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A family court judge told a father he was “unwise” to have taken his ultra-Orthodox Jewish children to a museum where images and exhibits depicted the theory of evolution.
Judge Judith Rowe made the remark in a judgment on a fraught custody dispute between a separated couple from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Satmar sect, which regards belief in evolution as heretical.
MPs from all major parties have called for the UK to “catch up” and recognise “gender identity” on passports and in law, increase access to sex change surgery on the NHS, and encourage transgender lesson and “gender neutral” toilets in schools.
It was the first parliamentary debate on the topic, following the January publication of a report by the Women’s and Equalities committee calling for the State to accept transgender ideology, and spread it via the education system.
The latest edition of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) has just been published surveying terrorist incidents in 2015. The trends that the GTI identifies – and our analysis of their implications for Christians are:
It is hard to imagine a more incongruous headline – just as the world’s attention focuses on the liberation of Mosul, the UK government has refused to grant a visa to the Archbishop of Mosul to attend the consecration of the UK’s first Syriac Orthodox cathedral, a church whose flock includes many refugees fleeing persecution from Islamists in Iraq and Syria.
Last week saw great celebrations as St Thomas Cathedral in London was consecrated by the worldwide head of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II. HM the Queen sent a personal message, while Prince Charles was the guest of honour and addressed the congregation. The service was attended by senior UK church leaders including the Bishop of London, while the UK Prime Minister, Rt Hon Theresa May MP, sent a letter to be read out to the congregation. Mrs May’s letter spoke of how “the appalling violence that has afflicted so many areas of the Middle East reminds us how fortunate we are to live in a country where different religious beliefs are not only tolerated, but welcomed”.
One of the great gifts of the charismatic movement was to reintroduce to the church the need and the ability to ‘test the spirits’. Those who had been involved particularly in the ministry of deliverance in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church, had never lost the clarity that the human pilgrimage and the integrity of the church was primarily defined by a spiritual struggle.
(In Response to the Bishop of Liverpool’s “Calm Down Dear- Love and Anger in the Church”.)
“The Church of our day urgently needs to heed the message of this second letter of Paul to Timothy. For all around us we see Christians and churches relaxing their grasp of the gospel, fumbling it, in danger of letting it drop from their hands altogether. A new generation .. is needed, who will guard the sacred deposit of the gospel, who are determined to proclaim it and are prepared to suffer for it, and who will pass it on pure and uncorrupted to (this) generation.–John Stott, 1&2 Timothy.
This spiritual dynamic constitutes the underlying framework on the top of which was laid the intellectual debate. Where that perception is lost, the church ceases to be the Body of Christ and becomes a political institution. Perhaps it should be no great surprise that where the church has slipped into that mode, it is attracted by political language and concepts.
A short film that is deeply critical of the church’s attitude to homosexuality is to receive its world premiere in a cathedral with the approval of the archbishop of Wales.
The 12-minute documentary, which tells the story of two former nuns who fell in love, only to be ostracised by the church after their relationship was exposed, is to be screened in St Asaph Cathedral in Denbighshire, north Wales.
All One in Christ will premiere on Tuesday and is thought to be the first gay film to be screened in a British church.
You may have missed it but yesterday was a significant day in the British Parliament. It almost passed me bye, but in the providence of God I happened to be watching the UK parliament channel (as one does) and saw the seeds of the coming disaster being sown. Bigger than Brexit, more dangerous than Same Sex Marriage, this story has gone largely unheralded and unannounced, except in a few in-house LGBT activist groups and the reliably liberal Huffington Post. The story is the first Transgender ‘debate’ in the UK parliament, on a report from the Women and Equalities Committee. Some people think that what happened in the House of Commons today is not very important at all – the BBC haven’t even reported on it. But according to some of the MPs who took part in the debate, it is one of the most significant debates in recent Parliamentary history. I am very much inclined to agree with the latter.
Goodness! There is much disquiet and distress in the Stanhope household, almost equal to the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Clinton mansion. One’s sympathies for the former are somewhat mixed. The Rev’d Dr. Vesey Stanhope, as you all know, had for many years ministered to the Anglican congregation on the shores of Lake Como (what Anglican congregation, one asks?) to the neglect of his duties as Rector of Crabtree Canonicorum. That is until my Lord the Bishop recalled him to Barset. Dr. Stanhope has just heard from the steward of his palatial villa that the Italian government, deeming the property unoccupied, have allocated a contingent of some 30 Somalians to bed down there. Should Dr. Stanhope object, or raise the slightest difficulty, he will be arrested and imprisoned the moment he sets foot on Italian soil again. One deplores government high-handed authoritarianism of course, and this has all the hallmarks of Merkelism-by-proxy, but one is also mindful that Dr. S. can no longer be Comotosed and is thus tied to his Barsetshire living – and the pastoral care of his flock – for the foreseeable future.
France’s National Assembly has voted to ban anti-abortion websites that claim to provide neutral information but actually pressurize women not to have the procedure.
The proposal, which is backed by the Socialist government and still needs to pass the Senate, would outlaw websites that deliberately mislead, intimidate or “exert psychological or moral pressure” on a woman seeking information about terminating a pregnancy, The Guardian reported.
Three years on from the definition of marriage being changed, statistics show that the demand has been insignificant, and has had to be boosted by overseas couples which represent almost half of all same-sex ‘marriages’ during this period.
There have been 58,540 traditional marriages of NZ residents during a three-year period since the law was changed[1]. Same-sex marriages during that time for NZ’ers were 1,422 representing just over 2% of total marriages – despite claims of a huge demand for same-sex marriage.
During the same three-year period, there were 1,260 ‘tourist’ same-sex ceremonies (47% of total same-sex weddings in NZ) and 7,437 ‘tourist’ marriages (only 11% of total opposite-sex marriages.)