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For decades traditional hymns such as Abide with Me and The Lord Is My Shepherd have been staples at British funerals.
But their popularity is waning as more people opt instead for cheerier secular songs.
A shift to more balanced ceremonies which involve celebration as well as mourning has driven an increase in pop songs and poems.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has dismissed claims among Conservative supporting newspapers that the Church of England has shifted to the right as 'absolutely' not the case.
He spoke to Christian Today after he and the Archbishop of York were criticised for a three-page letter sent to all clergy and parishes about the issues in next month's general election.
Archbishops Justin Welby and John Sentamu said in their letter that 'stability' should be one of the key reference points when people were considering how to vote.
A political party in Norway has voted to ban the ritual circumcision of boys under the age of 16 and several other measures which have been blasted as an attack on minorities.
In its national annual conference over the weekend, the anti-immigrant and libertarian Progress Party (FrP) voted to also ban hijabs in public schools, as well as forbidding the religious ritual of circumcision for young men.
Just a few decades ago, people believed, as is the scientific consensus, that among humans there are only two genders: male and female.
In 2017, however, progressives argue there are dozens of human genders, including being gender-less or even "gender-fluid," meaning a person's gender changes periodically based on how he feels. They argue that gender isn't tied to scientific study and research but instead to how someone "identifies."
But a recent scientific study conducted by the Weizmann Institute of Science is tearing holes into the progressive narrative that sex and gender aren't tied to science.
They're worse than the members of the Boko Haram terrorist group, as far as Nigerian authorities are concerned.
These are the radical Fulani Islamic herdsmen who have killed more people in Nigeria than any other terrorist and insurgent groups in the African country, according to a Lagos-based intelligence consulting firm in 2014.
Considering the atrocious record of this Islamist group, it came as a big surprise when more than 400 Fulanis in Nigeria recently converted to Christianity and vowed to promote peace in their country.
Just 30 per cent of Britons feel that their religion or faith is important to them, according to the 2017 Ipsos MORI survey of global trends. That puts us at the bottom of the international table: only Swedes (29 per cent), Belgians (27 per cent) and the Japanese (22 per cent) are more secular than we are, according to this poll.
The global average, meanwhile, is 53 per cent. Muslim Indonesia heads the list with 93 per cent. Christian America is on 68 per cent, despite a recent slump in church attendance. (I'm always a bit suspicious of what Americans tell pollsters about their faith.) Even Australia – hardly a nation that flaunts its piety – is on 42 per cent.
The British Humanist Association (BHA) has expressed concern that the UK's impending exit from the European Union could make legal widespread but currently illegal religious discrimination against current and potential teachers by religious schools. The issue, which exists across England, Wales, and Scotland, follows on from the conclusion of a long-running investigation by the European Commission into the matter, which concluded earlier last year.
Currently, the UK is bound by the European Employment Directive, an EU law that says employers may only discriminate against employees on the basis of religion or belief where there is 'a genuine, legitimate and justified occupational requirement' (GOR) that such discrimination occurs – for example, requiring clergy to share the faith of the church.
However, domestic legislation goes further than this, providing a specific exemption for 'faith' schools in England and Wales to require every single teacher to share the faith of the school, regardless of whether a GOR can be claimed or not. Similarly, in Scotland, a religious school can require every member of staff to be endorsed by a religion or belief body, again regardless of whether a GOR could be claimed. Last year, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) concluded that this discrimination is 'arbitrary', goes beyond what is permitted by European legislation, and should be reviewed.
IT became a legally recognised ceremony in Scotland just 12 years ago, and a mere 82 couples enjoyed a humanist wedding in the 12 months that followed.
But the popularity of the non- religious ceremonies has now soared, and the number of people married in this way is set to top 50,000 in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, weddings conducted by Scotland's biggest religious organisations have fallen.
David Cameron may have left power months ago, but his legacy lives on. The BBC has been trumpeting same-sex weddings being carried out at British consulates in Australia which are not valid under Australian law. There have apparently already been over 30 in the capital, Canberra. The UK High Commission in Australia is without doubt acting in defiance of Australia's Parliament, which continues to reject the redefinition of marriage. This offensive attempt to meddle with Australian democracy is part of David Cameron's legacy of exporting same-sex marriage around the world.
It is the Foreign Office playing politics and wasting taxpayers' money as none of these weddings (of UK citizens) will have any legal standing in Australia. What should we expect to see next? Will it be UK embassies providing abortion facilities in Dublin, 'sex change' operations in Moscow, or off-licence drinks in Riyadh? Obviously not. On a whole host of other controversial or sensitive issues, in foreign countries with different cultures, Britain would, surely, be much more respectful.
Yes, I remember the Church of England, much more than a name, a living thing. As it happens, my own religiously confused family was not churchgoing. By the early 1950s, most of the respectable English middle class had ceased to be especially religious, though they continued to respect faith. Church attendance had ceased to be normal in most of Britain around the time of the 1914–18 war, and had begun to be abnormal after the 1939–45 war. But parents brought up in the lost age of faith still felt it right that their children should be taught beliefs they themselves had lost, but be taught them by someone else.
So through various schools I was exposed to the last enchantments of Anglicanism as it once was, full of the might, majesty, dominion, and power granted to it by the first Queen Elizabeth. These men had crowned the second Elizabeth before an astonished world in 1953, and made an ordinary young woman our anointed monarch in a ceremony of grandeur, mystery, and poetry, a vast moth-eaten musical brocade that in those days still comfortingly covered up the peeling wallpaper and cracked plaster of our national home.