What's in the News
MPS VOW TO DEFEND CHAPLAINCIES
A new all-party parliamentary group of MPs is to “name and shame” hospital trusts which make drastic cuts in chaplaincy provision. The group, which includes former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, has formed in response to a report by Christian think tank Theos which found that chaplaincy care had been slashed by 54,000 hours a year since 2005. Group member and shadow justice minister David Burrowes said trusts are seeing chaplains as soft targets. “There needs to be a recognition of the holistic care of the person,” he added. The launch coincided with an announcement from Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust that it is to restore full funding for chaplaincy after it cut levels severely last year.
Source: Baptist Times (8/11)
PRAYER SURVEY COUNTERS CLAIM THAT FAITH IS IRRELEVANT
Tearfund believes that a survey on prayer commissioned by the Christian aid charity “flies in the face of the view that faith is increasingly irrelevant in today’s secular society”. According to Chief Executive, Matthew Frost, the poll “demonstrates the prevalence and potential of prayer”. While only about one in five adults goes to church at least once a year, twice as many pray. Of the twenty million who say they pray, just under half of them do so every day. Some 68 per cent pray for family and friends, 41 per cent give thanks to God and 25 per cent intercede over world issues. The highest percentage of praying Britons was found in the capital, with roughly three in four adult Londoners praying and one in five attending church at least once a month.
ARCHBISHOP CHALLENGES CHOCOLATE TRADE
Consumers should boycott chocolate that isn’t fairly traded to help end child labour, the Archbishop of York has said. Speaking to church and community leaders in Hull to mark the work of abolitionist William Wilberforce, Dr John Sentamu cited research connecting child labour with cocoa production. According to the Stop the Traffik campaign, 12000 trafficked children work on Ivory Coast plantations to farm 43 per cent of the world’s cocoa beans. Stop the Traffik claims that manufacturers who don’t subscriber to Fair Trade practices cannot guarantee that their chocolate is produced without child labour. The irony, The Times points out, is that most of Britain’s original chocolate makers were Quakers, who spearheaded the campaign to end slavery.
CHURCH REPORT SLAMS SUPERMARKET PRESSURE ON FARMERS
Supermarkets are placing “considerable stress” on farmers through unfair methods in order to guarantee cheap food on the shopping aisles, a Church of England enquiry warns. Launching the findings, Rt Revd Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter, said “It is clear that the Supermarket Code of Practice is not working”. The research found that farmers were often paying the cost for retailers’ two-for-one offers and there was a climate of fear about speaking out. Bishop Langrish said the Church itself is a landlord to many tenant farmers and had a duty to speak up for the
livelihood of farmers. One of the report’s proposals was the appointment of an independent farming ombudsman.
AWARD FOR VICAR AS SUNNI AND SHIA CONTEMPLATE PEACE
Canon Andrew White, Anglican Vicar of St George’s Church in Baghdad and International Director of the Iraqi Institute of Peace, has received the “Pursuer of Peace Award” from the Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths, Cambridge. White’s organisation has played a key role in negotiating a “fatwa against violence”, the first step on the pathway to reconciliation in Iraq between the rival Sunni and Shia factions. Canon White said that the fatwa would equate to statutory authority for all Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq and was to be signed by two of their respective, most senior leaders. The Woolf Institute announced that Canon White would receive the award for his “tireless work in bringing hope to broken people in a torn region.”
SEPTEMBER 2007
METAL PRICES FUEL CRIMEWAVE AGAINST CHURCHES
Soaring world metal prices have fuelled thefts from churches worth more than £3.5million. Church bells to call worshippers to prayer have instead joined statues and lead roofs in becoming a magnet for thieves.
Ecclesiastical Insurance has already received 1,000 claims this year. It is thought that criminal gangs are shipping the stolen materials to countries such as Dubai, India and China where there are shortages of metal to meet booming construction needs. In Leeds, Revd Robin Paterson of St Mary’s Church, Middleton, recently took the step of sleeping in the nave in a bid to stop further thefts.
POPE PUTS CHURCH ON GREEN ALERT
Pope Benedict XVl will highlight stewardship of the environment in the first Vatican encyclical on social issues since 1991. The Pope has already surprised Vatican observers by repeatedly hammering home green concerns, the Catholic Herald reports. At a youth rally in Loreto, for example, he urged world leaders to make ‘courageous decisions … before it’s too late’. Days later, he backed an international conference on protecting the Arctic, saying ‘the protection of water sources and attention to climate change are matters of utmost importance for the entire human family’.
Source: Catholic Herald (21/9)
BISHOP VOICES FEARS FOR SAFETY OF CONVERTS FROM ISLAM
The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, says Christian converts from Islam could be in danger of ‘honour killings’ in Britain. The Pakistan-born bishop told Channel 4’s Dispatches programme that converts could die unless Muslim leaders defended ‘basic civil liberties, including the right [of people] to … change their beliefs’.
The programme told the story of a Bradford family who have faced daily abuse and violence since their conversion. Nissar Hussein told interviewers he was ‘told categorically had I been in an Islamic country … they would actually be the first to chop off my head’. The Barnabas Fund, featured in the documentary, said they hoped it would lead to political and religious leaders taking the issue more seriously.
Sources: Church Times (21/9); Church of England Newspaper (21/9); The Times (16/9)
CHURCHES DEMAND CLUSTER BOMBS BAN
The Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Churches have united in urging the Government to ban the use of cluster bombs by UK forces. Ten years after the UK championed the Mine Ban Treaty, leaders of the three denominations called for an end to the use of ‘inhumane’ cluster munitions. These scatter smaller bombs over a wide area and pose dangers to civilians during and after conflicts.
Although the Government has committed itself to the Oslo Process, which is working towards a treaty on these weapons, the MoD recently reclassified one of its rocket systems that previously fell into this category. Methodist general secretary Revd David Deeks said that while some cluster munitions had been withdrawn, it was now ‘time for the Government to act on the promises made earlier this year’.
Sources: Baptist Times (20/9); Methodist Recorder (20/9)
CHURCH CREATES ISLAND IN SECOND LIFE
The Churches Advertising Network (CAN) has created an island in the virtual world of Second Life and is inviting online seekers to come ashore and ‘Have a second go at life’. Second Life consultant Andrew Down has built the island as a version of first-century Palestine and furnished it with the St Pixels church, cafes, pubs and pools for meditating by. CAN member Simon Jenkins said that Second Life users generally ‘tend to be a bit hostile to organised religion’. So they deliberately incorporated some fun elements to the island, such as the Everlasting Arms pub, the We Three Kings of Orient Arbucks coffee bar and the Zacchaeus bonsai shop. The island will be linked to CAN’s ‘real life’ advertising campaign this Christmas inviting people to take ‘a second chance at life’.
Source: The Times (21/9)
AUGUST 2007
CATHOLICS URGE AMNESTY NOT TO BACK ABORTION RIGHTS
Senior leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have appealed to Amnesty International not to adopt pro-abortion policies, following a new policy agreed this April. On the eve of the human rights organisation’s international council meeting, senior leaders in Rome, Britain and the USA warned that Catholics would have to withdraw their support if Amnesty continued on this course. The April decision was to support abortion in ‘hard cases’ such as rape, sexual assault, incest or risk to a woman’s life. Amnesty says the issue arose over the rape of women in war zones like Darfur, but Catholics fear the organisation is sliding towards an abortion rights stance. The Bishop of East Anglia, Rt Revd Michael Evans, said, ‘The world needs Amnesty International’ and hoped its work of challenging wrongful imprisonment and ‘degrading treatment’ would ‘long’ continue. However, active Catholic participation would be threatened by a ‘policy supporting the right to abortion’.
HOSTAGES TRIGGER BACKLASH AGAINST KOREAN CHURCH
The Taliban shootings of two South Korean Christians have triggered as much resentment against the Church’s meteoric growth in Korea as they have sympathy for the victims, reports suggest. Saemmul Presbyterian Church, home to all of the 21 surviving aid workers still being held in Afghanistan, was forced to close its website when it was deluged with critical messages. Critics have denounced the church for being ‘arrogant’ in ignoring government guidance and for seeking to work in a Muslim country mired in conflict. According to The Independent, the crisis has lifted the lid on a cauldron of resentment at the influence Christians now have within a country that was Buddhist until 120 years ago. Korea’s 36,000 churches are zealous in evangelising their own countrymen and second only to the USA in sending 16,000 missionaries abroad. In Afghanistan, the Taliban gunmen agreed to kill no more captives until South Korea’s ambassador, Kang Sung-zu, meets to negotiate with them.
306-YEAR-OLD BAN ON ROYALS WEDDING CATHOLICS ‘SHOULD GO’
The 1701 Act of Settlement banning the marriage of a royal to a Roman Catholic came under increased attack as an unjustifiable discrimination this week. Lord Lester, the Liberal Democrat peer drafted in by Gordon Brown to advise on constitutional affairs, said the centuries-old ban was ‘an injustice’ that should now go. He also conceded that legislating to end the ban on monarchs themselves being Catholics would raise renewed calls for the Church of England to be disestablished. Anger over the rule was sparked last week by the engagement of the Queen’s eldest grandson, Peter Phillips, to Autumn Kelly, a Canadian management consultant who was baptised a Roman Catholic.
NEW BISHOP WELCOMED BY FORMER PRESIDENT OF IRAN
Iran’s former President, Dr Mohammad Khatami, has welcomed the new Anglican bishop in Iran amid signs of a new Muslim–Christian dialogue in the country. Dr Khatami met Rt Revd Azad Marshall after a senior Presidential official attended Bishop Marshall’s installation in Tehran on Sunday. Dr Sarighati spoke after the service of Iran’s respect and freedom for religious minorities, including the freedom to change religion, the Church of England Newspaper reports. Representatives of the many denominations, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, who constitute Iran’s estimated 100,000 Christians attended the consecration. The Anglican House of Bishops in the Middle East said it was very encouraged by the ‘new spirit … in the Church in Iran’ and the ‘desire of the Muslim religious leaders to start a dialogue with us’.
Sources: Church Times (10/8); Church of England Newspaper (10/8)
HARRY POTTER SHOWS HIS CHRISTIAN COLOURS
Harry Potter creator JK Rowling has told a TV audience that her stories draw on Christian themes and reflect her own ‘struggle’ to ‘keep believing’. During a question and answer session on an NBC news magazine in the USA on 29 July, she said that calling Harry Potter ‘the Chosen One’ revealed the series’ ‘religious undertone’. She said ‘it had always been difficult to talk about’ because divulging some of the books’ Christian motifs ‘would give away a lot of what was coming’. Deathly Hallows, published last month, shows Harry visiting his parents’ grave where the headstone bears the inscription ‘The last enemy to be destroyed is death’. The finale features Harry choosing death so that others might live and includes a last battle resulting in death and resurrection. On her own faith, Ms Rowling said she is a Christian but her ‘struggle really is to keep believing’.
Source: Church of England Newspaper (10/8)
GOVERNMENT YOUTH PLAN MAY OFFER GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
Church-based youth work could play a key role in future, as the government responds to a report that identified British teens as the worst behaved in Europe. Children’s Minister, Beverley Hughes, has presented a ten-year plan to cut youth crime which includes more support for youth clubs, projects and voluntary groups. Matthew Summerfield, Executive Director of Christian youth ministry Urban Saints said his organisation endorsed the new strategy, provided ‘there are structured activities and that they bring young people together’. Oasis spokesman, Revd Malcolm Duncan, stressed the need to recognise the key role of the faith sector in providing youth services. ‘Why can’t we be at the heart of this initiative?’ he asked.
Source: Baptist Times (2/8)
