Churches Across UK to Tune in to 3-Minute Warning Video This Sunday

Proposed Legislation greatest threat to "people's private expression of faith since the Reformation"

Churches across the UK will interrupt their worship this Sunday to watch a three-minute warning video about a so-called Equality Bill, promoted by the Labour government and due to be voted on in the House of Commons the following day.

Opposition is being spearheaded by Christian Concern for our Nation which has called the legislation "the biggest state intervention into people's private expression of their faith since the Reformation."

Director Andrea Minichiello-Williams points out that if the legislation is approved, churches will not be able to advertise for a "Christian youth worker", but just a "youth worker". The role of worship leader, often pivotal in any church, would no longer be restricted to Christians.

Williams commented, "Christians and Churches across this nation need to be aware that this bill has enormous implications for their day-to-day functioning. If it is passed in its present form, the Equality Bill will result in churches and Christian organisations having to recruit people to key positions who are unsympathetic to the need to reflect Christ and to worship Him through their work. That will in turn affect the way in which Jesus Christ is perceived by those served by the Church and its ministries."

The video to be seen in churches throughout the United Kindom follows:

British Christians are also urged to sign David Skinner's anti-Equality Bill petition on the No 10 Downing Street website, which again can be accessed via www.ccfon.org.

British Preacher Warned by Police for Quoting Bible on Homosexuality

From Catholic World News

A British Evangelical street preacher was warned by police that he could face arrest if he continued to cite Bible passages that suggest the immorality of homosexual acts, the Christian Legal Centre reports. Miguel Hayworth was "clearly told that reading the Bible and preaching can be offensive and that they could be arrested," the group charges, adding that Hayworth and his father, who was preaching with him "were subjected to abuse and intimidation."

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Preacher threatened with arrest for reading out extracts from the Bible in public (Daily Telegraph)

Christian Doctor Who Abstained from Gay-Adoption Votes Accused of Discrimination, Removed from Panel

From Catholic World News

A Christian pediatrician in England has been removed from the Northamptonshire County Council's adoption panel because she abstained from votes recommending children for placement with homosexual couples. The head of Northamptonshire's children's services believes that the doctor’s principled failure to recommend children for gay adoption runs afoul of the nation’s 2006 Equality Act.

“Men and women bring different skills and styles to parenting and children learn from both examples,” said Dr. Sheila Matthews. “Mothers are more nurturing and fathers are more challenging and the combination of both is best for the development of a child.”

“I have no wish to impose my views on others,” she added. “I only wish to be able to abstain from panel votes … I don't want to be put in a position of doing something I don't believe in. That is my human right. Instead I have been accused of discrimination.”

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Doctor faces sack for refusing to back gay adoptions (Daily Telegraph)

Britain's Naked Public Square

From First Things
By Peter C. Glover

A series of high-profile legal battles and workplace rulings during the past several months has kept Christianity, or its lack, in the headlines in Great Britain. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, caused outrage last year when he suggested that Shari’a law might replace British common law in some cases. But the piecemeal persecution of Christians in Britain is even more damaging—and it has now become routine.

The growing crime rate and out-of-control teenage pregnancies (the highest percentage in Europe and rising) are among the social problems that have created national anxiety. But what has caused the recent headlines are the major legal battles and workplace problems that reveal the existence of anti-Christian bias in Britain—a bias manifested by censorship in public debate and a media antagonistic to all things Christian. Is it too much to think that the social problems and the bias are related? By making Christian practice difficult, if not outright illegal in public life, the British courts and public authorities have contributed to an increasing awareness that a vacuum exists where the nation’s Judeo-Christian spine used to be.

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British Parliament To Investigate Catholic Influence in Catholic Schools

This blog has frequently lamented the growing secularization of Europe and its suicidal refusal to even acknowledge the Christian foundations on which Western civilization flourished. But with this story in The Independent about a British Parliamentary investigation into Catholic influence in Catholic schools, one must wonder if outright persecution is at hand.

According to The Independent, "Members of the Children, Schools and Families Committee plan to call senior bishops to give evidence in an inquiry into the approach schools are adopting towards a range of issues – including abortion, sex education and PSHE (personal and social health education) classes." Let's hope that with that "Catholic influence," those students are preparing for the world in which they may have to live, and are learning about the English Martyrs and the Tyburn Tree.

Has anyone heard about a Parliamentary investigation into Muslim influence in Britain's Islamic schools?