Today’s Headlines:

STATE GOVERNMENT IN EASTERN INDIA CONSIDERS ANTI-CONVERSION LAW

BELARUSIAN OFFICIAL DEFENDS SERIES OF FINES ON HOUSE CHURCH

REPORT RECONFIRMS SHIFT OF CHRISTIANITY BEYOND WESTERN WORLD

Today’s Top Stories:

STATE GOVERNMENT IN EASTERN INDIA CONSIDERS ANTI-CONVERSION LAW

The government of eastern India’s Jharkhand state is considering an anti-conversion bill aimed at protecting the tribal culture, but Todd Nettleton from Voice of the Martyrs calls it an “area of concern. The idea of the bill is that nobody can be converted through enticement or through bribery or through paying them off which is a good thing. The sad thing is what this bill will be used for is to harass Christian ministries who are reaching people simply with the message of the gospel.” Comparable bills have been passed in five other states. “If it’s similar to the bills that we have seen in some of the individual states in India, as well as in nearby Sri Lanka, it will likely have a fine associated maybe with a first offense and could eventually, with repeated offenses, lead to jail time,” he said. Christians make up 4 percent of Jharkhand’s 27 million people. (Mission Network News)

BELARUSIAN OFFICIAL DEFENDS SERIES OF FINES ON HOUSE CHURCH

An official of the town administration of Bobruisk in the Mogilev region in eastern Belarus has defended a series of fines imposed on a Baptist family which hosts a church in its home. “A private home is not designated for religious worship,” said official Aleksandr Markachev. “Their services are illegal as they refuse to register their church and abide by the law.” The congregation refuses on principle to register with state authorities. Markachev rejected suggestions that church members’ rights to profess their faith freely are being violated, insisting that a number of registered churches exist locally where believers are free to attend. Pastor Yermalitsky was reluctant to discuss the matter. “We’re going to take our complaints to the procuracy here and the courts,” he said. (Forum 18 News Service)

REPORT RECONFIRMS SHIFT OF CHRISTIANITY BEYOND WESTERN WORLD

A report released this month by the Lausanne Researchers’ Network highlights the profound southern geographical shift of global Christianity in the past century. “USA Evangelicals/Evangelicals in a Global Context” provides new data on the southern shift in the evangelical movement from its roots in the U.K. and the U.S. The study shows that 80 percent of all Christians in 1900 came from Europe and North America; by 2005 it was less than 45 percent. This statistic correlates with the finding that of the estimated number of evangelicals worldwide — growing to 688 million from 250 million in the last 105 years — most are increasingly found outside of the Western world. Africans, Asians and Latin Americans are more typical representatives of evangelicalism than Americans or Europeans. People of African descent represent 31 percent of evangelicals while Asians and Latin Americans make up 15 and 13 percent respectively. The study shows that evangelicals continue to grow globally, but in the U.S. they have been declining as a raw percentage of the population. (Religion Today/Christian Post)