rebels are responsible for killing a Baptist pastor and his adult son near a southern town on Nov. 27.

A secret Christian in coastal Kenya escaped Muslim in-laws who last week sought to stab him and took his wife and children, less than two weeks after Islamic extremists further south torched two church buildings, sources said.

Two remarkable pieces about Islamist violence were published last week in mainstream media - one answering the ambivalence thoughtful people feel on what to do about the Islamic State, and the other answering perplexity on what to do about Islam.

Two Muslim men who raped two Christian sisters in Pakistan last year have been acquitted after Islamists pressured a key witness not to testify and a prosecutor failed to show up in court, family and legal sources said.

On top of recent government demolitions of church buildings, suspected Muslim extremists in Sudan's eastern city of Al Qadarif this month set fire to one used by a 500-member congregation, sources said.

An influential Buddhist monk in southern Burma (also called Myanmar) has erected Buddhist structures in a Baptist church compound.

Muslims in eastern Uganda angry at a Christian for leaving Islam killed his wife on Monday (Oct. 19), a month after his brother was killed for the same reason, sources said.

Police have filed a false blasphemy charge against a Christian in Sargodha because he refused their requests for money, a relative said.

A group claiming affiliation with the Islamic State (IS) announced the beheading of a Christian from South Sudan in a video posted on Sunday (Oct. 18).

Islamists upset by a Christian-Muslim debate are suspected in the killing of a long-time evangelist in eastern Uganda who led many Muslims to Christ, sources said.

Two of the three suspected Muslim extremists who tried to cut the throat of a pastor in northwestern Bangladesh last week met with him in mid-September and feigned interest in converting, the church leader told Morning Star News.

The terrorist group Islamic State (IS) killed three Assyrian Christians late last month, presumably in Syria, according to an execution video released Wednesday (Oct. 7).

A pastor in Madhya Pradesh state is recovering after Hindu extremists last month beat him unconscious and left him in a pool of blood, sources said.

In an unnamed village outside Aleppo, according to Christian Aid Mission, which assists indigenous Christian workers in their native countries, Islamic State militants on Aug. 28 crucified four Christians, including a 12-year-old boy, and beheaded eight others in separate executions.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani yesterday declined to meet with the wife of imprisoned U.S.-Iranian- pastor Saeed Abedini during his trip to the United Nations, days after the Christian’s wife learned he had recently been tortured.

The Islamic State (IS) has taken responsibility for gunning down the Italian program manager of a Christian-backed aid group on Monday (Sept. 28) in Dhaka, Bangladesh.