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Nearly half of the three million ethnic Turks living in Germany believe it is more important to follow Islamic Sharia law than German law if the two are in conflict, according to a new study.
One-third of those surveyed also yearn for German society to "return" to the way it was during the time of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, in the Arabia of the early seventh century.
The recent survey indicating that Christians are outnumbered by the non-religious covers only England and Wales but, although Northern Ireland is still the most religious part of the UK, the trend here is in the same direction.
According to the 2011 census, 10.1 per cent ticked ‘no religion’ and a further 6.8 per cent were ‘not stated’. In total this represents no fewer than 300,000 people, though it underestimates the non-religious because many tick a particular denomination for cultural reasons. The decline is also seen in weekly Church attendance, down from two-thirds of adults in the late 1960s to only one third today.
Four hundred Christians are attending a conference in London this afternoon which aims to equip church leaders to resist "the damaging culture of watching porn".
The P Word conference, which is organised by Christian charities CARE and Naked Truth is being held at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. It aims to help church leaders and others in ministry understand the problem and provide practical advice to help people resist pornography.
The ancient and wonderful song of worship “Te Deum laudamus” is so called because of the first words in Latin meaning “we praise you God”. (See here for a recent commentary). It contains in the BCP translation an unusual phrase celebrating Jesus’ humanity: “thou didst not abhor the virgin’s womb”.
Why this curious phrase to convey the incarnation? At the time when the Te Deum was written, a fierce controversy raged around how to understand the real nature of Jesus. Many thinkers, influenced by Greek philosophy, believed that things of the earth are clumsy, dirty, and destined to decay. In particular while the human body can attain a near perfect form of sorts, it often does not! It comes into being through a messy process; it gets old and falls apart, whereas the mind and particularly the soul are more pure, perhaps immortal, apparently more spiritual.
Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden Church of England Newspaper June 25
The Shared Conversation process will close with a General Synod wide conversation at York in July. It is then expected that in the autumn the House of Bishops will consider what, if any, motion on the subject of sexuality should be brought to General Synod in February.
"Pastoral Accommodation" has been floated as a term to embrace the action, short of same-sex marriage, that the Bishops might propose. Accommodation might point to a deliberate stretching of theology to tolerate what the Bible forbids.
A senior Northern Ireland politician has asked civil servants to draft a bill introducing same-sex marriage which he says could pass within the current Assembly's term.
Máirtín Ó Muilleoir said in a letter responding to another Member of the Local Assembly (MLA) that he wants the legislation passed as quickly as possible.
Exactly ten years ago, I was preparing to go to Berlin and broadcast the World Cup. The World Cup final is the most-watched sporting event on the planet—in 2014, the final game drew 1 billion viewers. I was in Germany as an ex-professional soccer player pursuing a career as a broadcaster/analyst. I never could have predicted that two years after that, I would give it all up and move to the Canadian Rockies with my wife and children.
The government’s handling of the Trojan horse affair involving schools in Birmingham was marred by fear and incompetence, creating a febrile atmosphere in which innocent explanations were rejected in order to blame “bad Muslims”, a tribunal has been told.
Andrew Faux, representing two former principals of Park View academy, the school at the centre of an alleged takeover by conservative Islamists in 2014, told the National College of Teaching and Leadership tribunal that the case against his clients rested on “snippets of misinformation”.
A woman from the West Midlands is the first person in the UK to be given a joint court order to protect her from both forced marriage and female genital mutilation. She tells her story.
"I was 17 when my father's family in South Asia first started telling him that I should be thinking about getting married," explains Zara - we have changed her name to hide her identity.
"An arranged wedding proposal came up that same year. I agreed the man would be a suitable match and we had talked online.
"We were fixing a date for the wedding when all of a sudden it was called off."
A majority of the LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community feel the need to lie about their gender or sexual identity, a survey suggests.
A poll commissioned by Pride in London asked more than 1,000 LGBT+ people how they felt about discussing their private lives in public.
Of those surveyed, 74% said they felt the need to hide their sexual orientation or gender identity.