- Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, has outlawed churches and punished Christian worship for decades.
- The kingdom’s 1.4 million Christians meet in secret, but authorities are signalling more openness.
- This is the inside story of the American mission to woo MBS to build the kingdom’s first church.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
On a sunny, cloudless October morning in 2019, twenty-five American Christians gathered at the base of Jabal al-Lawz, an umber-coloured mountain in northwest Saudi Arabia.
Their leader, the evangelical author and preacher Joel Richardson, took out a Bible he’d brought from back home in Kansas, and started to read out loud.
Soon after, he and his congregation began singing hymns, while…