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The Red Lighthouse

What Would Your File Say

What Would Your File Say

Of everything the police carried out of those homes in Yueyang, it is not the Bibles I keep thinking about. It is the files. On July 11, authorities in Yueyang, a city in China's Hunan province, raided a network of house churches. ChinaAid, which broke the story, reports

The Drone Watched the Monastery for Three Hours. Then It Fired.

The Drone Watched the Monastery for Three Hours. Then It Fired.

The sisters were preparing grain. It was the morning of Wednesday, July 22, at the Arsema monastery complex in Ethiopia's South Wollo zone, near the town of Mekane Selam in the Amhara region. The rainy season was coming, and the community was laying up stores to last through

They Were Attacked at Prayer. Then Egypt Arrested Them.

They Were Attacked at Prayer. Then Egypt Arrested Them.

The stones came first. Then the handcuffs. On the evening of July 8, in the village of El-Tal El-Qibliya in Egypt's Minya Province, dozens of residents surrounded the building where the village's Coptic Christians pray. They threw stones at the church doors. They threw

Christ the Answer, Permit Pending

Christ the Answer, Permit Pending

The church is called Christ the Answer. I keep turning the name over, because for nine years the church called Christ the Answer has been waiting for one. Nine years of signatures, identity cards, village office stamps, and recommendation letters. Nine years of doing everything asked of them, and then

Stopped at the Checkpoint: A Pastor's Family Is Taken on the Damasak Road

Stopped at the Checkpoint: A Pastor's Family Is Taken on the Damasak Road

On Saturday, July 18, a commercial vehicle left Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria's Borno state, heading northwest toward the town of Damasak near the Niger border. Among the passengers were the wife of Pastor Moses Guguma and their three children. She had just been discharged from a hospital

The Man Who Won't Rest

The Man Who Won't Rest

I have been thinking all week about a man who spent 266 days in detention and says that freedom felt disorienting. Pastor Jin Mingri, who goes by Ezra, founded Zion Church in Beijing in 2007. When the government shut its buildings in 2018, the church did not die; it scattered

No One Killed Shama and Shahzad: A Mob of Hundreds, Zero Convictions

No One Killed Shama and Shahzad: A Mob of Hundreds, Zero Convictions

On November 4, 2014, in the town of Kot Radha Kishan in Pakistan's Punjab province, a mob beat a Christian couple named Shahzad Masih and Shama Bibi, then threw them into the brick kiln where they worked and burned them alive. Shama was pregnant. They left three young