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Immigrants who want to settle in Britain will have to learn about Shakespeare and the Beatles, ministers suggested yesterday. They will also be expected to know about key battles and their dates, along with information about the role in the nation’s history of spiritual foundation stones, such as the King James Bible. Immigrants will be told, as they are not in the existing test, that ‘historically, the UK is a Christian country’. (Daily Mail, 1/7)
Secretary of State, Andrew Mitchell, was joined last week by faith groups for the release of a new paper, Faith Partnership Principles, at Lambeth Palace. The paper, produced by the Department for International Development with a working group of faith leaders, looks to work effectively with faith groups to fight global poverty. At the launch, the Secretary of State said: ‘Faith groups are an important part of the fight against poverty’. (Church of England Newspaper, 5/7)
Seven hundred peers, MPs, church leaders and representatives from charities attended this year’s National Prayer Breakfast at the Houses of Parliament. They heard Lord Bates call for a truce between warring factions during the period of the Olympic Games. Lord Bates has already walked 3,000 miles from Mount Olympia to London to highlight the need for such a move. After the Prayer Breakfast, nearly 100 supporters joined him for a prayer walk from Westminster to East London. They prayed for peace along the route and at a Catholic church close to the Olympic stadium.
Christians in Syria are becoming extremely concerned that they are vulnerable to the violence sweeping the country. They make up 10 per cent of the population of 22 million people and are afraid that the country will become another Iraq, with Christians caught in the crossfire between rival Islamic groups. Maximos al-Jamal, a Greek Orthodox priest who is still in Homs said about 90 of the civilians in two besieged Homs neighbourhoods are Christians, down from thousands who lived in the area before the uprising began. (ABC news, 20/6)
Huw Edwards, the BBC newsreader, has told the Daily Mail that Jesus is the figure from history he would most like to talk to. When asked which figure from history he would like to buy a pie and a pint from, Mr Edwards said: ‘Talking to him would unlock the mystery of his life’. He also said his grandmother’s Bible was his most prized possession.’ (Daily Mail, 1/6))
The Advertising Standards Authority has said that campaigning against changing the law on marriage to include same-sex couples should be allowed. Their ruling follows a number of complaints about publicity material for the Coalition for Marriage campaign, amid claims that they would offend homosexual people. The watchdog ruled that, while not everyone would agree with the aims of the campaign, this was no grounds for claiming that they were discriminatory. (Daily Telegraph, 14/6)
Social workers will have to check that parents are teaching their children ‘moral values’ and ‘conscience’ under a major overhaul of child protection rules. The move comes as ministers prepare to tear up more than 700 pages of ‘pointless’ child protection guidance in an effort to free social workers from paper work and ‘tick-box’ rules. A raft of targets and prescriptive national guidelines are set to be abolished in a move that ministers hope will free social workers, doctors, police and other professionals to do their jobs more easily. (Daily Telegraph, 12/6)
The General Medical Council’s Investigation Committee has reprimanded a Christian doctor for sharing his faith with a patient at the end of a private consultation. The GMC has ruled that his actions ‘did not meet the standards required of a doctor’. Dr Scott, who has been a doctor for over 28 years in Margate, Kent, was initially investigated by the GMC after it received a complaint from a patient that Dr Scott had discussed the benefits of Christianity with him. (Christian Today, 15/6)
An international team of leading researchers, based at Cranmer Hall, Durham, have just published a study Church Growth in Britain from 1980 to the Present, which shows that: there are now 500,000 Christians in black majority churches in Britain; at least 5,000 new churches have been started in Britain since 1980; there are one million Christians in Britain from black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities; and the adult membership of the Anglican Diocese of London has risen by over 70 per cent since 1990. (Church of England Newspaper, 13/6)
