Explained: What you need to know about the chaos surrounding Barnabas Aid

After a tumultuous power struggle that led to the ousting of the charity’s founder, Patrick Sookhdeo, the Charity Commission launched an investigation and took control of how much Barnabas Aid can spend. Now, two individuals have been arrested in connection with a fraud inquiry. Tim Wyatt delves into the chaos engulfing one of the UK’s most prominent Christian charities

What is Barnabas Aid? 

Barnabas Aid is a Christian charity which supports persecuted believers around the world. It was founded in 1993 by Patrick Sookhdeo and his wife Rosemary, focusing especially on Christians suffering in the Islamic world. Over the decades it became well-known among evangelical Christians in particular and raised millions of pounds in donations.  

It grew out of the existing ministry of Sookhdeo, who founded the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity a few years earlier. According to an account published by the previous Barnabas Aid trustees in 2016, Sookhdeo had first approached existing Christian aid agencies and missionary societies to try and raise money for believers suffering persecution in predominantly Muslim countries.  

When this was rebuffed, he decided to launch his own charity, originally calling it ’Barnabas Fund’ after the so-called “son of encouragement” who helped Paul and the early apostles plant churches in the book of Acts.  

Over time Barnabas Aid has grown into a family of charities, with branches operating in the UK, New Zealand, the United States and Australia, and has an annual turnover in the tens of millions of pounds. The charity provides humanitarian aid for impoverished Christians in dozens of countries around the world, supports Christian schools educating special needs children, resources local churches facing pressure from oppressive governments, and advocates for the persecuted church globally.  

Who is Patrick Sookhdeo? 

Sookhdeo was born in 1947 in Guyana, then a British colony in South America. His family had migrated from India generations earlier and followed Islam. When he was still a child, the family relocated to London, and a few years later Sookhdeo…