In the News

The Queen has urged leaders of the Church of England to learn the "onerous but rewarding task of peacemaking" as they grapple with deep divisions over issues such as homosexuality.
 

Addressing the Church’s ruling General Synod, she warned of stormy waters ahead with "many different views" on the "difficult issues" they face.
 

But she held up the breakthrough over women bishops, an issue which took decades of argument to resolve, as proof that breakthroughs are possible “even in the midst of deep disagreements”.
 

She was speaking at the inaugural sitting of a newly elected Synod - ahead of a five-year term expected to be dominated by attempts to resolve deep splits over the Church’s teaching on homosexuality and whether to offer informal blessings for same-sex couples.
 

In a highly unusual move, much of the Synod’s main annual meeting in July next year is to be given over to group mediation sessions involving different factions in an attempt to forge some agreement on the issue.

In an article celebrating the incestuous relationship of a brother and sister who met for the first time as adults, Cosmopolitan magazine defies “the last taboo” and argues that, by virtue of shared genetics, a brother and sister coupling creates a “perfect storm” that others might be missing out on.

 

The leftwing publication has a history of pushing liberal social causes—whether it’s celebrating a woman who posted on Facebook a video of herself having an abortion, advocating for gender neutral restrooms, or praising the Kardashian/Jenner family as “America’s First Family.” Now Cosmo is pushing the taboo of incest in a new article and seemingly overlooking a potential case of child rape.

Sharia law is being openly practiced in Austria and Germany, an Austrian former Muslim has said. Sabatina James has called on the west to expel recognised Islamists in its midst, saying there can be no place for Muslims who refuse to integrate.

 

In an interview with Austrian news outlet Krone, James said: “there are democratic Muslims, no question. They are not the problem. Someone following a religion is one thing. The teachings of Mohammed are another. He has been proven to have taught and practiced violence. He called for the beating of woman and stoning of adulteresses, the execution of apostates, of people like me.

 

“If all this violence, of which I speak, has nothing to do with Islam, then Mohammed has nothing to do with Islam. The established theology of Islam must deal with [these problems]. But it lacks critical debate.”

Whether real or perceived, the stigma of unplanned pregnancy and abortion is an important issue for pro-lifers to address, especially in Christian churches, according to a new study.

 

A report by LifeWay Research found that many women facing unplanned pregnancies go silently from the church pew to the abortion clinic because they are afraid of being judged rather than helped.

 

“More than 4 in 10 women who have had an abortion were churchgoers when they ended a pregnancy,” according to the study, Baptist Press reports.

 

Only 7 percent discussed their abortion decision with someone at church; and 76 percent said the church had no influence on their decision to abort their unborn child, according to the study.

 

“That’s a huge opportunity for the church to have an impact on those decisions,” Scott McConnell, vice president of LifeWay Research, told the Christian news outlet. He called on churches to openly extend more grace to women facing crisis pregnancies.

 

“Women are perceiving judgment from the church, and that’s probably partly because there are clear teachings in the Bible including about how and why we make judgments,” McConnell said. “However, if they don’t start experiencing something different than what they’ve seen in the past, these numbers aren’t going to change.”