LAHORE, Pakistan, October 26, 2020 (Morning Star News) – Police in Karachi, Pakistan are ignoring the kidnapping and forcible conversion to Islam of a 13-year-old Christian girl by a 45-year-old Muslim whose two brothers are police officials, sources said.

Ali Azhar, a neighbor of the victim’s Catholic family, abducted Arzoo Raja on Oct. 13, and her family went to police that same day, said her father, Raja Lal.

“When we failed to find Arzoo, we registered a kidnapping case with the local police station,” Lal said. “On Oct. 15 we were summoned to the station, where we were shown documents which claimed that Arzoo was 18 and had willingly converted to Islam after marrying Ali Azhar.”

Police have shown no interest in arresting the accused in spite of National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) records showing Arzoo’s age as 13, as she was born on July 31, 2007, he said. Sexual intercourse with a girl below the age of 16 is statutory rape and carries a death sentence or a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison in Pakistan.

Ghazala Shafique, a Karachi-based Christian rights and social activist, said police were doing little in the case.

“Two brothers of the accused are police officials, and they are using their influence to protect him,” Shafique told Morning Star News. “Attorney [Noor Naz] Agha brought this to the court’s notice…

A Catholic archbishop in Portland led a prayer session and “exorcism” over the city and asked God to help end the violence and riots there, CBN News reports.

Portland’s Archbishop Alexander Sample prayed at his parish, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, before a Catholic sacrament and then led a Procession down the street on October 17th.

Sample called the event an “exorcism” of Portland, but he said it was more tongue-in-cheek than a true exorcism. According to CBN News, he stated, “I wasn’t trying to suggest that I think the city of Portland is possessed. It’s not that at all. It’s just a prayer of blessing prayed by the clergy, especially a bishop over a community just asking that all the influences of the Evil One be driven away.”

However, some really do believe there is a wickedness in the air at Portland. One reporter, Andy Ngo, stated on Twitter “Many of the people I’ve seen engaging in violence in Portland can only be described as wicked.”

Andy Ngo is a journalist who had been previously beaten and harassed by Antifa activists in Portland. He was sent to the hospital for injuries sustained by rioters.

But Andy Ngo isn’t the only one Tweeting about there being evil in Portland. Others in the comments section of his tweets have echoed his sentiments. One wrote, “I believe we are witnessing spiritual warfare.”

The Twitter account Cultural Front, also…

One of North Carolina’s largest churches, World Overcomers Christian Church, says it will not hold in-person services until a vaccine for coronavirus is developed.

“When our people are able to come back together, they’re going to want to greet one another and hug one another, and in my estimation, the risks are too great,” Andy Thompson, senior pastor of the 15,000-member church, told CBS 17.  “We have to figure out ways to minister to people beyond just them risking contact in the middle of a pandemic.”

According to The Christian Post, the church pointed to a recent report from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, which showed an increase in clusters of coronavirus cases linked to social gatherings.

The department defines a cluster as the occurrence of five or more epidemiologically linked cases within 14 days of each other.

The report said religious gatherings ranked third on the list of social gatherings potentially creating clusters.

In light of the report, Thompson said World Overcomers Christian Church will continue streaming services online.

“Church for us is just growing. We’ve never had this many people watching,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever go back to having church the way I did before.”

Thompson said he worries about other churches that have decided to return to in-person…

President Trump says in a new interview he identifies as a “non-denominational Christian” and that he thanks God for his healing from Covid-19.

Trump’s comments came in a written interview with Religion News Service, which called it a “rare exchange” about religion with a president who has a close relationship with Christian leaders but seldom discusses his own faith.

Trump grew up Presbyterian and was confirmed in 1959 at First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, the oldest continuously serving Presbyterian church in the U.S. He told RNS his parents “taught me the importance of faith and prayer from a young age,”

He called himself a Presbyterian when he ran for president in 2016, yet told RNS he has changed his faith identity.

“Though I was confirmed at a Presbyterian church as a child, I now consider myself to be a non-denominational Christian,” Trump said.

Trump added, “Melania and I have gotten to visit some amazing churches and meet with great faith leaders from around the world. During the unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak, I tuned into several virtual church services and know that millions of Americans did the same.”

Asked by RNS what he learned during his battle with Covid-19, Trump said he “felt the prayers of Americans from all across the country – and even around the world.”

“I said,…

Two government-sanctioned Christian organizations are seeking alternative ways to sell their religious books online due to censorship established by the Chinese Communist Party.

According to ChinaAid, The Christian Council of China – a human rights Christian group for Chinese citizens – and the Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches of China are utilizing Chinese pinyin in expressing religious terms in their books that would otherwise be censored by the CCP.

The TutorMing Mandarin Learning Tips Blog defines pinyin as “the Romanization of the Chinese characters based on their pronunciation.”

In Mandarin Chinese, the phrase “Pin Yin” literally translates into “spell sound,” the article explains. “In other words, spelling out Chinese phrases with letters from the English alphabet.”

In the case of both Christian groups, the use of pinyin has been increasingly evident in replacing or removing religious terms on the titles and descriptions of their books in order to successfully sell them online.

ChinaAid notes that since March 30, 2018, the “Holy Bible” was removed from China’s online bookstores, including Taobao, Jingdong, WeChat store, Dangdang, and Amazon China.

One online Chinese Christian bookstore, however, recently found a way around the CCP’s religious…

A bishop of The Episcopal Church announced that he’ll be stepping down from office weeks after the denomination’s disciplinary panel ruled that he violated canon law by refusing to allow same-sex marriages in his diocese.

Addressing the Diocesan Convention on Saturday, Bishop William Love of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany said he will resign as bishop on Feb. 1, 2021, according to Anglican Ink.

On Oct. 5, the denomination’s Hearing Panel found Bishop Love guilty “by clear and convincing evidence” of violating Resolution B012, a measure passed in 2018 requiring that all Episcopal dioceses allow for the blessing of same-sex unions.

The panel stated: “Depriving same-sex couples of access to matrimony materially and substantially impacts their spiritual, emotional and physical well-being as people of God. The expression of love changes dramatically when it is recognized, welcomed and witnessed. The loss of a public ceremony impacts the couple, the family and friends and the community.”

“I am very disappointed and…

Editor’s note: This two-part series explores why some evangelicals have chosen to convert to other branches of Christianity, namely Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

Evangelicalism was not enough for Joel and Stephanie Dunn, though they come from several generations of Baptists.

And in desperate pursuit of God, they wound up amid candles, incense, beautifully-painted wooden icons, and Divine Liturgy — in the communion of saints whose lives they now say have provided the medicine for their sin-sick souls.

Though Orthodox Christians comprise only 0.5% of the United States population, many of them relatively recent immigrants, some believers in Jesus have found their way into Orthodoxy after experiencing profound dissatisfaction with various forms of modern Christianity. And while many in the contemporary West have abandoned the Christian faith entirely, which The Christian Post explored in a multi-part series last year, others have traveled a more ancient path.

For the Dunns, things came to a head in 2016 when they realized that their current faith tradition, Southern Baptist, was inadequate. They were received into the Eastern Orthodox…