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A Christian charity says the number of Christians persecuted for their faith around the world has gone up over the last four years.
Open Doors says every month 322 Christians are persecuted, 214 churches and religious buildings are destroyed, and there are 772 acts of violence.
Their figures are likely to be significantly lower than the numbers in reality, given the number of incidents which do not receive police, charity or media attention.
Nearly one in four 'Christians' do not believe in the story of Jesus' resurrection from the dead, according to a recent ComRes poll.
But actually, as Ludwig Kennedy once claimed in a radio debate with Lord Rees-Mogg, 'Christianity stands or falls on the claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.'
The Apostle Paul put it even more bluntly: 'If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.' (1 Corinthians 15:14) The resurrection is of 'first importance’ (1 Corinthians 15:3,4).
March 1. A new Channel 4 documentary series called "Extremely British Muslims" showed the inner workings of a sharia court inside Birmingham's Central Mosque. In the first episode, viewers witnessed the case of mother-of-four Fatima, 33, as she sought permission to divorce her drug dealer husband she says has abused her throughout their 14-year marriage. According to sharia law, Muslim women must plead their divorce cases in court, while Muslim men need only to say the words "I divorce you" three times to obtain a divorce. Birmingham Central Mosque said it allowed the sharia proceedings to be filmed in an effort to "break down misconceptions about Islam." Some 100 sharia courts in Britain are now dispensing Islamic justice outside the remit of the British legal system.
Tragic stories of Christian experiences under the Islamic State continued to emerge throughout the month of January. A Christian doctor who forfeited the chance to escape his Syrian village after ISIS had captured it because he wanted to stay and help the sick and needy, both Christian and Muslim, was kidnapped by the Muslim terrorists and ordered to renounce Christ for Muhammad. When he refused, they publicly slaughtered him. Similarly, after ISIS ordered another Christian youth in Syria to embrace Islam, he too refused and was slaughtered for it. His mother — who was prevented from burying her martyred son's body — recalled that when ISIS first invaded their village, he reminded her of Jesus' assertion in the New Testament: "If you deny me before men I will deny you before the Father."
Primary school children were taken to meet an Islamic preacher described as 'extremist' at the mosque where Lee Rigby's murderers worshipped.
The trip saw pupils from Kilmorie Primary School in Lewisham, London, meet controversial preacher Shakeel Begg, who the High Court said 'promoted and encouraged religious violence'.
Students at the school, aged eight and nine, were taken to the Lewisham Islamic Centre to take part in a discussion with the imam.
A team of doctors in Britain is to become the first in the world to modify pig organs to treat newborn babies with birth defects.
Babies born missing a section of their oesophagus, the tube linking the mouth to the stomach, are to receive transplants harvested from pigs and then modified using the child's stem cells.
The landmark life-saving treatment will be used next year by doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London on about 10 children born with severe cases of oesophageal atresia.
Religious education teachers failing to address difficult topics in the classroom, such as Christ's crucifixion, are contributing to a generation of “snowflake” children unable to cope with the harsh realities of life, an academic has claimed.
Tommy MacKay, visiting professor of education at Strathclyde University, has said that religious education is a compulsory part of the school curriculum to the age of 16, and teachers should not shy away from introducing complex subjects, including the Easter story of Christ’s death on the cross, which he says is not being taught to Scottish pupils.
Midwives may soon be carrying out surgical abortions for the first time following a major taxpayer-funded review of legislation led by a controversial law professor.
MPs and pro-life campaigners have reacted with fury after Sally Sheldon concluded that the 1967 Abortion Act has been misinterpreted in saying that only doctors could perform suction and other surgical tasks in terminations.
But she was backed by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which said the 'valuable' findings should prompt a wider review.
On Easter Sunday the Church of England, like other Christian churches, celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In this post I am going to explore two questions. 'What does it mean to say that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead?' and 'Why does the resurrection matter?'
What does it mean to say that Jesus Christ rose from again the dead?
The answer given to this question by the Church of England in Article IV of the Thirty Nine Articles runs as follows.