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Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 21–29 August 2026

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Maharashtra’s anti-conversion law took effect on 28 August, and congregations across the state have begun asking worshippers to sign statements that they attend of their own free will — evidence manufactured in advance of an allegation nobody has made. In Palghar, twenty-two women were charged under the ordinary criminal code a week before the statute existed. Russia has designated a children’s evangelism agency an “undesirable organisation”. In Kiribati, an Adventist official explains that broadcasting evades not the state but rival pastors. Also: indigenous missionaries sent to Canada’s First Nations, a Catholic mission in Turkmenistan defining success as remaining, and Indonesian work on “algorithmic piety”.

Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 18–21 August 2026

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Indian police in Pune charged a church leader based in Great Britain under Maharashtra’s anti-conversion law eleven days before it came into force — and the interim bail order that followed contains a rare judicial proposition: an open door is not an invitation to convert. Elsewhere, the RSS held its coordination meeting without mentioning conversion, preferring the language of demographic imbalance; Shanghai reportedly extended curbs on Catholic practice to funeral rites; a Russian court fined three Baptists for missionary activity without saying what made it missionary.

Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 7–18 August 2026

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The convert, not the missionary, is the figure the law now reaches. An Acehnese court jailed a former Muslim for explaining his conversion on TikTok; a Nigerian federal court told Kano’s Hisbah it has no jurisdiction over a woman who left Islam; ten Catholics walked free in Rajasthan after 104 days in jail for defending their own Mass. In Moscow, a hostel was fined 100,000 roubles for “unlawful missionary activity” because migrant guests kept prayer mats. In Abuja, Nigeria’s Salafi da’wa movement signed peace protocols with northern Christian leaders under Muslim World League patronage.

Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends- 31 July – 7 August 2026

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This week’s briefing opens on a paradox: Nigeria’s Senate has criminalised bus preaching — not under a religion law but under a road-safety act, and defends itself by noting the ban has sat quietly in traffic regulations since 2007. Elsewhere three traditions moved to police their own missionaries: Indonesia’s MUI certified a 49th cohort of preachers, Thailand’s overseas dhammaduta office met in Ulaanbaatar to map legal obstacles, and the IMB deployed physiotherapy where preaching is unwelcome. Plus Yad L’Achim confronts the IDF, and lay Christians outpace their pastors into AI.

Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 24–31 July 2026

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India’s anti-conversion laws moved from arrest to adjudication this week: a Muzaffarnagar court refused bail to twelve people seized at a prayer meeting after a Bajrang Dal tip-off. Strasbourg, meanwhile, struck down a Bulgarian ban on door-to-door preaching. Elsewhere: the Ahmadiyya Caliph announced 267,596 new adherents at Jalsa Salana UK; Texas Baptists counted 500 decisions from a World Cup campaign; Sinhala-Buddhist critics shifted from anti-conversion bills to colonial restitution; and AI is quietly ending missionary “creative access.”