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 – 24–31 July 2026
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.”
Proselytism and Religious Outreach Worldwide: Conflicts, Policies, and Trends – 24 April – 1 May 2026
India: from law to lived coercion. – The internationalisation of the forced conversion debate. – Pope Leo XIV: doctrine as missionary strategy. – Iran: persecution as geopolitical byproduct. – China: the architecture of legal isolation. – A note on the “genocide” framing in Nigeria. – Islamic Da’wa Campaign Planned for FIFA World Cup 2026.