China calls well-known house church an ‘illegal gathering’

CHINA: Authorities launched a crackdown on Early Rain Covenant Church Sunday night, arresting Pastor Wang Yi, all church elders except one, church members, seminary students, and parents of students attending the church schools. Police broke down doors, swarmed apartment complexes, and searched homes in the middle of the night, and are pressuring members to sign documents declaring Early Rain—one of the most influential house churches in China— an “illegal gathering.” Only two of those arrested have been released and are now under house arrest.

Earlier this year, Wang Yi told WORLD Magazine’s June Cheng, “Our purpose isn’t to avoid persecution but to bring both our faith and the persecution we face out into the open.”

UNITED NATIONS: Monday is the 70th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, a “boundlessly idealistic” document whose roots are broadly Western and Christian (Lebanese theologian Charles Malik was a key member of the draft committee). “The Declaration sets forth at the very beginning that the foundation of all of our rights is the profound and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family,” argued Princeton University professor Robert George. “It is not the gift of kings or potentates or presidents or parliaments, but one that is inherent.”

FRANCE: Following a fourth weekend of violent protests in Paris, President Emmanuel Macron promised on Monday a minimum wage increase and fuel tax cuts.

POLAND: “All energy sources are important, and they will be used unapologetically,” said the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wells Griffith, the moderator at the COP24 Summit, the high-level climate change gathering in Katowice. Reports suggested the United States would be an outlier, having reneged on the Paris climate agreement under President Donald Trump. But Australia and other nations joined the big four energy producers (United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait) in voting against the wording of a key report, which called for the elimination of fossil fuel use.

BRITAIN: Prime Minister Theresa May abruptly postponed Tuesday’s scheduled Parliament vote on a proposed Brexit deal, signaling the failure of two years’ negotiations and opening the way for further negotiations, or for the U.K. to leave the European Union without a deal.

MIDDLE EAST: One year after the Iraq-led coalition declared victory over ISIS in Iraq, Islamic State fighters maintain but one stronghold near the Iraq-Syria border. An analyst working in the region predicted an ISIS resurgence, though, particularly if militants are allowed to continue to return unhindered to their communities. And Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nadia Murad, the Yazidi activist and ISIS survivor, echoed that warning in her speech upon receiving the honor in Oslo Monday: “If no justice is there, the genocide will be repeated.”

Approximately 560,000 Syrians have been killed in the nearly eight-year-old Syrian war, according to latest figures.

NORWAY: The co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, Congolese obstetrician Denis Mukwege, gave a do-not-miss speech (audio in French, text in English.) Mukwege told of caring for 48 raped children (one as young as 18 months old) at his Panzi hospital in Bukavu, and also highlighted “the absence of the rule of law, the collapse of traditional values, and the reign of impunity, particularly for those in power” enabling such enduring conflicts. As Mukwege spoke, Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit fought back tears.

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Editor’s note: The first item in this article was edited to clarify language used in documents police had Early Rain Covenant Church members sign.