Source: Barnabas Fund, February 5, 2019<\/p>\n
An event held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates<\/a> on February 5 was attended by [more than] 130,000 Christians; a startling occurrence in a region where Christian worship is tightly restricted and Christian converts from Islam risk imprisonment for apostasy.<\/p>\n The UAE has one of the fastest growing Christian populations<\/a> in the world, mainly due to the inward migration of Christian workers. The country has recently gained a new cathedral, 16 new churches and has around 700 Christian congregations.<\/p>\n The 48-hour papal visit to the UAE this month is unprecedented for the Arabian Peninsula and may signal a softening of the government towards the Christian community, estimated to number over one million.<\/p>\n \u00bb Full story<\/a> (and links) also describe the current state of religious freedom in this country.<\/p>\n \u00bb See also what the Secretary General of the Evangelical Alliance, Efraim Tendero, shared at the Global Conference on Human Fraternity in Abu Dhabi<\/a> or watch his two-minute video greeting<\/a> (World Evangelical Alliance) or read some comments from missiologist Todd Johnson<\/a>, who points out that good Christian-Muslim relations are critical for the future of our planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Barnabas Fund, February 5, 2019 An event held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on February 5 was attended by [more than] 130,000 Christians; a startling occurrence in a region where Christian worship is tightly restricted and Christian converts from Islam risk imprisonment for apostasy. The UAE has one of the fastest growing Christian … Continue reading UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Unprecedented Gathering of 130,000 Christians<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8373,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372\/revisions\/8373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}