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The new year is a good time to stand still and look at the big picture of what is happening in the world and pray not just about the individual incidents of persecution we report each week, but also the longer-term trends. Our God is sovereign, but he expects us to pray for His will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven (Matt. 6:10).
In 2017 Christians can expect to face five major challenges to their freedom of religion.
Gender identity issues have shot to the front of the equality debate and nowhere more urgently, it seems, than in the case of children. John Conroy’s documentary Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best? (BBC Two) was among the most even-handed I’ve seen on the subject, looking at the issues from all sides, but particularly that of parents.
The film took a usefully remote approach, exploring the subject through the prism of the Canadian experience, where attitudes to these issues are among the world’s most progressive. It began with an acknowledgement that modern ideas of gender diversity and gender fluidity can seem a terrifyingly long way from traditional childhood and parenting. But its chief focus was the increasing politicisation, and polarisation, of opinion in Canada. Especially between those who advocate the "affirmative" approach of believing and supporting children in their gender choices – and those who argue that gender identity is rather more complicated than that.
This is a guest post by the Rev’d Dr Gavin Ashenden, Chaplain to the Queen.
I have just returned from Paris where I was invited to be part of a conversation with three imams sponsored by Lebanese TV.
I thought they were kind, impressive and delightful people. It was a privilege to meet them and talk to them. We had many things in common, but most of all a deep attraction to God who made us, whose intentions towards us, we know, are love and mercy.
Children facing hormone treatment after being diagnosed as transgender could in fact be autistic, according to a leading psychologist.
Youngsters who believe they were born in the wrong body are seven times more likely than others to be on the autistic spectrum, said Dr Kenneth Zucker.
The autistic trait of 'fixating' on subjects could convince children they are the wrong sex, he added.
A new lab procedure that could allow fertility clinics to make sperm and eggs from people’s skin may lead to "embryo farming" on a massive scale and drive parents to have only "ideal" future children, researchers warn.
Legal and medical specialists in the US say that while the procedure – known as in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) – has only been demonstrated in mice so far, the field is progressing so fast that the dramatic impact it could have on society must be planned for now.
"We try not to take a position on these issues except to point out that before too long we may well be facing them, and we might do well to start the conversation now," said Eli Adashi, professor of medical science at Brown University in Rhode Island.
A supportive mother of a transgender child has accused the BBC of lying to her in order to get her to appear in a documentary.
Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best?, which will air on Thursday (12 January) at 9pm on BBC Two, is a This World documentary that claims to ask whether parents are 'right' to support their children’s gender identity. The BBC has claimed it is more 'balanced' than the promotional information appears to show it to be.
The program information gives an interview with Dr Kenneth Zucker, who the documentary filmmakers say ‘lost his job for challenging the new orthodoxy that children know best’.
Most millennials do not view Britain as a Christian country, according to a poll to be published tomorrow.
Instead, they view Britain as a nation with no specific religious identity. But they do believe that religion plays an important role in the lives of individuals.
The survey was carried out by pollsters ComRes and is being published tomorrow to mark the launch of the new Faith Research Centre later this month.
October 2017 marks the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act. Throughout the year this significant anniversary will generate media publicity, events, stories from women and will fire up campaigns by those who want to see the laws tightened up (or at least adhered to) and by those who want to relax the law on abortion even more.
Expect to see more focus this year on the operation of UK abortion clinics and new research on the link between abortion and preterm births. There will be further Parliamentary debate on the discriminatory provision in the Act that permits abortion to term for disability, especially in February with Committee Stage of Lord Shinkwin’s Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill and the We’re All Equal campaign in support of the Bill. It will be fascinating to see what happens in the US under the more overtly pro-life administration of Donald Trump.
In a huge victory for the pro-life advocate responsible for uncovering the grisly business of selling body parts of aborted babies, StemExpress has dropped its lawsuit against David Daleiden.
Daleiden was responsible for the undercover videos exposing the Planned Parenthood abortion business and the abortion industry selling the body parts of aborted unborn children. StemExpress was a middleman that would take the body parts from Planned Parenthood and sell them at a much higher cost to scientists and researchers conducting dubious research with them.
After it was exposed, StemExpress filed a lawsuit against the light and attempting to cover up additional video footage and information related to the sales of the body parts.
One stark, inescapable conclusion of life as a doctor is that abortion hurts. It may not be a widely publicised conclusion – after all, even pro-lifers grant that abortion is intensely personal. But that is no reason to stay quiet. If anything, the intensity and emotional involvement of a decision to terminate a pregnancy calls for urgent attention towards those hurting from it.
It has long been known by those in the pro-life movement – and, all too painfully, by those who have had terminated pregnancies – that abortion hurts not only the unborn but also the mothers involved. The facts of foetal life are now well known, and many mothers terminate pregnancies only out of desperation, or because of cultural or domestic pressure. The significance of the decision is well known to those women suffering from it: it is hidden only by an industry and ideology dependent on keeping it obscure.