Charisma Magazine

New Zealand-based youth evangelist Winkie Pratney is slowly recovering from a stroke that caused a brain aneurysm the day after Christmas.

"Each day we've noticed marked improvement, and his recall seems to be deepening," wrote Pratney's son, William Pratney, in a Dec. 28 blog posting at winkiepratney.com. "He began writing in a notepad we got him, attempting to remember things like people's names, books he has written, sermon topics he has spoken on."

Despite threats of violence from Muslims in an area of Egypt wracked by sectarian violence, police declined to increase security for a Coptic Christmas Eve service on Jan. 6, and six Christians were shot to death after leaving the church.

Three men suspected to be Muslims, including one with a criminal record sought by police, were in a moving car from which automatic gunfire hit Coptic Christians who had attended services at St. John's Church in Nag Hammadi, 282 miles south of Cairo. A Muslim security guard was also killed, and nine other Coptic Christians were wounded, with three of them in critical condition, according to news reports.

A coalition of faith leaders wants to put a referendum on the November ballot to allow District of Columbia residents to vote on the definition of marriage.

The Stand4Marriage DC Coalition filed paperwork with the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics on Wednesday in hopes of mobilizing citizens to repeal a bill passed last month legalizing gay marriage in Washington, D.C. The measure has been signed by Mayor Adrian Fenty and transmitted to Congress, which oversees the district's laws, to begin the required 30-day review period.

Photo: Bishop Harry Jackson, chairman of the Stand4MarriageDC Coalition, leads a rally opposing gay marriage in Washington, D.C.

A wave of arrests hit Iranian house churches during the Christmas season, leaving at least five Christian converts in detention across northern Iran, including the mother of an ailing 10-year-old girl.

Security officers with an arrest warrant from the Mashhad Revolutionary Court entered the home of Christian Hamideh Najafi in Mashhad on Dec. 16. After searching her home and confiscating personal belongings, including books and compact discs, police took her to an undisclosed location, according to Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN).

North Korea is again the world's worst persecutor of Christians, according to a new ranking released today by religious liberty advocates Open Doors.

The communist nation has topped the missions organization's World Watch List for eight consecutive years because of its long history of targeting Christians for arrest, torture and murder. California-based Open Doors estimates that of the 200,000 North Koreans languishing in political prisons, 40,000 to 60,000 of them are Christians.