Is Trump closing the door to persecuted Christians

 

The 'golden door' is 'closed': US won't admit persecuted Christian refugees in 2026, report warns

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Friday, September 04, 2026

An Ethiopian refugee who fled the Tigray conflict prays during Sunday Mass at an Ethiopian Orthodox church building built by former Ethiopian refugees, at the village next to Um Raquba refugee camp in Gedaref, eastern Sudan, on December 6, 2020. Some 400 Orthodox Christian believers attended the biggest mass at Jibreel (Gabriel) Church since it reopened its doors just over a week ago to refugees at Um Raqouba camp near the Ethiopian border. | Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP via Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The United States is on track to admit zero Christians fleeing from the world's worst countries for persecution in fiscal year 2026, according to a new report from the global watchdog Open Doors and the Evangelical refugee resettlement agency World Relief. 

The organizations unveiled their new report Thursday at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, documenting the state of Christian persecution worldwide and the number of refugees admitted into the U.S.

The release comes one month before the Trump administration is set to determine the number of refugees to be admitted to the country in fiscal year 2027, which begins Oct. 1.

“The U.S. has essentially taken this golden door and closed it,” asserted World Relief CEO Myal Greene at Thursday’s event. 

The report, titled “State of the Golden Door: Evaluating U.S. Refugee Resettlement and Asylum in Light of Global Christian Persecution,” states that the number of refugee admissions from the 50 countries on the 2026 Open Doors World Watch List had plummeted to zero in fiscal year 2026, which concludes at the end of the month. 

While the report primarily focused on persecuted Christians, it acknowledged that the halt on refugee resettlement during the Trump administration has applied to all religious minorities in those countries, not just Christians.

“Only three refugees were resettled from a country on the Open Doors World Watch List, and those individuals were not religious minorities," the report states. "We can conclude with a high degree of confidence that in FY2026, no refugees experiencing religious persecution will be resettled in the U.S."

The report is critical of President Donald Trump’s designation of an “invasion” at the southern border, his halting of all refugee resettlement in a January 2025 executive order and the administration’s implementation of guidance encouraging enforcement officials to “remove any noncitizens attempting to enter either at or between ports of entry even if they were attempting to seek asylum.”

Although refugees have been admitted to the U.S. in fiscal year 2026, the Trump administration has prioritized the resettlement of white South Africans whom it describes as “victims of unjust racial discrimination.”Statistics in the report reveal that the asylum approval rate for countries on the World Watch List decreased from 58% in fiscal year 2023 to 10% in fiscal year 2026.

As fiscal year 2026 is on track to be the first year in at least a quarter century when not a single Christian refugee was admitted to the U.S., Open Doors estimates that 388 million Christians faced persecution worldwide — one out of every seven Christians around the globe.

Open Doors CEO Ryan Brown said “the breadth of persecution” and “the depth of persecution” against Christians have increased.

Specific examples of Christian persecution mentioned by Brown include Sub-Saharan Africa, which has seen a “continued surge in the ways that violence is characterizing the ways that persecution is being experienced by Christians on the ground there,” as well as the advancement of “digital surveillance” at “exponential rates” in countries such as China, where “the church is being monitored and technology is being used as a tool to create harm and displacement.”

The actions of the Trump administration as they relate to refugees and asylum seekers come as part of an effort to prioritize border security.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Brown lamented that “one of the things that has become confused in the discourse and the dialogue, especially with Christians, is these issues of border security, these issues of … folks fleeing for economic reasons or those types of opportunities that the U.S. seems to uniquely afford them.” 

“That’s not what this report’s talking about," he said. 

“This report is specifically talking about those individuals that have a reasonable fear for their life and their safety because of their Christian faith and identity,” Brown added. “Throughout the Church history … the Holy Spirit has used people having to leave because of persecution to bring the Gospel and to … spark revival in different places around the globe.”

Brown urged Christians to “prayerfully consider those things to try to just separate those issues that often seem to convolute issues of border security, issues of folks chasing economic opportunity and look at this issue of Christian persecution and those being forced to flee persecution on its own merits.”

He doesn't believe expanding refugee resettlement will endanger the border security the Trump administration has prioritized.

“Often when we engage these conversations, we can do so with this trepidation that there … are floodgates of individuals that … if we open the door a crack … that it’s going to be overflowing with … folks that are coming in," Brown said. "That is traditionally not the case.”

Brown characterized asylum seekers as “a relatively small number of people” who “truly have no other options,” insisting that “these are thousands of cases” as opposed to “millions of cases.”

Looking ahead to fiscal year 2027, Greene maintained that he is not "optimistic to expect a significant reversal of the policy.”

“That said, we’re people of faith, and we’re committed to being faithful in our advocacy and being consistent in bringing these causes to light,” he vowed. “We wouldn’t be issuing this report if we didn’t believe that there are Christians and people close to the administration who have a deep desire to see these policy changes and what that entails.”

World Relief Vice President of Advocacy and Policy Matthew Soerens expressed hope that Trump would reimplement the policy of his first administration, where the president made “individuals who are fleeing religious persecution a priority within the refugee determination in 2019.”

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War on Christianity > Baptist pastor killed by military in Myanmar

 

Baptist pastor executed by Myanmar military junta amid conflict: watchdog

By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor Tuesday, September 01, 2026

This aerial photo taken on Oct. 29, 2021, shows smoke and fire in Thantlang, Chin State, where more than 160 buildings were destroyed by shelling from junta military troops, according to local media. | STR/AFP via Getty Images

The Rev. William, a Baptist pastor in Myanmar’s Chin state, has been killed by the country’s military junta, along with a fellow Chin Christian, Nam Ceu, according to international advocacy groups. The pastor had led his congregation for more than 25 years.

The pair had been arrested in May and held by the military since then, according to the U.S.-based International Christian Concern (ICC). The two men were accused of aiding the Hakha Chinland Defense Force, an armed group fighting the junta.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been in conflict since a 2021 coup, when the military overturned the second consecutive election victory of the party led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The takeover widened a decades-long fight between the military and ethnic armed movements, which have long contested government authority along the country’s border regions and demanded autonomy, into a nationwide war. New pro-democracy resistance groups have since allied with established ethnic forces, some of which comprise Christians.

The Rev. William, who did not use a surname, was killed on June 4, and a funeral service was held on Aug. 26 in Chungcung, reports the Maryland-based Burma Research Institute. 

The Rev. William’s church, Chungcung Baptist Church, was looted and burned in October 2021, and the village around it has faced repeated violent raids since the military junta seized power that year. The village consisted of about 300 houses.

William leaves behind a wife and five children. 

“We grieve with his family, his congregation, and our Chin brothers and sisters everywhere. This was an extrajudicial killing, carried out without due process or trial," Rev. Dr. Robin Stoops, Burma Research Institute board chairman and former associate general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, said in a statement. "But grief demands action. We call on the international community, and especially the United States, to hold those responsible accountable."

Stoops traveled through Chungcung village during a visit before the 2021 military coup.

The conflict has brought airstrikes, shelling, mass displacement and interruptions to humanitarian aid in Chin, Kayah, Kachin, Karen and parts of Shan states, where roughly 2 million Christians make their home.

The military controls only about 14% of the country’s territory.

The killing took place amid attacks on churches carried out by Myanmar’s soldiers.

Troops burned St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Kachin to the ground just ahead of the congregation’s planned Saint Patrick’s Day celebration in March 2025.

The cathedral fire came days after soldiers had already flattened a high school, the priest’s residence and the diocesan offices on the grounds, on Feb. 26 that year. Airstrikes had destroyed Sacred Heart Church in Mindat, Chin state, on Feb. 6. Less than a month later, an airstrike on March 3 destroyed the pastoral center at St. Michael’s Catholic Church, part of the Banmaw Diocese in Kachin.

Rights groups say the strikes on churches, Buddhist monasteries and other worship sites are retaliation against communities suspected of aiding ethnic resistance fighters.

The resistance groups have overrun hundreds of junta outposts, and the military has faced defections and surrenders in its ranks. The advocacy group Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust previously said the offensive brought hope to the pro-democracy movement but triggered a harsh crackdown by local commanders.

Ethnic Burman Buddhists make up most of Myanmar’s population, though the country is also home to a range of ethnic and religious minorities. Between 20% and 30% of ethnic Karen people are Christian, and Christians form a majority in Chin and Kachin states.

Decades of persecution have pushed many to flee Myanmar for neighboring India and Thailand, with some resettling in the United States or Australia, while many others remain in refugee camps near the border facing years of uncertainty.

Chin State, Myanmar

Islam's War on Christianity > One small win for the good guys in Nigeria

 

Christian woman wrongly arrested for converting from Islam: Nigerian court

By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor Sunday, August 16, 2026

Uganda Bible reading | Getty Images

A Federal High Court in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria has ruled that Islamic religious police have no authority to arrest a woman over her conversion from Islam to Christianity. The ruling curbs the reach of Hisbah, religious police units that enforce Sharia law.

The woman, identified by the pseudonym Sarah, is 22, according to Christian legal advocacy group ADF International, which supported her case.

She fled her family home in Kano State in 2025 after suffering abuse from her elder siblings, who were also trying to force her into a marriage she didn't want. Her parents had died years earlier.

Sarah took refuge with a Christian family, the Abaras, and converted to Christianity while living with them. Her siblings worked with local Hisbah police to have her arrested, and she was detained for four days, during which she was beaten and pressured to accept the marriage she had fled.

Fearing further threats after her release, the Abara family helped Sarah relocate to the city of Jos in Plateau State in January 2026. Her siblings then accused the Abaras of kidnapping her, and the family was arraigned without legal counsel on Feb. 26.

Sarah had filed a rights enforcement petition in a neighboring state on Feb. 24. On May 26, the court ruled in her favor, ordering Kano State and the Hisbah to stop pursuing her arrest over her conversion or her refusal to marry.

The court said the police’s actions were a “flagrant violation” of Sarah’s fundamental right to human dignity and freedom of religion, and it ordered financial compensation for the violations against her rights.

Sean Nelson, senior counsel for global religious freedom at parent group Alliance Defending Freedom, said the ruling affirms that Hisbah has no jurisdiction over Christians or other non-Muslims, and called the criminal case against the Abaras outrageous.

A criminal case against the Abara family remains open in Kano, where ADF is backing their defense, arguing the family helped Sarah escape danger rather than kidnapping her. The Abaras are out on bail.

Sarah said the Abara family kept her safe when she had nowhere else to go and introduced her to Christianity, and that she is thankful the court recognized her freedom to convert.

ADF International said Nigeria is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a Christian, with thousands killed for their faith each year, and that Hisbah units in several northern states have increasingly targeted Christian converts and those who support them.

The group also represented Rhoda Jatau, a Christian mother who spent 19 months in prison after being accused of sharing a video condemning the killing of a Christian student, before her acquittal in December 2024.

In 2025, a man identified by the pseudonym David was acquitted after being arrested and tortured for helping persecuted converts flee violence, the group said.

President Donald Trump said last October that Nigeria had failed to protect its Christian communities amid violence he said posed an “existential” threat to Christianity in the region.

Trump had the State Department place Nigeria on its list of countries of particular concern, a designation for governments accused of tolerating severe religious freedom violations, in a move meant to pressure Nigeria’s government. Nigerian officials have played down the violence and rejected claims that Christians face genocide.

A lawyer who uses the pseudonym Jabez Musa and advocates for Christian women and girls abducted and forced to convert to Islam told The Christian Post earlier that U.S. military intervention in Nigeria over the past year has not stopped escalating Christian persecution.

Musa said the U.S. bombed attackers with jets and it would have helped had the campaign continued, but it was not sustained. He said attackers have regrouped, attacks have increased in every region, and violence has spread into southern Nigeria.

Islamist violence has killed thousands of people in Nigeria’s mostly Christian Middle Belt farming region in recent years, and critics say the government has failed to protect its citizens. The attacks in this region are launched mostly by Islamic Fulani militias.

The U.S. launched airstrikes against Islamic State terrorists in northern Nigeria last Christmas Day and deployed troops in early 2026 for counterterrorism operations against Islamic State-linked terrorists. U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the effort had killed hundreds of militants, but most U.S. troops were withdrawn from the country last month, a move Musa believes left the intervention incomplete.

Vulgar comment by Fox News host starts backlash firestorm

 

Pastors, pundits torch Fox News host's vulgar attack on Christian journalist: 'Pack of creepy weirdos'

By CP Staff  Wednesday, July 22, 2026

The News Corp. building on 6th Avenue, home to Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, on March 20, 2019, in New York City, New York. | Kevin Hagen/Getty Images

Christian pastors and pundits expressed outrage toward a Fox News host who vulgarly attacked a Christian journalist Tuesday for questioning the morality of homosexual surrogacy.

Daily Wire reporter and commentator Megan Basham drew the ire of Fox News host and former MTV VJ Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, also known simply as Kennedy, when Basham weighed in on a viral New York Post story regarding Fox News contributor and political analyst Guy Benson announcing that he and his husband welcomed a baby girl last week.

"Benson is an incisive pundit. But there is nothing conservative about deliberately creating motherless children," Basham said. "I pray Benson and those like him on the Right would consider what they are telling the world about how unnecessary they believe mothers (or if we're talking about two women, fathers) are to the needs of children."

"Because that is what they’re declaring when they create these children through the surrogacy process. That mothers and fathers serve no specific purpose," Basham added.

Kennedy replied to Basham with an X post that said: "Bless your heart, Megan. While you're at it, go replace the batteries in your vibrator."

Kennedy's post prompted a torrent of backlash from Christians and other conservatives, some of whom suggested the libertarian pundit's remark is symptomatic of an attitude rampant at Fox News that is antithetical to the values of its core audience.

"What a pack of creepy weirdos they have over at Fox News. Who talks like this?" asked Federalist senior editor and Pagan America author John Daniel Davidson. "And who honestly thinks it's normal and healthy for a gay couple to purchase children through surrogacy? Creeps, that's who. Anyone who isn't morally insane knows that surrogacy should be illegal."

Morally insane may be a little over the top; perhaps morally obtuse would be a better fit.

"When people have no intelligent rebuttal, they turn to low-browed gutter language," evangelist Justin Peters replied to Kennedy.

"You're a pervert," replied J. Chase Davis, lead pastor of The Well Church in Boulder, Colorado.

"Batteries do need to be replaced, but they would be the ones in [Kennedy's] 'Don't Be Low Rent Monitor,'" said Douglas Wilson, senior pastor of Christ Church (CREC) in Moscow, Idaho.

Nick Freitas, a Christian who formerly served in the Virginia House of Delegates, replied to Kennedy by noting "the role of unfunny female comic has already been filled by Chelsea Handler," and urged her, "if you're going to insult someone to show everyone how cool you are at least make it clever."

"Not to mention Megan is spot on and gay couples paying women to have their babies is weird. [D]epriving a child of a mother because your sexual preference prevents creating children with your partner is abnormal and damaging to the kid," Freitas added.

Christian cultural commentator Peachy Keenan called Kennedy's retort "gross and twisted."

"Popular Fox News pundit to a conservative Christian woman (who has been undergoing major cancer treatment for several years) because she is not in favor of motherless babies. Lovely," Keenan said.

"Wow. This is what letting being on Fox News go to your head looks like," said Nick Searcy, a conservative Christian actor and director whose documentary was featured by Fox News Digital in 2020.

Conservative Christian attorney Jenna Ellis denounced Kennedy's post as "a disgusting comment that totally misses the point, like most of your vulgar commentary." She also suggested Kennedy was lashing out because she felt personally attacked by Basham.

"Kennedy officiated Guy's homosexual 'wedding' btw — that's why she's defending him, because she's defending herself too. She's all in on the degeneracy. It's her brand," Ellis said.

Auron MacIntyre, a columnist and podcast host with The Blaze, suggested Kennedy's attitude is not isolated to her at the supposedly conservative news network.

"It's really important that you understand how much Fox News hates conservatives. It's a [vile] hive of scum populated by homosexual baby peddlers and shrill spiteful girl bosses," he said.

The debate over Basham's comment came three years to the day that The Blaze and former Fox News host Glenn Beck reported that whistleblowers inside Fox News revealed that Fox Corporation was willing to match individual employee donations of up to $1,000 to far-left charities.

The charities eligible for matching included Planned Parenthood, which profits from abortion; The Trevor Project, which supports castrating minors; the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is facing federal criminal prosecution for alleged fraud; and The Satanic Temple, which has distributed satanic literature to children and filed multiple lawsuits challenging state abortion restrictions on religious grounds.

"Fox pretends to care about Christians, but some of the stuff they push internally suggests otherwise. Glory holes, trans surgeries for kids, and potential donations to Satan are a huge slap in the face to every Christian at the company, and we resent it," one whistleblower said at the time.

Fox News reportedly never responded to The Blaze's requests for comment on their findings, though The Satanic Temple was pulled from the company's charity matching portal days after Beck exposed it.

The Blaze story came a month after Daily Wire host Matt Walsh reported that Fox Corporation was endorsing an organization that offers cross-sex hormones to homeless youth, hosting a Pride-themed ice cream party at the New York headquarters of Fox News and recommending LGBT literature to its employees, including a book featuring a "glory hole."

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Aussies turning farther and farther from God

 

The 2026 Census Will Show Australians Are Still Turning Away From Christianity

Jul 17, 2026 11:00 am By Mark Rowley23 Comments

In the 2021 Australian Census, 9,886,957 people (or 38.9% of the population) ticked “no religion.”

The population selecting no religious affiliation grew from roughly 7 million people in 2016 to nearly 9.9 million people in 2021.

Australians identifying as “no religion” rose to 38.9% from 30.1% at the 2016 census and 22.3% in 2011 – an increase of 16.6% in a decade.

The data indicates a massive, multi-generational shift away from Christianity in Australia.

For the first time in Australian Census history, the 2021 results revealed that fewer than half of all Australians (43.9%) identify as Christian, a steep drop from 52.1% in 2016 and 61.1% in 2011.

Fifty years ago, in 1971, that figure was 86.2%.

St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, Dxwkx, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

The implications of this are massive, especially when growing populations who practice expansionist, proselytizing religions such as Islam are filling the void.

We can fully expect to see the Muslim population reach 1.2 million and 4.3% of Australia’s population in this year’s census.

It has been roughly doubling every decade, and Shady Alsuleiman, president of the Australian National Imams Council, has been rejoicing at the trend.

“We as a Muslim community, right now, according to the pattern and the trend, we double every 11-12 years,” he said on a podcast in 2025.

“We need to be a part of the decision making,” he said.

“Halal, for example, hijab, for example, masajid [mosques], for example. We need to plan for the next 50-100 years.”

Conversely, Sydney Catholic Schools’ manager and Network Catholic Identity, Dr. Robert Haddad, said overall the religious affiliation numbers for the 2021 Census make very “disturbing reading.”

He said the huge increase in the number of those describing themselves as “no religion” evidences that we are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of upcoming “millennials.”

“For the second census in a row, the number of Catholics has fallen both as a raw number and as a percentage of the Australian population,” he said.

“Unless something dramatic is done, we Catholics and Christians in general, run the risk of becoming an aging and shrinking minority in our own country, putting at further risk our religious freedoms. However, we must resist any temptation to fall back into the ‘bunkerm’ and redouble our efforts to evangelize the culture and emerging generations. We have to promote the faith in ways that are faithful, relevant and joyful all at the same time, which is not an easy task, but definitely a necessary one.”

So what will Australia’s 2026 Census reveal? At this point, the outcome seems painfully predictable.

A further shunning of the foundational pillar of Christianity sounds another death knell for Australia.

How responsible is the Royal Commission into Institutionalized Child Sexual Abuse for the movement away from Catholicism and Christianity? I have no doubt there is a correlation, as there should be.

My concern is that as Aussies turn farther from God, they will gravitate toward wokeism and antisemitism, both of which run hand in hand with godlessness.

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