Roxana Stanciu (CARE) analyses hate speech and how can Christians respond to it. “Christians should be ready to be offended and to engage in meaningful conversations”.

The de-escalation is taking place in parallel to new massive demonstrations. “We want to grow in maturity and our love for the Lord at this time, so that we can withstand whatever changes that might come”, says a pastor.

More than 50 evangelical churches have been allowed to register. Johannes Reimer (Peace and Reconciliation Network) shares about the new unity and social action of Christians in the Central Asian country.

What should happen as restrictions are loosened and as impatience for normality grows? Can Christians continue to promote both freedom and responsibility?

Italy, Spain and Greece have received increasing numbers of migrants and refugees. But 6 in 10 trafficking victims in Europe are EU citizens.

A festival in Barcelona airs a documentary about religious persecution in China. It tells the sad story of Sun Yi, one of the inmates of the Masanjia labour and re-education camp.

French evangelicals welcome the “affirmation of freedom of worship as a fundamental freedom” and issue a guide with practical information about the re-operning of church buildings.

The Catholic head backs an initiative for “believers of all religions to unite spiritually (…) to implore God to help humanity overcome the pandemic”. A new inter-religious platform with an ambitious project in Abu Dhabi is behind the initiative.

“These closures are a clear hindrance to the free practice and exercise of religion”, the politicians say in a letter to the Algerian President.

The task force, which has come to light more than six years after the Supreme Court forced its constitution, has already drawn criticism.

Seventy-five years ago this week, the forces of Nazi Germany formally surrendered to Allied Forces in what came to be called Victory in Europe Day. But the 9th May is also the seventieth anniversary of a three-minute speech by Robert Schuman.

Fear of the coronavirus has also come to the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos (Greece), prompting several Christian organizations to take steps to protect the nearly 20,000 people crowded into the camp.

It is the second time in less than a month that Cuban State Security operatives 'visit' Evangelical Focus contributor Yoé Suárez. Christian Solidarity Worldwide denounces the harassment of the journalist and his family.

May this crisis make you ponder life and death, and what is truly valuable.

Big companies are using the confinement to attract new consumers. The Protestant Evangelical Committee for Human Dignity and other six platforms call to protect children and fight human trafficking.

Evangelical leaders in Colombia and Peru presented projects to their governments, to support coronavirus victims. Cuban evangelicals are actively working with those affected by the pandemia.

The coronavirus crisis in Europe is “driving a public debate about privacy, ethics and public health, and what measures are appropriate (or not) to protect it”, says Patricia Shaw of the Homo Responsibilis Initiative.

Jonathan Ebsworth of the TechHuman initiative warns that some technologies being used in Europe are “approaching a level of quasi-omniscience that no human enterprise ought to have”.

Yoe Suárez was summoned to Siboney Police Station in Havana, where he was interrogated by police and threatened with imprisonment and unspecified “repercussions” for his family.

The cinema shows many examples of viruses that affect humans, producing devastating epidemics that remind us of our fragility and vulnerability.

The Pope is offering an outpouring of indulgences. The message that Roman Catholicism is giving in these weeks of coronavirus crisis is a disarming detachment from the basic principles of the biblical faith.

Overall, only 57% of Europeans see religious freedom as a “very important” right, much behind fair judiciary (87%), gender equality (85%), free internet (69%) and others.

“Religious freedom, must include recognition of the right to protect life and to advocate against its termination, both in words and deeds”, the WEA says at the UN Human Rights Council.

As technologically simulated relationships become ever more realistic and superficially convincing, we must be aware of the risk that the simulacrum will exert a seductive appeal to our hearts.

Missiologist Jim Memory looks at the crises and opportunities Europeans have faced in the last decade.