Religious Liberty

Religious freedom advocates accused South Korean authorities of using the legal system against leaders of churches and new religious movements. They cite a pattern of prosecutions and asset seizures. Seoul says the cases involve fraud, not belief.

The Christian satire site The Babylon Bee sued New Mexico officials over a new state law requiring warning labels on AI-generated political satire. The suit argues the mandate compels speech and burdens protected parody. State officials have defended the law as a disclosure measure.

Police in Wenzhou, the Chinese city sometimes called 'China's Jerusalem,' raided a house church and took founding pastor David Tang into custody along with six colleagues. All seven have since disappeared with no word on their whereabouts. Advocacy groups say the raid fits a pattern of tightening pressure on unregistered congregations.

Nigerian forces have freed additional victims of recent mass kidnappings, but attacks on schools and villages continue. Church leaders say Christian communities remain particularly exposed. The government faces mounting pressure over its security response.

A California bill, SB 934, would reopen a window for lawsuits stretching back 17 years against Christian counselors. Supporters say it gives victims recourse; opponents say it exposes ministries to claims they cannot defend. The bill is moving through the legislature.

The World Council of Churches issued support for the Armenian Apostolic Church in its standoff with the Armenian government. Clergy have been detained and church property contested. The council urged authorities to respect the church's independence.

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, a seminary student and Democrat, described Bible-related instruction in public schools as propaganda, drawing a sharp rebuke from Sen. Ted Cruz and other conservatives. The exchange has turned scripture in the classroom into a defining issue in the Texas race.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport reversed plans for Islamic ritual foot-washing stations after the governor threatened to pull state funding over the accommodation. The fight has become a test case for how far public facilities may go in tailoring amenities to a single faith.

A Pakistani court delivered the first conviction stemming from the mob attacks that burned churches and homes in the Christian enclave of Jaranwala. Advocates called it a rare and overdue step toward accountability.

Christians in Tunisia describe practicing their faith quietly in a country that mixes permissive nightlife with a history of exporting ISIS fighters. Converts risk family rejection and social exclusion. Congregations meet in homes.

Advocates say jailed Chinese pastor John Cao has been diagnosed with cancer, intensifying calls for his release on medical grounds. His family has been denied visits for long stretches of his sentence.

A Baptist pastor held by Syrian authorities has been freed after weeks in detention, according to advocacy groups that pressed for his case. His congregation says he was questioned over church gatherings.

The Supreme Court is being urged to take up a religious liberty case brought by a Korean spa in Washington state that wants to remain female-only, a dispute that drew national attention over a judge's crude description of the anatomy at issue.

A small town in Andalusia has become the center of a national dispute after its Socialist-led council voted to move a centuries-old local holiday off the date tied to its patron saint's festivities.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is taking a New Jersey school district to court for barring outside adult volunteer mentors, a policy the district adopted after a complaint from an out-of-state atheist legal organization.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said liberty was never meant to be 'liberation from man's duty to family, nation and God,' pointing to the Church as one of the institutions that has held the nation together for 250 years.

Sheikh Muhammadu Sani Yahaya Jingir, a prominent Islamic cleric in northern Nigeria, faces calls for arrest and prosecution after describing Christians and other non-Muslims as 'infidels' and urging Muslims to vote accordingly.

At what was billed as a book launch in Bhubaneswar, a Hindu religious leader issued a public call to make the central Indian state of Odisha 'church-free,' a chilling escalation for the region's Christians.

Lawyers for a Liberty University student are asking the Supreme Court to revisit a decades-old ruling that bars religious studies majors from receiving grants under a state-funded tuition assistance program.

Human Rights Watch reports that the Taliban have detained six staff members of an organization working on women's and children's rights in Afghanistan.

After sustained pressure from Christian groups, the Indian government decided not to bring a controversial bill before Parliament that would have allowed Christian organizations to lose their properties.

The Armenian government's confrontation with the Armenian Apostolic Church has reached an unprecedented point, with Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II appearing in court on criminal charges.

Federal agents arrested a former teacher accused of sending a bomb threat to Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida. The message forced the cancellation of services and a sweep of the campus. Investigators traced it through the sender's own network.

A conservative legal group is challenging a school district's sex education curriculum, saying parents were not given a meaningful way to opt out of graphic material. The district says the program meets state standards. Similar suits have produced mixed results.

A new tally puts Germany and France at the top of Europe's anti-Christian hate crime counts, with hundreds of church desecrations and a woman stabbed while praying. Researchers say most incidents never reach national statistics. Church groups are pressing governments to track them separately.

New guidance bars Canadian Armed Forces chaplains from referring to God in public ceremonies, in the name of inclusivity across the ranks. Chaplains say the rule empties the role of its purpose. Defence officials describe it as a matter of respecting a diverse force.

A Vietnamese court sentenced a Montagnard pastor to seven years in prison on charges tied to unregistered worship. Advocacy groups say the case fits a pattern of pressure on ethnic minority churches in the Central Highlands. His family says he was denied a lawyer of his choosing.

Texas is expanding room for prayer and religious instruction in public schools while Connecticut moves in the opposite direction, tightening limits. Both states cite the same set of Supreme Court decisions. The split previews the next round of litigation.

Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, rejected a Wall Street Journal report describing a rise in attacks on Christians there, saying he has lived and worshiped in the country since 1973 without difficulty.

Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs is calling for a nationwide pause on Flock Safety license plate camera deployments, citing dozens of documented abuse cases and the absence of any federal framework governing their use.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya cut off CBS anchor Margaret Brennan during a Sunday interview, refusing to let the conversation move past what he says was his censorship by the previous administration during the pandemic.

A former Miss North Carolina stripped of her title says the posts used against her were a pretext and that her outspoken Christian convictions were the real reason she was targeted. Pageant officials have pointed to social media content they called racist, and she disputes their account of how it surfaced.

The family of a North Carolina pastor taken into immigration custody says he suffered a stroke while detained and was not promptly hospitalized. His congregation has rallied for his release as attorneys press for medical records.

Trump urged the Senate to pass the Protect College Sports Act, warning that women’s and Olympic programs will disappear without it. But advocates for women’s sports say the White House-backed bill could override stronger state laws barring trans-identified males from female competition, and one senator has introduced an amendment to close the gap.

Will Rosenzweig, a federal prosecutor dismissed last year over critical comments about Trump he had written years earlier as a private citizen, is suing the Justice Department. His defunct blog was surfaced online by a conservative pundit who tagged senior DOJ officials — a sequence his complaint says shows the firing was retaliation for protected speech.

“I’m here for another term,” Justice Samuel Alito said, dismissing weeks of retirement speculation that had Republicans quietly planning for a confirmation fight. His decision keeps the Court’s composition intact heading into a term that opens with a major climate case and leaves the White House without a near-term vacancy to fill.

Rep. Jim Jordan and House Republicans are raising alarm over South Korean legislation targeting “fake news,” calling it a major threat to expression in a treaty ally and warning that American platforms and outlets could be swept into its enforcement. Seoul’s governing party says the measure addresses disinformation.

“Our American heritage is Christian,” a Texas pastor told a public meeting north of Dallas, where he and his son joined dozens of residents opposing a planned Islamic development. The dispute pits land-use process against a broader argument about what a community is entitled to preserve — a fight now recurring in suburbs across the Sun Belt.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide welcomed the release of a Baptist pastor held for two weeks by Syrian authorities over Facebook posts officials deemed offensive to Islam. His detention was among the first high-profile tests of how the country’s new government will treat its shrinking Christian minority.

Vanessa Sivadge, the Christian nurse fired from Texas Children’s Hospital after alleging Medicaid fraud tied to gender procedures on minors, has settled — and the terms require the hospital to establish what is being described as the first detransitioner clinic. The outcome converts a whistleblower dispute into standing clinical capacity.

Todd Blanche has repeatedly signaled openness to federal restrictions on medication abortion, and abortion-rights groups now read those comments as a preview of Justice Department priorities rather than confirmation-hearing hedging. The nominee is on track for confirmation, which means the question moves from hypothetical to scheduled.

A 73-year-old retired nurse's decision to learn to write Tibetan offers a window into how ordinary people are holding onto cultural identity under Beijing's new ethnic 'unity' law. Quiet acts of preservation are becoming the main form of resistance.

In Nigeria's Middle Belt, drought and shrinking farmland are pushing herders and farmers onto the same ground, and the violence that follows lands hardest on Christian villages. The piece argues climate pressure is not persecution but is increasingly its accelerant.

Three non-Christian Texas mothers filed suit this week seeking to block and remove the state-mandated displays of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. The suit argues the requirement puts the state behind a specific religious text and pressures children of other faiths. Texas officials say the displays are historical rather than devotional, the same argument that has succeeded and failed in different circuits over the past two years.

Border Patrol agents arrested two Mexican pastors living in Texas who the government says overstayed their visas. The men were traveling to a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association leadership event when they were detained. The case has drawn attention from congregations that rely on clergy on temporary religious worker visas, a category with backlogs long enough that lawful status can lapse while a renewal sits unprocessed.

A cluster of blue-state attorneys general and private litigants are pursuing consumer-protection and charitable-solicitation theories against faith-based nonprofits, an approach that can impose crippling legal costs regardless of the merits. Religious liberty attorneys argue the tactic sidesteps First Amendment protections by attacking fundraising and disclosure rather than doctrine.

The Justice Department filed suit to block Montgomery County, Maryland, from enforcing its ban on firearms in public places, arguing the ordinance sweeps too broadly to survive Second Amendment scrutiny. Separately, a Maryland synagogue sued the county over the portion of the law restricting concealed carry near houses of worship, saying congregations facing antisemitic threats are being stripped of the ability to protect themselves. Both cases test how far local governments can go in designating gun-free zones.

Morse Tan, a former Trump administration official, has been blocked from leaving South Korea while he faces a defamation case over incendiary remarks about the country's president. Tan says the prosecution is political and describes the government as a "rising dictatorship" that is criminalizing criticism. South Korean law treats defamation as a criminal matter even when the statements are true, a provision long criticized by press-freedom groups.

A court in India’s Madhya Pradesh state sentenced seven Christians after finding them guilty of forceful conversions at a birthday party, closing a case that has run since April 2024. Advocates describe the convictions as the latest application of anti-conversion statutes against ordinary gatherings.

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into an Oklahoma city’s denial of a rezoning request that would have allowed a mosque to be built. Federal law bars local governments from using land-use rules to impose a substantial burden on religious exercise, and the inquiry tests that protection in a case with implications for congregations of every faith.