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She Appealed Her Conviction to Europe's Highest Court. Then a Democracy Refused to Let Her In.

She Appealed Her Conviction to Europe's Highest Court. Then a Democracy Refused to Let Her In.

Strip the case to its facts and it is hard to believe the facts. Päivi Räsänen is a Finnish member of parliament, a physician, a former interior minister, and a grandmother of twelve. In 2004 she wrote a booklet for her church on marriage and sexual ethics. In March of

Three Dates in Nigeria: The Anatomy of the World's Deadliest Place to Follow Christ

Three Dates in Nigeria: The Anatomy of the World's Deadliest Place to Follow Christ

On a Sunday in January, in the Kajuru area of Kaduna State, armed men waited for the singing to start. Then they blocked the church doors and marched the congregation out at gunpoint. One hundred seventy-two people. Nine escaped in the first hours. The other 163, men, women, and

The Sunday They Took the Congregation: 163 Worshippers Marched Into the Bush

The Sunday They Took the Congregation: 163 Worshippers Marched Into the Bush

The bandits waited until the service was underway. On Sunday, January 18, in a rural Christian community in the Kajuru area of Kaduna State, armed men arrived in large numbers, blocked the church entrance, and forced the congregation out at gunpoint. "It has been confirmed that 172 people were

Scrolling Past the Martyrs

Scrolling Past the Martyrs

My thumb has habits my heart never approved. Somewhere in an ordinary evening scroll, between a slow cooker recipe and an argument about a movie I will never watch, my feed has shown me a church being raided on the other side of the world. Three items, three identical rectangles.

Seven Years of Sundays

Seven Years of Sundays

It does not take much to keep me home from church. Rain has done it. A cough, a late Saturday, a stretch of sermons I privately graded and found wanting. I say that plainly because of what happened on June 14 in a hotel ballroom in Jiangyou City, China. At

Nine UN Experts Put Nigeria on Notice for the Taking of Christian Girls

Nine UN Experts Put Nigeria on Notice for the Taking of Christian Girls

In Bauchi State there is a girl who was 13 when the men took her. She was converted to Islam by force and married by force. Her case is now written into a formal United Nations communication to the government of Nigeria. She is not alone in the file. Girls

Nigeria Is Back on the List. Now Comes the Hard Part.

Nigeria Is Back on the List. Now Comes the Hard Part.

In late October 2025, President Trump announced that the United States was designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, the sharpest instrument in American religious freedom law. The announcement ended a long asking: the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom had recommended it every year since 2009. The term