World

The world witnessed fleeting glimpses of the horror wrought on the Lebanese people on Aug. 4 through videos that circulated widely online, among them that dramatic footage as Rabih Thoumy celebrated Mass via livestream from Saint Maron-Baouchrieh church. He recounts the explosion and aftermath.

A court in Myanmar on Thursday sentenced the Canadian pastor of an evangelical church to three months imprisonment after finding him guilty of violating a law intended to combat the spread of the coronavirus. 

South Korean prosecutors arrested the elderly leader of a secretive religious sect Saturday as part of an investigation into allegations that the church hampered the government’s anti-virus response after thousands of worshipers were infected in February and March.

Persecuted Christians in Sudan are safer after the nation decriminalized apostasy, ended flogging and made other reforms through the new Fundamental Rights and Freedoms Act.

The president of Turkey on Friday formally reconverted Istanbul’s sixth-century Hagia Sophia into a mosque and declared it open for Muslim worship, hours after a high court annulled a 1934 decision that had made the religious landmark a museum. The decision sparked deep dismay among Orthodox Christians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly working on plans to annex about one-third of the Palestinian West Bank into Israel, but Baptists in the region are speaking out against such a move. While many U.S. evangelicals support the modern secular nation of Israel, Baptists who live and minister in that nation or the territory it occupies see the situation much differently.

Five mixed-race women born in Congo when the country was under Belgian rule who were taken away from their Black mothers have filed a lawsuit for crimes against humanity targeting the Belgian state. 

Like many restaurants around the world, Nikos Katsouris has seen his eatery in Lesbos, Greece, close due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So, he and his partner, Katerina Koveou, have been providing their former customers who are refugees items like toothpaste, diapers, and imperishable groceries. 

Baptists in the Central Asia nation of Kazakhstan have long faced persecution from their government. Now, Kazak officials are using coronavirus restrictions to again target a Baptist church.

As people in Bristol, England, joined global rallies against racial injustices, some protesters on Sunday (June 7) toppled a statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston and tossed it into the city’s harbor. A British Baptist leader who lives in Bristol told Word&Way the statue should’ve previously been removed.