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In the News

  • A new bishop will be consecrated to support UK Christians who support the traditional interpretation of the Bible's view on marriage.

    The position is being created by the Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON), an international group of conservative Anglicans who believe marriage is intended to be a life-long union solely between one man and one woman.

    GAFCON said the new bishop will minister to churches who have rejected the Church of England "for reasons of conscience".

    Read more.

  • The Church of England is to intervene in a general election for the second time.

    Church leaders plan to publish their advice to Christians on how they should vote over the next few days, in advance of the appearance of the main party manifestos.

    The initiative comes after the CofE tried to influence voting in 2015.

    Read more.

  • An outstanding school was put into special measures because it did not have a fence, headteachers have said as they attacked Ofsted over their "whimsical" attitude to school safety.

    Delegates at the National Association of Headteachers annual conference in Shropshire unanimously passed a motion to "deplore" a spate of recent instances where inspectors had made "inconsistent" judgements on safeguarding measures.

    In some cases, this resulted in inspectors "automatically failing" schools on safeguarding, occasionally over spurious reasons, teachers heard.

    Read more.

  • The subject of gay sex and the views of party leaders has again come up in the general election campaign.

    It hit the headlines recently when Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, a committed Christian, repeatedly tried to keep the focus on politics and not his personal beliefs.

    Now, the prime minister, a Christian and a vicar's daughter, has been drawn into the debate.

    Read more.

  • Andrew Foreshew-Cain, the first Church of England vicar to enter into a same-sex marriage, is resigning as a parish priest today.

    Foreshew-Cain, a member of the Church's General Synod who is vicar of St Mary with All Souls, Kilburn and St James, West Hampstead, said in a letter to his parishioners reported by The Sunday Times that the CofE is 'institutionally homophobic'. He spoke of his relief at leaving because he and other gay and lesbian clergy were 'barely tolerated'.

    He said the Church was 'an institutionally homophobic organisation that blindly denies its policies and practices are deliberately and harmfully discriminatory and wrong'.

    Read more.

  • Responding to the Gafcon communique: "Gretna Green and the dog that didn't bark"-opportunities and omissions.

    Marriage as source of contention has history between England and Scotland. In 1754 Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act came into force in England. It was designed to stop young people marrying without parental consent under the age of 21. It didn't apply in Scotland, where boys could marry at 14 and girls at 12. So generations of 'minors' fled to Gretna Green to be married by the village blacksmith. Scotland didn't even require the celebrant to be a priest or civil servant.

    Once again, at least in Christian terms, the Anglican Church in Scotland is going to have a different attitude to marriage from the Anglican Church in and of England.

    Read more.

  • I had not heard of Andrew Turner MP until he stood down. Undoubtedly I had been missing something. He was the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight — a place the rest of us, and seemingly Andrew, thought was perpetually stuck in about 1953.

    Au contraire; it has moved on apace. It is as swingingly modern and intolerant as every other part of the country now.

    Turner stood down because he told a local sixth-former that he wouldn't be attending some gay pride bash because he thought homosexuality was "wrong" and a "danger to society". A-level student Esther Poucher reported his comments and the local Tories quickly disowned him. He announced his resignation to make way for a new generation of people, he said.

    Read more.

  • Suppression of freedom of speech in universities is "one of the greatest problems of our time", a former chancellor has warned.

    Lord Lawson, who led a Conservative campaign for Brexit, said that political correctness is a "great blight of our age", adding students often have their way because of "totally supine" university authorities.

    "Safe space" and "no platform" movements have swept across campuses including a campaigns to ban certain speakers who are deemed offensive.

    Read more.

  • Young Muslims are being taught how the authorities can see what they do on WhatsApp by a controversial human rights group, it can be revealed.

    Cage, an advocacy organisation, who once described killer Jihadi John as a "beautiful kind man", is teaching people how to avoid criminality on the social media forum.

    A poster for the event, showing a pair of hands holding a smartphone while bound in handcuffs, promises "guidelines" on what "can and can't be done online whilst using media technologies".

    Read more.

  • Grassroots Conservatives express the greatest regret that Andrew Turner, MP for over 15 years for the Isle of Wight with a majority of 13,700, has been targeted, bullied and pressured to stand down in the forthcoming election by the same anti religious intolerance that was applied to Tim Farron MP.

    In an interview on Today on Saturday April 29, the 16 year old schoolgirl who expressed 'outrage' at Mr Turner's views, admitted that they were not a surprise to her as his voting record on 'gay marriage' was known.

    Grassroots Conservatives asks the following: Would the same targeting and bullying on social media be tolerated of Muslims in public life who held exactly the same views as Christians on the matter of homosexual practice?

    Read more.