Nearly 300 Christians in a northern part of India have been charged with crimes, including trying to convert Hindus to Christianity with drugs and spreading lies about Hinduism.

According to World Watch Monitor, 271 Christians were charged. Only three have been named – pastors Durga Prasad Yadav, Kirit Rai and Jitendra Ram. 

Previously, a court in August cleared the charges, but Deputy Police Superintendent Anil Kumar Pandey says the Christians are accused of “various criminal offenses, like fraud, defiling places of worship and prejudice against national integration.”

Said Sajan K. George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians: “In Uttar Pradesh Hindu radicals have fabricated unfounded accusations against innocent Pentecostal Christians.”

“There has been a surge in persecution against Christians,” he added. “Pentecostal pastors and Christian groups are under the constant watch of radical elements and the police.”

However, a lawyer for the party who filed the complaint said the Christians have been trying for years to convert people to Christianity.

“The accused handed out banned medications and drugs to visitors and under their effect influenced them to become Christians,” he said.

According to religious freedom group ADF India, Christians in the Uttar Pradesh area experienced 26 attacks on…

Two months after firing their pastor, Dean Curry, over allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies, the Life Center Assembly of God Church in Tacoma, Washington, will deliver their final verdict at a private meeting with church members on Thursday night.

Curry, 50, who has repeatedly denied the allegations against him, was removed as leader of the Life Center Assembly of God Church in July due to accusations of physical misconduct with a former church employee. Leaders at the Assemblies of God’s Northwest District Council said his dismissal was based on the “testimony of two or more witnesses.”

The formal complaint filed with state and federal agencies against Curry highlights three incidents involving three women: An ongoing relationship with a married church member that turned physical; an incident involving another married church member being visited by Curry late at night, discovered by the woman’s husband; and a female administrative employee who spoke of uncomfortable conversations with Curry that included comments on her appearance and discussions of his intimate relations with his wife.

A report from the News Tribune said…

A group of pro-life pregnancy centers in Baltimore will be given $1.1 million in legal expenses after they sued and won a case involving a city law that infringed their First Amendment rights.  

The Baltimore spending board approved the payment to the Center for Pregnancy Concerns last week, according to The Baltimore Sun newspaper. 

The law would have forced crisis pregnancy centers – which provide free testing and assistance – to post signs saying they don’t offer abortions. The Center for Pregnancy Concerns sued and won at every level, including at the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled the law violated the First Amendment rights of the centers. The Supreme Court did not take the case, although it sided in a similar case with California pro-life pregnancy centers. 

Thomas Schetelich, chairman of the pregnancy center’s board of directors, told the newspaper he would have preferred that the city stopped appealing. Baltimore was the first city to pass such a law. 

“I am enormously disappointed that there would be this level of litigation over what we thought was a very clear violation of the First Amendment,” he said. “We have no joy that we’ve won this case. We have no joy that we had to litigate this for nine years.”

Because the pregnancy centers won the case, they were entitled to reimbursements. The…

Pentecostal megachurches promoting a prosperity gospel, led by millionaire superstar pastors promising economic salvation and HIV cures, are on the rise in Nigeria, a report has said.

DW.com attended a service of one of the churches in question and charted the growth in an article on Tuesday, noting that congregations are expanding and attracting multitudes to mass events.

One ministry highlighted was that of preacher David Oyedepo, whose Living Faith Church outside Lagos is Nigeria’s third biggest Pentecostal church.

“The siege of unemployment is over in your life, the siege of business stagnation, frustration in your life are finally over,” Oyedepo promises to crowds of 50,000 people.

The multi-millionaire pastor has a net worth of over $150 million, and is building an even larger church that will have the capacity to seat 100,000 people.

Nigeria is roughly divided by its Muslim and Christian population. Half of its close to 80 million Christians are members of Pentecostal churches, attracted partially by promises of finding economic salvation and their lives being changed.

Last year an Albuquerque, New Mexico middle school, refused to allow a student to start a pro-life club, and are now facing legal action. 

Reportedly, 8th grader Dylan Fredette asked the administration at his middle school numerous times for permission to launch a Students for Life group at Rio Rancho Middle School last year but was consistently denied the right to do so by the school’s principal, Linda Kitts.

According to the Thomas More Society, which is representing Fredette, Kitts told the student that she could not allow the club because it would be too controversial and unfair to those who did not agree with him.

“Rio Rancho Middle School currently allows various non-curriculum clubs, including the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Club, Pay It Forward Club, and Chess Club. Kitts’ only explanation to Dylan regarding her refusal to allow the club was that the group’s message would be too controversial and not ‘fair,'” Thomas More Society Special Counsel Joan Mannix noted.

“That basis for denial violates Dylan Fredette’s rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Rio Rancho Public Schools’ own policies,” she said.

Purportedly, Principal Kitts has no memory of the conversation in November 2017.

CBN Reports, the president of Students for Life of America, Kristan Hawkins, seemed skeptical of the principal’s…

Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear has urged Christians not to “tear apart” their unity over theological disagreements, such as Calvinism.

“It is the Gospel that is the source of our renewal, and it is the Gospel that should be our defining characteristic as a people,” Greear said in his first presidential address at the SBC on Monday in Nashville.

Baptist Press reported that The Summit Church, in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina pastor made a promise to preach the Gospel “above all.”

“Our disagreement on finer points of theology should not tear apart our unity in the Gospel,” Greear said. “Calvinism is never an issue to me…. I can assure you that what is not biblical is sitting around bickering about finer points of theology when people are lost and going to Hell.”

“I agree with (former SBC president) Johnny Hunt. I do not know all there is to know about the particulars of Calvinism,” he added, “but what I do know is that the more I go and share Christ, the more people seem to keep getting elected.”

Over 70 churches in Charlotte, North Carolina, have come together to declare in a unified sermon series what they are for, as opposed to what they are against.

“This whole thing started for us just out of relationship,” said Chris Payne, the senior pastor of two vibrant churches that recently merged to become one congregation, in a phone interview with The Christian Post.

Payne, 41, leads New Charlotte Church, which he and his wife started in their living room eight years ago, and Church at Charlotte, a 50-year-old congregation in the city.

While with a pastor friend whom he goes running with on the weekends, the two ended up discussing the possibility of writing a set of sermons together and spoke of swapping pulpits in a demonstration of unity to the community. They proceeded and put together a simple four-part series and called it “For Charlotte.”

“We wanted to let people know what we were for. A lot of times people know what the Church is against, but not really what we are for together.”

“And we’re for the Gospel; for the Church, capital-C church; we’re for each other, our neighbors; and we’re for our city.”

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