The Christian Voices

An American pastor is now back home with his family after being imprisoned in India for over seven months on false charges. Bryan Nerren, a pastor from Shelbyville, Tennessee, traveled overseas last October to attend conferences in India and Nepal for 2 weeks.  Nerren, who is at the helm of an international non-profit ministry called Asian Children’s Education Fellowship, has been training Sunday school teachers in India and Nepal for the last 17 years. According to  The American Center for Law & Justice  (ACLJ), a Christian advocacy non-profit law group which has been representing Nerren, noted that the pastor was detained and arrested upon his arrival at the airport in Bagdogra, India for allegedly “evading a duty on funds.” Nerren was carrying a sum of money that he intended to use to cover the expenses of his trip and the conference, but according to the ACLJ, the sum was not enough to make transporting it a crime. The law group reports that Nerren had declared the f

 Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 12 Christians and kidnapped another in attacks in Benue state earlier this month, sources said. Four Christians were killed in Tse-Haaga village on May 12, area residents said. “The herdsmen invaded our village riding four motorbikes around 5 p.m. on Tuesday, May 12, and attacked us and killed four members of our village, injuring three others,” Tse-Haaga resident Clement Haaga told Morning Star News by phone. Another area resident, David Terwerse, confirmed to Morning Star News by text message that four Christians were killed and three injured. He added that in Agasha village two Christians were killed while two others were killed in Yelewata village, where five were injured. Two Christians were also killed in Tarkende village on May 6, and the herdsmen killed two Christian farmers in attacks on Saghev and Ukusu villages on May 2, he said. In Agila, a Christian was kidnapped, Terwerse said. The predominantly Christian communities are inhabit

Tribal mobs armed with clubs went to the homes of 16 families of a church in Jharkhand state, India every night for nearly three weeks, threatening to kill them if they didn’t return to their animistic Sarna religion, a pastor said. “The persecutors were going with batons and wooden sticks, not giving the Christians any chance to say no, but emphasising that either they reconvert to the Sarna fold or they would kill them right then and there,” Pastor Sarabjit Bharati of Kirpa Bhavan Salom Church, outside Banjari Patan village in Palamu District, told Morning Star News. “They went to the extent of saying, ‘If these Christians do not accede, leave Christianity and return to our Sarna fold, we will kill them and consequently go to jail for it. We do not mind.’” Of 16 church families (about 130 people) threatened in one area, Pastor Bharati said two families were terrorized into returning to their ancestral Sarna religion, which involves worship of a creator god called Dharmes and a

NAIROBI ,  Kenya , May 26, 2020  – Unable to return to her home in western Uganda due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, Rehema Kyomuhendo was in the eastern part of the country when she first heard about Christ. In March, Kyomuhendo – who is 24 but slight in stature and looks much younger – had accompanied her father, a sheikh (Muslim teacher) on a business trip from Mbarara District to Mbale District, 492 kilometers (305 miles) away. She began listening to Christian programing aired on an FM radio station. They were still at her aunt’s house in Nawuyo village, Mbale District, on May 4 when at 10 p.m. she called a business friend of her father’s whom she knew to be a Roman Catholic. “She explained to me about Christ and the way of salvation, and I got convicted and accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior,” Kyomuhendo told Morning Star News by phone. “As she was sharing Christ with me, I was so overjoyed, and my father heard my joy and woke up, came from his bedroom furiously and s

D arrin Patrick, a megachurch pastor, author, and speaker, has died. Patrick was a teaching pastor at Seacoast Church, a multi-site megachurch based in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and the founding pastor of the Journey Church in St. Louis, where he lived. In a Friday evening update, Seacoast Church  stated : “Darrin was target shooting with a friend at the time of his death. An official cause of death has not been released but it appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No foul play is suspected.” Patrick’s unexpected death came as a shock to friends and colleagues. Robby Gallaty, pastor of Long Hollow Baptist, in Hendersonville, Tennessee, said that Patrick was scheduled to speak at his church next weekend. “I just talked to him Tuesday and Wednesday,” said Gallaty. “This is the second close friend I have lost in a year.” Gallaty first met Patrick in 2015 and had invited him to speak the following year at a men’s ministry event at Long Hollow. Just before the even

A nother ancient document is causing controversy for the Museum of the Bible after a federal government prosecutor filed a  claim  that a six-by-five-inch clay tablet was stolen from Iraq. The US Attorney’s Office of Eastern New York says that Hobby Lobby legally purchased the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet for $1.6 million to loan to the museum, but the papers documenting the artifact’s purchase history were false. “In this case, a major auction house failed to meet its obligations by minimizing its concerns that the provenance of an important Iraqi artifact was fabricated, and withheld from the buyer information that undermined the provenance’s reliability," said US Attorney Richard Donoghue, who filed a foreiture claim on the Gilgamesh tablet on Monday. In an official statement to  Christianity Today , the Museum of the Bible announced it has cooperated with the investigation and is cooperating with authorities to return the tablet to Iraq. The museum also said Hobby Lobby will