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Last week, 33 individuals who were attempting to establish an underground church were sentenced to death. The missionary who was assisting them has been imprisoned for months, and his fate, like all of those he has come in contact with, is still perilously undetermined. Officially, their crimes are related to “attempting to overthrow” the regime of dictator Kim Jong-un. But in North Korea, where the lines between state-allegiance and cult-like devotion to government leaders is so blurry that it may no longer exist, the crimes of being a Christian and opposing the regime are one and the same. A growing...

Posted By Rick Moran On March 9, 2014 @ 1:06 pm In Politics | 34 Comments They’re being charged with attempting to overthrow the regime, but their real crime is that they were working with jailed South Korean Christian missionary Kim Jung-wook to set up 500 underground churches in North Korea.They are not being “executed.” Using that word would lend some legality and moral framework to Kim’s action. This is nothing less than a massacre of innocent human beings — a slaughter that should raise an outcry in every civilized nation of the world.The Daily Mail reports: Thirty-three North Koreans...

This is the Time Magazine Asia edition. The US edition doesn’t cover Muslims behaving badly. (via Religion of Peace)The title of the essay that got Time in trouble was “Losing Faith: The Islamization of Malaysia” which criticized the so-called moderate Muslim country for its religious intolerance toward minorities. During a party conclave in December, several UMNO leaders called specifically for Sunni Islam to be enshrined as the state religion. This came after the arrest of two Shi’ite Muslims for possessing books on Shi’ite Islam and a ban on the word Allah in reference to a non-Muslim deity, even though...

MADISON, Wis. — On a day when news headlines nationwide screamed of Gov. Scott Walker’s “apparent” knowledge of illegal campaigning going on in his office when he was Milwaukee County executive, the judge of the nearly three-year “secret” investigation into Walker’s former aides and associates summed up the meat of the matter. “The John Doe is closed and the results of the John Doe speak for themselves in terms of who has allegedly committed a crime, who has been charged with a crime and who has been convicted of a crime,” former Appeals Court Judge Neal Nettesheim told Wisconsin Reporter...

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – A high school football coach in North Carolina has been ordered to cease leading his team in prayers following a complaint by a prominent atheist activist organization. Officials with the Mooresville Graded School District recently told Mooresville High School football coach Hal Capps to stop leading the Blue Devils in prayer, and Capps has agreed to discontinue to the practice. The Madison, Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) had contacted the district last fall after learning of Capps’ practice and asserted that the prayers were unlawful. According to reports, a parent of a student had complained to...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A gunman opened fire in a cathedral on the Russian island of Sakhalin, off the country's eastern coast, on Sunday, killing a nun and a churchgoer and wounding six other people, state-run news agency RIA reported.

Restrictions, harassment, and intimidation towards people who practice their religion increased in every major region of the world in 2012 except the Americas, with Christians the major target, says a new report by the Pew Research Center. “Muslims and Jews experienced six-year highs in the number of countries in which they were harassed by national, provincial or local governments,” the study found, but Christians continue to be the world’s most oppressed religious group, with persecution against them reported in 110 countries. A recent report by the Christian group Open Doors noted that “North Korea remains the world’s most restrictive nation...

Muslim persecution of Christians is the “Achilles’ Heel” of the global Islamic movement’s image—the surest way of exposing its supremacist and intolerant elements and one of the main reasons the major media and establishment rarely report or address it. The logic (fully explained here) can be summarized as follows: Islamic and jihadi attacks targeting the West or Israel pose no problem to the image of Islam. No matter how violent or brutal, no matter how many Islamic slogans are shrieked—“Allah commands the subjugation of infidels!”—Muslim violence against the West and Israel will always be dismissed as desperate acts of disempowered,...

Gerald Molen, the producer of Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary film “2016: Obama’s America,” says he never feared his government before he learned that D’Souza is under federal investigation for election fraud. […] “I’m a little bit taken aback by the whole thing because he’s such a great American,” Molen said of D’Souza on Newmax TV’s “Steve Malzberg Show.” The conservative writer and commentator understands the process in America and how it works, Molen said. […] Asked by Malzberg if he ever felt threatened or had any feelings they should not have been making the film, Molen answered, “No. This is America....

Christian Legal Centre client, Tony Miano, was arrested this week after a woman complained that he had spoken about sexual sin. The Christian street evangelist was remanded in custody overnight and later released on bail to appear before Dundee Sheriff's Court on 22nd April. Tony, who is a former Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff, was arrested on 8th January on a charge of alleged breach of peace with "homophobic" aggravation. He was part of a street preaching team holding a week-long mission in Scotland. He was the second of the street pastors to address lunchtime shoppers in Dundee High Street. He...

Reported cases of Christians killed for their faith around the world doubled in 2013 from the year before, with Syria accounting for more than the whole global total in 2012, according to an annual survey. Open Doors, a non-denominational group supporting persecuted Christians worldwide, said on Wednesday it had documented 2,123 "martyr" killings, compared with 1,201 in 2012. There were 1,213 such deaths in Syria alone last year, it said. "This is a very minimal count based on what has been reported in the media and we can confirm," said Frans Veerman, head of research for Open Doors. Estimates by...

Open Doors, a persecution watchdog group, is out with its 2014 World Watch List, which ranks 50 countries where the persecution of Christians for religious reasons is most severe, according to the report. The organization looks at “violence, government pressures, and other related indicators” to collectively assess countries, according to The Blaze, which spoke with the group’s CEO and President Dr. David Curry. Their ranking methodology is explained in more detail here. “Not every circumstance is the same. For example, in North Korea, you have a quasi-Stalinist government that is the most difficult place to call yourself a Christian on...

Antonio Socci: In the Vatican there is a NEW PROGRESSIVE INQUISITION, and their first victims are the Franciscans of the Immaculate We would just like to remind our readers that Antonio Socci, the great Italian journalist and religion pundit, is inclined to more conservative views but is far from being a Traditionalist, and has been consistently positive in all his views of Pope Francis. So his view is that of an outsider and it is a very nice summary of the intervention in the Franciscans of the Immaculate and how it has been conducted so far. IN THE VATICAN THERE...

Dear A&E, I read that you are indefinitely suspending Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty after he quoted the Bible and said that the homosexual act is sinful. I get it, guys. I do. You punished the Christian guy for being a Christian because you got some angry emails from a bunch of whiny gay activists who lack the spine and maturity to deal with the fact that there are still people out there who have the guts to articulate opinions that they find disagreeable. In so doing, you’ve kowtowed to a pushy minority of vocal bullies who don’t even watch...

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by my (imaginary) friend, the Very Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the great State of Confusion Utopia. He is a founding member of CCCEB (Climate Change Causes Everything Bad), a charter member of President Obama’s Go For it Team, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairperson of both the Islamic Relations and Meretricious Relations Subcommittees. He is also justly proud of his expertise in the care and breeding of unicorns, for which his Save the Unicorns Foundation has received substantial Federal grants.  We are honored to have a post of this caliber by a...

The left is all in favor of free speech — until someone offers a contrary opinion. Phil Robertson of TV’s wildly popular “Duck Dynasty” offended the homosexual lobby this week with remarks about his religious faith. The A&E network show is the most-popular reality program on all of cable television, following the Robertson family of Louisiana and their business of making calls and other paraphernalia for duck hunters. The show’s success makes the bearded Mr. Robertson, who has the appearance of ZZ Top in camouflage, an unlikely celebrity because he is a born-again Christian. A writer for GQ magazine asked...

While the Japanese were celebrating the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the mastermind of that attack, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, had a sobering message for his countrymen. "We have awakened a sleeping giant," he said. Even before the war began, the admiral had warned his emperor that Japan would enjoy early victories in any war with the United States, but that winning streak would last only six months to a year, after which American industrial might would inevitably overwhelm the small island nation. He was right. For the first few months of World War II, the Japanese war...

At the risk of having at least some of what I am about to share misunderstood, I venture a few thoughts on the current Phil Robertson-Duck Dynasty -A&E story. First, it strikes me that framing it primarily as a freedom of speech issue falls short of what is really happening. The censoring of Phil Robertson is more than an attack on any man’s right to speak his mind—it is a matter of religious discrimination. It is part of a broad-brush attempt by some to delegitimize opinions and values rooted in a traditional view of scripture—the historical-grammatical method of interpreting and...

Phil Robertson has spoken out for the first time since his homophobic comments in a magazine interview went public and refused to go back on his controversial remarks, saying: ‘I will not give or back off from my path.’ The Duck Dynasty patriarch led a small Bible study group in his home town church in West Monroe, Louisiana on Sunday, granting MailOnline exclusive access. And the deeply religious outdoorsman stood by his incendiary statements –

All week long the news media, social media, and ideological attention seekers talked, discussed, lambasted, denigrated, supported, backed, or touted Phil Robertson, the patriarch of Duck Commander and Duck Dynasty.All this blathering was the result of an article in GQ written by Drew Magary. In the article, Robertson expounded on his personal views of homosexuality and gays. The backlash was shock and awe. A&E, which produces Duck Dynasty, suspended Mr. Robertson indefinitely over his comments. Then, there was shock and awe backlash against the backlash. Lost in all this kerfuffle was the article itself. It appears very few, if any...