This year marks the most violence against the Christian community leading up to the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church within the past seven years, said an advocate for persecuted Christians.

“I would say candidly that in my whole tenure at Open Doors this is a year when more is taking place on the weekend of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church than at any other time,” said Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors USA.

This Sunday marks the 15th year of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church – one of the largest prayer events in the world. Half a million churches in 150 countries are expected to participate in the event. more >>

Hundreds of Christian-sponsored events nationwide will take place Sunday to draw attention to the half million children in the U.S. foster system today.

The national Orphan Sunday campaign, led by the Christian Alliance for Orphans, is an annual grassroots event calling Christians to be involved in adoption, foster care and the global orphan ministry. Local events across the country seek to raise awareness about the orphan crisis and infuse passion into the church to tackle the problem.

“While everyone may not be called to adoption, we are all called in the body of Christ to do something on behalf of the orphan,” said Kelly Rosati, senior director of the Sanctity of Human Life Division at Focus on the Family, in the video program called, “Answer the Cry.” more >>

WASHINGTON – A Catholic leader who specializes in migration issues highlighted on Wednesday how both foreign governments and the U.S. government benefit from illegal immigrants.

And because there are benefits, J. Kevin Appleby of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the governments are not urgent about fixing the system despite how broken it may be.

“If it’s broken, then don’t fix it,” he said at a panel discussion on immigration reform Wednesday evening. more >>

The Republican Party may lose the Latino vote over its latest stance on restricting citizenship to children born to certain immigrants, warned an influential Hispanic evangelical.

Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said his group is “disappointed” with the Republican Party’s rhetoric on immigration, especially regarding the party’s consideration to amend the constitutional provision guaranteeing “birthright citizenship.”

“[It] may very well serve as the nail on the coffin to the inevitable alienation of America’s largest ethnic minority,” Rodriguez commented in a statement Tuesday. more >>

Both conservative evangelicals and liberal mainline Protestant groups are applauding a new legislation that makes the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine possession more fair.

The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, passed by the U.S. House last week, reduces the infamous 100-to-1 sentencing ratio for possession of crack cocaine versus powder cocaine to 18-to-1.

The current law mandates a minimum of five years in prison for simple possession of crack cocaine. Meanwhile, an amount of powder cocaine 100 times larger than crack cocaine would result in the same incarceration period. more >>

The nation’s largest evangelical body is urging the Florida church behind “International Burn A Quran Day” to cancel its plans.

Plans to burn Islam’s holy book on the ninth anniversary of Sept. 11 shows “disrespect” for Muslims and would only “exacerbate tensions” in Christian-Muslim relations worldwide, stated the National Association of Evangelicals on Thursday.

“It sounds like the proposed Quran burning is rooted in revenge,” said NAE President Leith Anderson, in a statement. “Yet the Bible says that Christians should ‘make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else’ (I Thessalonians 5:15).” more >>