For the past 29 years, members of the Tiananmen Mothers group have urged the Chinese government to acknowledge, investigate, and apologize for the Tiananmen Square massacre, when China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) shot and killed hundreds or even thousands of students. The response: silence and the continued persecution of those who speak out. 

Two a.m. is a normal time for monks to pray, not so much for modern postulants. But about two dozen men and women and a few college students gathered at that hour in the sanctuary of Christ Community Church, which meets in a stone chapel on the campus of Montreat College in North Carolina. Their heads bowed, a soft circle of light spilled over the group near the altar in the otherwise dark church. 

Police officers in Chengdu, China, detained Pastor Wang Yi and 200 members of Early Rain Covenant Church over the weekend as they prepared to gather for a service commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake. All were released within 24 hours—but the arrests and crackdown on one of China’s most influential house churches raised alarms over the Xi Jinping regime’s growing efforts against Christians.

Daniel Auta heard gunfire and children screaming from the girls’ boarding school about five minutes away from his home in the town of Dapchi in Yobe state. Boko Haram militants had descended on the school, launching on Feb. 19 the group’s second mass school kidnapping in northeast Nigeria. Auta, pastor of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) in Dapchi, knew instantly his community would long feel the impact of the attack.

Since January we’ve closely watched the plight of about 100 Iranians invited to apply for asylum in the United States under a special U.S. law, then denied U.S. entry. The applicants—mostly Christians—remain trapped in Austria, their once-open door to America shut, and unable to return to Iran, where most have reason to fear they will face imprisonment or even execution.

Since the Chinese government implemented strict new religious regulations in February, churches in Henan province in central China have felt the brunt of a crackdown: In the past few months, authorities have closed house churches, demolished crosses, banned minors from attending church, and forced believers to take down Christian decorations from their homes.

You can safely bet Andrew and Norine Brunson did not entertain visions of grandeur when they embarked on what’s become a 24-year stint in Turkey. Back then Turkey lacked good toilets and Starbucks—both items it now enjoys. Its leaders were eager to join the European Union, and the developed world. About the time the Brunsons opened Resurrection Church in Izmir, Turkey’s Ministry of Tourism invited me on a tour of Christian sites, eager to show journalists “the other Holy Land.”