Category: World


World

Police in Vietnam Attack House Church, Jail Leaders

Charisma Staff

VietnamHANOI, Vietnam– Police invaded the Sunday service of the Agape Baptist congregation in Vietnam’s Hung Yen Province on June 7 and beat worshippers, including women, and arrested a pastor and an elder.

Christian sources said police put the two church leaders into separate cells, and each man was beaten by a gang of five policemen. Pastor Duong Van Tuan of the house church in Hamlet 3, Ong Dinh Commune, Khoai Chau district said that officers beat them in a way that did not leave marks: hard blows to the stomach.


World

Underground Church Growing in Muslim-Dominated Indonesia

Charisma Staff

Pentecostals on the tsunami-ravaged coast of Indonesia are experiencing a wave of conversions and healings.

In the strongly Muslim Aceh province of northern Sumatra—where 167,000 people died in the 2004 tsunamiâ—the underground church movement is growing, with Pentecostal congregations thriving.

Indonesia has an official policy of religious tolerance, but in Muslim-dominated areas Christians face open hostility and persecution. In Aceh province, churches must register with the authorities and are not permitted to evangelize. Many Christians choose to meet in unregistered—or underground—churches.

World

Christians Pray for “New China” on Anniversary of Historic Massacre

Charisma Staff

House_church

Twenty years after the Chinese government-run People’s Liberation Army opened-fire on thousands of unarmed student protesters and allowed armored tanks to roll over the crowds, killing hundreds, Christians are praying for a “new” China to emerge that respects democracy and religious freedom.

Tonight Christian leaders from the U.S. and China are gathering in Washington, D.C., for a prayer service aimed at remembering the victims of the June 4, 1989, massacre.

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