(  )  Hezbollah’s fight with Israel is displacing Christians in Lebanon.  Thousands of them now find themselves far from their ancestral churches, where Christians have maintained a strong presence through centuries of Byzantine, Arab and Ottoman conquest — as well as plenty of 20th Century crises.  Believers are estimated to make up around a third of Lebanon’s population of roughly 5.5 million people.  With 12 Christian sects, the country is home to the largest proportion of Christians of any nation in the Arab world.  Many Christians had to spend most of Holy Week away from their homes due to the fighting.

(  )  Supporters of England’s nearly 500-year-old church choir tradition are trying to preserve it as the nation becomes increasingly secular.  They have launched a campaign for the government to recognize choral services as an important part of Britain’s culture under a United Nations program that seeks to protect intangible cultural heritage.  The epitome of British church choir tradition is Evensong, a weekly evening service of hymns, psalms and prayers laid out by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer of the Church of England in 1549. The service is performed by the choir, with the congregation participating simply by listening.  

(  )  Lawmakers in India are making it harder for foreign NGO’s — including Christian ones — to operate.  They have added amendments to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, which is designed to strangle Christian ministries that depend on funding from the U.S. and other places.  The Hindu Nationalist party that is running India’s federal government has made no secret of its plans to promote Hinduism over all other religions in the vast nation.  Meanwhile, in the countryside, Christians are being terrorized by radical Hindu groups which have publicly vowed to drive them out of India or kill them.