Christian Portal News

Read the Full Article at christian OR religion OR pastor OR pope - Google News

BBC News

In pictures: Orthodox Christmas BBC News Members of some Christian Orthodox Churches around the world have begun celebrating Christmas, which according to the Julian calendar falls on 7 January. … Religion News in BriefNew York Times Doors Wide OpenWilkes Barre Times-Leader Armenian Christmas Is Celebrated On January 6HULIQ Gather.com all 89 news articles »

(author unknown) Armenian, Christmas, Family, Orthodox

Read the Full Article at L.A. Times - Religious News

The traditional date of Jan. 6 is still observed by many Southern California Armenians, who find it more meaningful and spiritual — and less commercial — than the Dec. 25 celebration.

Never mind the stripped Christmas trees cast out along the driveways or the holiday house lights that stopped shimmering over the weekend. According to Richard Dekmejian’s Armenian calendar, Christmas is now two days away.

(author unknown) Armenian, Christmas

Read the Full Article at Moreover Technologies - Religion news - 30 of 20340 returned

[26/12/2009 19:54] Amman, Dec. 26 (Petra) — HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal, on Saturday congratulated Christians in Jordan on the occasion of Christmas. During his meeting today at the Armenian Orthodox Church with heads of churches and representatives

(author unknown) Armenian, Christmas, Orthodox

Read the Full Article at Breaking Religious News latest RSS headlines - Big News Network.com

A regional governor said on Thursday that Turkey would open an Armenian church in an eastern city to worship in 2010. Munir Karaloglu, the governor of the eastern province of Van, said they would open…

(author unknown) Armenian, Easter, Turkey, Worship

Read the Full Article at

Christian leaders representing a wide spectrum of sects were assured Monday morning by the commander of the IDF’s Civil Administration Bethlehem Coordination and Liaison Office that Christian pilgrims would have free access to the birthplace of Jesus during the Christmas holiday.

Priests, archbishops and friars representing Latin Catholic, Coptic, Greek Orthodox, Franciscan, Lutheran, Anglican, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian and Armenian Christian sects met with Lt.-Col. Eyad Sirhan, the Druse commander responsible for orchestrating pilgrimages by a diverse collection of Christian faithful.

(author unknown) Anglican, Armenian, Bishop, Catholic, Christmas, Coptic, Jesus, Lutheran, Orthodox, Priest

Read the Full Article at www.jpost.com

Father Samuel Aghoyan, a senior Armenian Orthodox cleric in Jerusalem’s Old City, says he’s been spat at by young haredi and national Orthodox Jews “about 15 to 20 times” in the past decade. The last time it happened, he said, was earlier this month. “I was walking back from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and I saw this boy in a yarmulke and ritual fringes coming back from the Western Wall, and he spat at me two or three times.”

Wearing a dark-blue robe, sitting in St. James’s Church, the main Armenian church in the Old City, Aghoyan said, “Every single priest in this church has been spat on. It happens day and night.”

(author unknown) Armenian, Orthodox, Priest

Read the Full Article at International Christian Concern

Along the Jordan River “the Christian church has not forgotten the legacy of those first followers of Christ.”

(author unknown) Armenian

Read the Full Article at Moreover Technologies - Religion news - 30 of 17898 returned

, after years of neglect by the authorities to repair the historic structure, reported the Georgian Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church on Thursday. The St. Gevorg of Mughni Church, built in 1356, had been entirely rebuilt in 1756. It is made of

(author unknown) Apostolic, Armenian

Read the Full Article at Moreover Technologies - Religion news - 30 of 18334 returned

Amid a cautious rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, Turkish officials are considering a request to allow an Armenian-language religious service to be held in a historic church near the city of Van. Van Mayor Munir Karaoglu asked Ankara to allow a

(author unknown) Armenian, Turkey

Read the Full Article at Breaking Religious News latest RSS headlines - Big News Network.com

Mosul – A 16 year old Christian was killed on the doorstep of his home in Mosul, in the neighborhood of Tahrir. The boy, Rami Katchik, belongs to the Armenian community.

(author unknown) Armenian

Read the Full Article at billtammeus.typepad.com

The book pays a fair amount of attention to the religious beliefs and practices of the passengers on the plane — and in some ways these passengers represent the religiously pluralistic America we are becoming:

“Many were praying — all those faiths, all those visions of God and the route to His Place:

“Balaji Ganesan, a Hindu, looking at the river from seat 20E, sat next to Amber Wells, a Methodist deep in her prayer.

“Heyam Kawas, a Muslim, was hunched over in prayer. . .

“A silent Russian prayer next to a silent Jewish prayer, the believers holding hands.

“There were Roman Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, and all the various Christian faiths that had set their own paths. Christmas and Easter churchgoers. Agnostics and nonbelievers. Men and women who had no idea they were religious until this moment, converts in a kind of flying foxhole.”

(author unknown) Armenian, Catholic, Christmas, Easter, God, Methodist, Muslim, Orthodox, Prayer, Russia, Women

Read the Full Article at Compass Direct News

LOS ANGELES, January 23 (Compass Direct News) – Three Christians from two different families were arrested from their homes Wednesday morning (Jan. 21) and are being held without charges, sources told Compass. Authorities took Jamal Ghalishorani, 49, and his wife Nadereh Jamali from their home in Tehran between 7 and 8 a.m., about a half hour after arresting Hamik Khachikian, an Armenian Christian also living in Tehran. Ghalishorani and his wife are Christian converts from Islam, considered “apostasy” in Iran and potentially punishable by death. The three arrested Christians belong to house churches, source said, and they hold jobs and are not supported as clergy. The arrests come as part of a tsunami of arrests in the past several months, sources said. Arrests and pressure on Christians from authorities have ramped up even further in the past few months, the source said, adding that the reasons were unclear. Another source, however, said the arrests are part of a concerted, nationwide government plan against non-Islamic faiths. “We are quite sure that these arrests are part of a bigger operation from the government,” the source said. “Maybe up to 50 people were arrested. In Tehran alone already some 10 people were arrested – all on the same day, January 21.”

(author unknown) Armenian, Iran, Islamic, People

Read the Full Article at www.catholic.org

VATICAN CITY (VIS) – This morning in the Vatican, Benedict XVI received prelates from the Episcopal Conference of Iran, who have just completed their “ad limina” visit. The conference is made up of ordinaries of the Armenian, Chaldean and Latin Churches who, the Pope reminded them, represent “the richness of unity in the diversity that exists in the bosom of the Catholic Church, to which you bear daily witness in the Islamic Republic of Iran”.

“Yesterday as today”, he went on, “the Catholic Church never ceases to give encouragement to those concerned for the common good and peace among nations. For its part neither will Iran, a bridge between the Middle East and sub- continental Asia, cease to fulfil this vocation”.

(author unknown) All Posts, Armenian, Catholic, Chaldean, Episcopal, Iran, Islamic, Pope, Vatican

Read the Full Article at Mission Network News

Nagorno-Karabakh (MNN) — Next, an unrecognized Azerbaijani breakaway republic is flying under the radar of religious rights watchdogs. Nagorno-Karabakh(nuhGORno CARAbock) just passed a draft religion law, and the president signed it. Due to go into effect this month, the law includes a ban on unregistered religious activity. Glenn Penner with Voice of the Martyrs Canada says this is bad news for believers. “It virtually gives an undefined monopoly to the Armenian Apostolic Church over preaching and spreading its faith. It restricts other faiths, such as evangelicals, to simply ‘rally their own faithful.’ In other words, evangelicals can have church services, but they are not going to be able to do evangelistic work.” The law would also censor religious literature, but the penalties for breaking the law aren’t spelled out very well. An open door for interpretation is always trouble.”Pray for clarity with the law, that the government will actually do something to really clarify the question, ‘What does it mean to disobey the law?’” Pray that the president rejects the law. Pray also for boldness for the believers.

(author unknown) Apostolic, Armenian, Azerbaijan, Canada, Evangelical, Evangelicals, Martyrs

Read the Full Article at News2

Amidst the rambling homes and cobble-stoned streets of the Georgian capital Tbilisi’s old town, two stone churches stand side-by-side, sharing a snow-covered courtyard. One, the Georgian Orthodox Church of Jvaris Mama, is alive with parishioners and lit candles. Its neighbour, the Norashen Church, sits lonely and locked. –

AFP reports Unused for nearly seven decades, the Norashen Church is at the
heart of long-running dispute between the Armenian Apostolic and the
Georgian Orthodox Churches.

The dispute has flared again in recent weeks, raising ethnic tensions
in Georgia as it is still recovering from an August war with Russia over the South Ossetia region, where ethnic Ossetian separatists broke from Georgian control in the early 1990s.

aBetterWay Apostolic, Armenian, Court, Denominations, Orthodox, Russia

Read the Full Article at News2

Although the Muslim jihadist terrorists in Mumbai attacked citizens of a majority Hindu nation, the brunt of Islamic oppression has fallen upon the many “infidel” Jews and Christians living in Islamic majority countries. Of particular severity is the persecution of Christians in the Arab/Muslim Middle East. The events in Mumbai brought home to Joseph Hakim, Vice President of the International Christian Union (ICU), the suffering of Christians in Lebanon and Egypt in particular. This reporter asked Mr. Hakim the following questions before the Mumbai terrorist attack on November 26, 2008. –

Joseph Hakim at FrontPageMagazine.com comments Yes, I personally heard Dr. Dawoud
describe his commanding officer in the Egyptian army telling him that:
‘First we will deal with the Saturday people, then with you – the
Sunday people.’ The Wahhabi extremist Islamic agenda has been
bulldozing its way through the Middle East starting from the Saudi
territory. They have ethnically cleansed the Jews first in 630 CE,
starting with the Khaybar War and continuing until today.

The
Christian cleansing began in the Ottoman Empire in 1400’s through the
1900’s and included genocide against Armenians, Assyrian and
Greek-Orthodox Christians. Antioch, which is the oldest Christian city
and the site of the first church in the world, witnessed the killing
and terrorizing of Christians by the Muslims. Many Christians were
pushed out of their homes, including my own family, which lived in
Antioch, Lebanon until the 1930’s.

Lebanon was 80% Christian,
today it is down to 30%, as a result of Arab Islamic countries secret
agenda conceived during the Lahore Convention in the 1960’s, to arm the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) with the intent to destroy
the Christian community. Still, Lebanon is the only country in the
region where the Constitution mandates a Christian President. The Taif
Agreement engineered by the Saudis in the 1990’s, transferred power
from the Christian president to the Sunni-Muslim mandated Prime
Minister.

aBetterWay Africa, Armenian, Cross, Egypt, Family, India, Iran, Iraq, Islamic, Muslim, Orthodox, Pakistan, People, Persecution, Santa

Read the Full Article at News2

With the dismantling of Saddam’s regime, anarchy has reigned in Iraq, and members of religious minorities — especially Christians — have been threatened and persecuted. –

The New American reports Westerners tend to think of Iraq as always having been a Muslim nation,
but Christians have an ancient tradition there. Some accounts trace the
presence of Christianity in Iraq to the arrival of the apostle Thomas
in 37 A.D. (In contrast, Islam did not spread to Iraq until the seventh
century A.D.) The nation’s largest Christian group, the Chaldeans, use
a liturgical language very similar to the Aramaic spoken in Palestine
at the time of Christ. While the largest number of Iraq’s Christians
are Chaldean Eastern Rite Catholics, other Christian denominations in
Iraq include Assyrians; Presbyterians; Anglicans; evangelicals; and
Greek, Syriac, and Armenian Orthodox.

Under the authoritarian, yet secularized, rule of the Sunni Muslim
Saddam Hussein, there simply was not enough freedom of movement in Iraq
for radical elements within the Shiite majority to act aggressively
toward their Sunni or Christian neighbors. In fact, traditionally,
adherents of all faiths were able to coexist in relative peace. With
the power vacuum created by the dismantling of Saddam’s central regime,
however, anarchy has reigned in Iraq, and members of religious
minorities — especially Christians — have been threatened and
persecuted.

OneNewsNow.com reports Recently, two Christian sisters were killed in Mosul by Islamic
terrorists simply because they were Christians. The violent act comes
as more than 200 displaced Christian families from Mosul started to
return to their houses after more Iraqi troops were deployed in the
city.

In the past two months, an estimated 24 to 40 Christians in Mosul have been killed because of their faith.

aBetterWay Anglican, Armenian, Catholic, Chaldean, Denominations, Easter, Evangelical, Evangelicals, Iraq, Islamic, Muslim, Orthodox, Persecution, Presbyterian, Santa

Read the Full Article at News2

Following the surprise mid-October publication of a list of 56 centralised religious organisations scheduled for liquidation, apparently for not submitting correct accounts, Russia’s Justice Ministry has refused to reveal what stage any plans for liquidation are at and precisely why the 56 organisations are on the list. –

Forum 18 News Service reports A total of 56 major religious organisations spanning confessions broadly considered mainstream in Russia are still earmarked for court liquidation because the Justice Ministry claims not to have received their accounts, Forum 18 News Service has found. Old Believer, Armenian Apostolic, Catholic, Protestant, Nestorian, Muslim and Buddhist organisations are among those on the list.

Over half of all centralised religious organisations belong to the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), but none are among the 56. This is because they were forewarned by the Ministry, religious rights lawyer Vladimir Ryakhovsky of the Moscow-based Slavic Centre for Law and Justice claimed to Forum 18.

Under the 1997 Religion Law, three local religious organisations which have existed for at least 15 years may register as a centralised religious organisation, such as a diocese or union. This may then function as an umbrella organisation for other – including newer – local organisations seeking legal status.

aBetterWay Apostolic, Armenian, Catholic, Confession, Court, Muslim, Orthodox, Persecution, Russia, Santa

Read the Full Article at News2

The argument over rights within Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre is as complicated and seemingly intractable as the Middle East conflict itself. –

BBC reports Many Christians believe the church in the heart of
Jerusalem’s old city marks the place of Jesus Christ’s death, burial
and resurrection. As such, it is arguably Christianity’s holiest site.

The church is grudgingly shared by six claimant communities – Roman
Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Egyptian
Copt and Ethiopian Orthodox – who have always jealously defended their
rights over various parts of the complex.

Rivalry between the groups dates back to the aftermath of the
crusades and to the great schism between Eastern and Western
Christianity in the 11th Century.

aBetterWay Armenian, Catholic, Easter, Egypt, Israel, Jesus, Orthodox, Santa, Unusual

Read the Full Article at News2

Rival monks brawled at one of Christianity’s holiest sites, and police have detained two clergymen for questioning. –

AP reports Rosenfeld says fighting flared over preparations for the annual
ceremony held by the Armenians to commemorate the 4th century discovery
of the cross believed to have been used to crucify Jesus.

USA Today reports “We were keeping resistance so that the
procession could not pass through … and establish a right that they
don’t have,” said a young Greek Orthodox monk with a cut next to his
left eye. The monk, who gave his name as Serafim, said he sustained the
wound when an Armenian punched him from behind and broke his glasses.

Father Pakrat of the Armenian Patriarchate said
the Greek demand was “against the status quo arrangement and against
the internal arrangement of the Holy Sepulcher.” He said the Greeks
attacked first.

aBetterWay Armenian, Cross, Denominations, Israel, Jesus, Orthodox, Santa