Diana Chandler

WASHINGTON (BP) – Grace Pierre Dowey, a 10-year-old girl living in a Haitian orphanage near Port Au Prince, knows she has a family in the U.S. She’s met her adoptive parents Ted and Ashley Dowey and her four siblings on Zoom, but that’s the extent of it.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (BP) –When United Believers Community Church moved to the Hickman Mills area of Kansas City at Easter of 2011, serving the area where the U.S. Census Bureau counts more than 16 percent as impoverished was a priority.

KADUNA STATE, Nigeria (BP) – Nearly 175 worshippers were abducted Jan. 18 from three churches in Kaduna State in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, Christian advocacy groups reported, after at least 35 were killed in separate attacks on villages in the Middle Belt and eastern Nigeria.

WASHINGTON (BP) – Brad Robertson was a new college graduate embarking on a career in Washington when someone invited him to King’s Church in the fall of 2021. He’d grown up agnostic, shepherded by agnostic parents.

WASHINGTON (BP) – U.S. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, both Southern Baptists, joined others at a press conference Jan. 14 urging federal authorities to block interstate abortion pill prescriptions.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (BP) – Violence against Christians is at an all-time high in 15 nations including Nigeria and Syria, Open Doors International said Jan. 14 in releasing its annual World Watch List of the 50 most dangerous countries for believers.

WASHINGTON (BP) – The U.S. government should use “peaceful methods” to fight religious persecution in Nigeria, a northeast Nigerian minister and humanitarian said in testimony before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in Washington Jan. 13.

TEHRAN, Iran (BP) – Christians have been shot as police respond to protests across Iran, a U.S.-based evangelist told Baptist Press, with Southern Baptists requesting prayer for persecuted Christians and others across the nation.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (BP) – Nigeria, Rwanda, China, Mozambique and Mexico were the most dangerous countries for Christians from 2023-2025 in five distinct categories of persecution, Global Christian Relief (GCR) said in its second annual Red List.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (BP) – Abortion remains legal in Puerto Rico despite a new law there establishing personhood at conception; while among the states, the Wyoming Supreme Court struck down legislation Jan. 6 that outlawed the abortion pill and other limitations.