The BBC director general Mark Thompson has claimed that Christianity is treated with less sensitivity than other religions because it is “pretty broad shoulders”.

He suggested other faiths had “very close identity with ethnic minorities” and as a result were covered in a more careful way by broadcasters.

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense subcommittee on Foreign Policy urged the Israeli government Tuesday to garner support from Evangelical Christians around the world, and to strengthen its connection to those outside of the US.

In an Iraq torn by national and religious divides, there is no safe haven for Nuria’s family or other Arab families who convert from Islam.

Muslim family members, neighbors or employers who discover they are converts can make their lives unbearable.

Local government officials in Hungary are handing state-owned schools over to churches, unable to afford their upkeep during the economic recession, according to church sources.

“Churches are entitled to run schools in Hungary as public service providers, receiving the same taxpayers’ money as public sponsors,” said Balazs Odor, ecumenical officer of Hungary’s Reformed Church.

Translators of U.S.-based Wycliffe Associates have launched two Bible translation projects in countries where evangelism, or even reading a Bible, is forbidden.

Wycliffe CEO Bruce Smith said among the nations targeted by his organization was at least one predominately Muslim country with a strongly Islamic government, where he claimed Christians face persecution, even from family members and neighbors.

Pilgrims are flowing back to the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism on the Jordan River as Israel removes 40-year-old land mines and improves the area, but barbed wire and armed soldiers testify to the area’s tense past.

Located in a closed military area on the West Bank a few kilometers from Jericho, the site — Qasr el Yahud — has been revered since the fourth or fifth century as the place where John the Baptist recognized Jesus as the Messiah

Eleven members of one of Iran’s largest evangelical house church movements, who were charged with ‘action against the order of the country’ and drinking alcohol, have been acquitted by an Iranian court, BosNewsLife learned Friday, May 20.

The charges referred to their involvement in a house church meeting and to taking communion wine, Iranian Christians said earlier.

Two Indian Christians of a thriving Pentecostal house church in Saudi Arabia have been moved from pre-trial detention to a prison in the Saudi capital Ryadh where they are “forbidden to pray or read the Bible” and “suffer of a lack of food and medical attention.”

The two were initially detained in January and received 45-days of “pre-trial detention” on charges of attempted proselytizing.

[Update] Turns out that the pastor of a rural United Methodist church was not ‘fired’ from his job after voicing his doubts that sinners live an eternity of torment.

It was initially reported that Reverend Chad Holtz was dismissed from Marrow’s Chapel in Henderson, North Carolina, when he posted a note on his Facebook page supporting a book written by prominent young evangelical pastor Rob Bell. But Holz explains it “was less a firing and more a divorce.”

Five Iranian house church Christians were behind bars Wednesday, March 15, after being sentenced to one year imprisonment on charges of “crimes against the Islamic order” and there were reports that Iranian authorities have been burning Bibles.

The attacks come amid wider reported pressure on groups deemed dangerous by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government.

Qamar David’s life had been threatened since he and a Muslim, Munawar Ahmad, were accused of sending derogatory text messages about Muhammad in June 2006, said David’s former lawyer, Pervaiz Chaudhry.

David was convicted under Section 295-C under Pakistan’s widely condemned blasphemy laws for derogatory remarks against Muhammad in a case registered at Karachi’s Azizabad Police Station, with another case registered at Saddar Police Station pending.

Two-time Oscar winner, Al Kasha: Bob Dylan “came to the house every week for six months. In fact he wrote the album, ‘Slow Train Coming’ in in our house.

Bob was, at that time, going through a spiritual search and if you look at his track record as a writer, he was always seeking after Jesus and he finally realized that Jesus was his Savior.”

Americans may have thought that cracks in the façade and framework of evangelicalism would show up most visibly when serious evangelicals argued whether Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee would be the better presidential candidate.

But now we have a chance to see that other divisive issues among evangelicals beg for attention. The topic? Hell, and a punishing God’s use thereof.

An ethnic minority house church leader remained detained in China’s troubled northwestern Xinjiang region Sunday, March 6, after a court rejected an appeal to review his 15 years prison sentence on charges of revealing state secrets to overseas groups.

United Nations officials and local Christians have linked the sentence to Pastor Alimujiang Yimiti’s Christian conversion, his leadership of a house church with his wife Gulinuer and two sons, and apparent involvement in sharing reports of religious persecution.

While sliding close to what critics consider the heresy of “universalism” — that all humans will eventually be saved — Rob Bell never uses the term in his book.