Who pays the price of conversion – the missionary or the convert? This week, India’s Supreme Court ruled that a backward-class Hindu who becomes Muslim leaves his reservation status behind, while Iran keeps the Bible from converts but not from born Christians. In Russia, Muslims praying at home are fined for “illegal missionary activity”, and in Jharkhand a tribal body warns churches against celebrating local festivals – adopting a culture counts as an offence. Meanwhile, mission is growing: Africa now has more Catholics than Europe, Southern Baptists raised a record $212.5 million, and Adventists voted $99 million for one campaign. A global survey of conflicts over proselytism, drawing on sources in more than ten languages.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 3-9 October 2026
France’s Catholic bishops become partners of the state’s anti-cult agency. A Chhattisgarh village invokes tribal self-government law to bar pastors. The Madras High Court rules that conversion by inducement, and ghar wapsi alike, disqualifies a body from foreign funding. Russian courts heard 716 “illegal missionary activity” cases in 2025, up 66%, while the Orthodox Church trains activists in “counter-sectarian mission”. In Israel, Yad L’Achim pushes door-to-door Witnesses out of Petah Tikva; in Iran, a pastor’s wife must serve 13 years for “deviant proselytising”. The common thread: majority institutions joining the regulation of outreach, and money replacing belief as its legal object.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 26 September – 2 October 2026
In Chhattisgarh, more than a thousand non-Christians filed declarations stating that they attend church of their own free will. Hindu groups took the filings to the district authorities, and churches in Dhamtari now post notices warning non-Christians that they enter at their own risk. Documents meant to prove voluntariness have become evidence of exposure. This week’s briefing also covers a Rajasthan court’s first reading of the State’s 2025 conversion law, Russian fines and donation prosecutions, an Indonesian church opposed purely as a permit dispute, the Muslim World League courting Brussels, Wycliffe’s record translation year, and Southern Baptist and Adventist agencies drawing a line around what AI may do in mission.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 12–25 September 2026
Two weeks of conflicts over proselytism, from Central Asia to Nigeria. In Kazakhstan, nine alleged Tablighi Jamaat members are tried on hidden-camera evidence; in Uzbekistan, a Shia faces prison for laments posted on Telegram; Pakistan’s top court upholds the ban on the Ahmadiyya founder’s writings. The Muslim World League plans to supply Islamic sources to AI companies, Yad L’Achim reissues an outreach booklet in Russian and Arabic, and Nigeria’s bishops warn of “neo-paganism”. Our analysis follows enforcement from the book to the channel to the private conversation, and asks why a return to ancestral religion is “homecoming” in one place and regression in another.
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 5–11 September 2026
This week’s briefing tracks a widening split in how states police religious outreach — and how outreach answers back. A Moscow Region court orders 178 New Testaments destroyed because of their publisher’s imprint; a Kyrgyz investigator says the offence was “Adventist books in their homes”; meanwhile an IMB team in South Asia distributes Scripture on QR cards costing a penny each, and an Adventist leader in Kisumu tells 4,000 people that “no one can deny you a pulpit because it’s on your hand.” Maharashtra shows the limit of that escape: its new Act has left a Catholic bishop unwilling to preach that Jesus is the one Saviour. Also: Jerusalem café affair, Indonesia’s first mass certification of preachers, and Rome’s new “Church of the Sheaves” paradigm.
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