The use of technology is advancing and strengthening religious persecution, Open Doors CEO David Curry said in releasing his organization’s 2020 World Watch List of the 50 countries where such persecution is most severe.

The United States and the European Union are urging China to free Pastor Wang Yi, sentenced to nine years in prison in what religious liberty advocates call Christian persecution.

The State Department issued its latest designations of the world’s most serious violators of religious freedom, moving Sudan down to its next-tier watchlist.

For months, Paul and Robin Tinley have been watching people spill out of Venezuela and into Colombia, where they serve with the International Mission Board. About 5,000 a day walk away from Venezuela’s economic meltdown in hopes that they can escape hunger, crime, unemployment and lack of medical care.

For many South Korean students, participating in a midterm missions experience is life altering. They are trained and then sent out to work alongside International Mission Board missionaries in different parts of Asia.

The Chinese government designated Wulin Shenghui Church of Penglai in Shandong province, where Lottie Moon was a member during her time in Dengzhou, as a nationally protected historical and cultural site.

Persecution is spiking in India under extreme rightwing Hindu nationalism encouraged by the Bharatiya Janata Party, according to reports from across the Asian nation.

China has freed an imprisoned Christian but continues a reign of persecution including church demolitions and restrictions barring foreign students from worship, religious liberty advocates reported.

Earlier this month, the pastor of a Kurdish Christian church in northeastern Syria gathered his congregation to decide whether to leave or stay as Turkish forces pressed into the region after U.S. troops had suddenly withdrawn. Only eight families planned to leave.

Daily prayer sustained Pastor Andrew Brunson during his 735-day ordeal in prison that began after 23 years of spreading the gospel in Turkey.

A Baptist woman is dead and 12 Christians including church members, school students and teachers remain kidnapped in two successive incidents in Kaduna, Nigeria, widely attributed to militant Fulani herdsmen.

At church-based learning centers in Lebanon, refugee children receive both an education and much-needed trauma therapy.