Sadly, today’s episode will be the last episode of the Premier Christian Newscast. To wrap the show up, we looked back over the last two years at what stories and topics have come up the most. What has been making waves in church news? What issues are we unable to move on from? And what might this tell us about what is going to be hitting the headl…

All of the UK will be going to the polls soon in a general election, which is expected at some point in the autumn. After a drubbing in the recent local elections, Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are widely expected to be dumped out of office in Westminster too. And just as more and more Britons are abandoning the Tories, so too are Christians. This we…

The horrendous attack on a mother and her children by Abdul Ezedi, an Afghan asylum seeker, in Clapham earlier this year sparked a ferocious row. A string of politicians and right-wing media outlets accused churches of giving asylum seekers like Ezedi bogus baptisms after they had fraudulently converted to Christianity to boost their arguments to n…

It’s not just British denominations which are splintering under the weight of their divisions. The United Methodist Church in the United States has also gone through a painful five years of divorce, with up to one in four congregations choosing to leave. The crisis was, inevitably, precipitated by deep disagreements over LGBT issues including same-…

It’s not just a toddler group. Emphasis on the ‘just’. That’s the title and message of a new report which urges churches to take their midweek parents and toddler groups more seriously. These groups are not just about toys on mats and beakers of juice for tired mums, but vital for children’s flourishing and also for drawing families into the wider …

It is not just the Church of England and the Catholic Church which has been wrestling with divisions over same-sex marriage in recent years. The Baptist Union is also split between those who believe God affirms gay marriage and those who hold to a traditional opposition to it. Yet unlike other denominations, the Baptists have come recently to an in…

Ecumenism. Even the word itself is probably putting some of you off right now. A tiresome bit of churchy jargon that has no relevance for your church or spiritual life, right? But working for unity across churches and denominations is for some a genuine passion, an urgent priority, even a lifetime’s ministry. Earlier this year, a group of Catholic …

Many of England’s biggest football clubs – today some of the country’s largest entertainment businesses – were originally started by local churches 150 years ago. Fascinatingly, the connections between Christianity and football are not solely a historical quirk either. There are Christians playing the game at every level, managing teams and running…

Just before Christmas, the Catholic Church surprisingly announced priests could offer pastoral blessings to same-sex couples for the first time. The announcement has been a jolt of energy to the church, delighting liberals who have been quick to publicise their blessings, and equally infuriating conservatives. Why has the backlash been so vociferou…

Almost nobody has heard of Sir Paul Marshall until a few weeks ago. But, thanks to his Twitter account, the multi-millionaire hedge funder and media mogul has become briefly famous, or perhaps infamous. An investigation has revealed Marshall had a private Twitter account which had liked and re-posted dozens of hardline anti-Muslim and far-right twe…

After the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the Church of England embarked on a racial reckoning just like so many institutions. This produced a landmark report and a new racial justice unit. But more than three years on, has any progress been made in dismantling prejudice and discrimination in the national church?…

A Christian gospel singer was approached by the police while busking in central London. In a video of the conversation, one of the officers tells the singer she is not allowed to sing church songs outside of church grounds, and later sticks her tongue out. For many of those furiously sharing this video online, it is further evidence of how the secu…

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the government of Iran has sought to tightly control its small Christian minority and suppress the spread of Christianity throughout the population. But the Women Life Freedom anti-government protest movement has rocked the Islamist regime. Millions of Iranians have defied the strict interpretation of Islam the…

The story which dominated the UK church world last year was undoubtedly the revelations about Mike Pilavachi and Soul Survivor. But while the C of E’s investigation into him confirmed he had acted inappropriately at the Watford church he led, the story has often been veiled in vague terms and muttered innuendo. What exactly did he do to those young…

Christians spend an awful lot of time thinking about how and why people join the church. But we rarely consider the opposite – all of those who leave. Every year, an entirely uncounted number of people give up on going to church. Some continue to believe and practice faith outside a worshipping community, others abandon Christianity entirely. Who a…

Abuse scandals. Famous deaths. A lot of reports. And a even more arguing about same-sex relationships. 2023 was a busy year for church news, and 2024 is already shaping up to be more of the same. But before the last 12 months is totally swamped by what’s already kicked off this year, let’s take a brief look back at some of the most consequential st…

Ever since October 7th, the world has been transfixed with horror at the violence and war unfolding in Israel and Gaza. First the brutal Hamas terrorist attack which left over a thousand dead and hundreds more snatched as hostages. Then the devastating Israeli bombing campaign, which has killed thousands more. And now Israeli soldiers and tanks fig…

In France, Emmanuel Macron has launched a new fund to raise hundreds of millions of euros to pay for the preservation and renovation of ancient church buildings across the French countryside. The move has excited church conservation types on this side of the Channel, as a possible model to follow to safeguard our crumbling Christian buildings which…

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the famous atheist and scourge of Islam, has suddenly announced she has now become a Christian. Many in the church have reacted with excitement that a prominent anti-religious voice has switched sides. But others have been scornful, noting her article explaining the conversion seems focused on Christianity’s role in the culture war…

It’s not only the Church of England that has been having big synods recently. Throughout October, hundreds of bishops and others from the Catholic Church gathered in Rome for their own synod. But unlike the regular twice-yearly meetings the C of E has had for decades, this synod is a much larger, and rarer event. It’s all part of Pope Francis’s eff…

Last week was a momentous one in the long-running civil war over same-sex relationships in the Church of England. Just like in February, a session of the General Synod – the church’s elected parliament – was almost entirely focused on scrutinising the bishops’ plans to offer formal services of blessing for gay couples in church. The lengthy and at …

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The increasingly dictatorial government of President Daniel Ortega has turned its oppressive gaze onto the Catholic Church in Nicaragua in recent years. Angered by the church sheltering anti-government protesters in 2018, the state has intimidated, harassed, detained and exiled numerous church leaders and Christian activists. But many within the Ca…

Europe is often described as the world’s first post-Christian continent. In what was the cradle of Christendom, a tidal wave of secularisation has swept through from the post-war era onwards. But while mainline and established denominations – whether Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox - have if anything seen even more decline than we have here in Bri…

17 October marks the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Eight years ago the UN set itself the ambitious target of eliminating severe poverty globally by 2030. But despite almost a century of steady progress, numbers of people living on less than $2 a day have actually started increasing, not dwindling down to nothing. What’s gone wro…

“Martyrs are more numerous in our time than in the first centuries: they are bishops, priests, consecrated men and women, lay people and families, who in the different countries of the world, with the gift of their lives, have offered the supreme proof of charity.” Those were the words of Pope Francis as he announced he was setting up a new commiss…

Mostly, we can only guess what clergy in the Church of England think about any number of hot button issues, but last month The Times conducted a fascinating survey of 1,200 serving vicars, rectors and curates. For the first time in about a decade, we can dig into a much more representative sampling of what the clergy think, on everything from same-…

Christian pilgrims have been visiting Jerusalem and the Holy Land for centuries, trying to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. But in recent years, there has been a disturbing rise in incidents of harassment and abuse against Christians by Jewish Israelis. Some pilgrims have been spat on in the street and Christian graveyards have been desecrated. And …

Immigration is never far from the headlines these days. Whether it’s the government’s highly controversial plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda, the so far unsuccessful efforts to stop migrants crossing the Channel on small boats, or even the scheme set up almost overnight to bring in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, we talk a lot ab…

‘Prohibiting people from worship and communal religious exercise is profoundly illiberal and illegitimate.’ Those are the words of the former EU Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief, Jan Figel. The Slovakian has launched a legal case against his own government at the European Court of Human Rights over its ban on churches meeting in pers…

Men have dressed up as women for thousands of years, but as you’ve probably noticed, drag is having a particular moment right now. Drag races are prime time TV fodder and drag artists are everywhere in popular culture. And the church is no different. In recent months a worship song by a Christian drag queen has shot to the top of the iTunes Christi…

It’s pretty well known that most churches in Britain are largely filled with white faces. Clearly there are hundreds of thousands of believers from other ethnic backgrounds, but on the whole they tend to worship in separate churches. In an era when we are more and more aware of racial injustice and lingering prejudice, can we just accept this as it…

At a recent Protestant convention in Germany an entire church service – liturgy, prayers, psalms, and sermon – was written and delivered by AI software. Around the world ministers and Christian techies are experimenting with tools such as ChatGPT to see what the latest technology can do when prompted to create materials for worship services. What i…

Financial institutions are guilty of discriminating against Christians. That’s the claim of Anglican vicar Richard Fothergill and charity exec Mike Davidson, both of whom are prominent Christians who have recently had their bank accounts closed. They argue banks are trying to force those with unpopular views out of public life. But the banks insist…

The work of keeping children and vulnerable adults safe from harm and abuse in church has never been a more central part of the Church of England’s remit. Yet in its efforts to do right by victims and build ever more robust policies to root out abusers, the church has managed to get itself in a terrible mess. Survivors and campaigners are up in arm…

The recent Asbury Revival prompted huge excitement among many British charismatics and Pentecostals. But it has also prompted some uncomfortable questions, including why isn’t this happening more over here? When the Charismatic Renewal movement hit the UK in the 1980s, there was a moment when miraculous healings, demonic deliverance, speaking in to…

Recently, the Church of England announced that its multi-billion pound funds would no longer invest in any fossil fuel companies. For years the Church had tried to use their position as shareholders in companies including BP, Shell, Total and ExxonMobil to nudge them towards cutting emissions and changing strategies. But now they have given up, con…

Joshua Sutcliffe, it seems, cannot stop getting into trouble. The Christian teacher has been fired twice from schools and also prosecuted for street preaching during the pandemic lockdown. And now, he has been banned from teaching anywhere for two years by the Teachers Regulation Agency for refusing to use the preferred pronouns of a trans student …

Seventy-five years ago this week, the HMT Empire Windrush docked in the UK, bringing 800 migrants from Caribbean nations to their new lives in Britain. But the anniversary is a bittersweet one the British Caribbean community thanks to the lingering aftermath of the Windrush scandal, which saw thousands of legal residents mistakenly treated as illeg…

Graphic lessons on oral sex, how to choke your partner safely, and the existence of 72 different genders. According to the Christian MP Miriam Cates, these are some of the things appearing in sex education classes up and down the country. According to her campaign, a radical progressive ideology has infiltrated sex and relationships education. In r…

Churches have been holding baptisms, weddings and funerals for the people of Britain for well over 1,500 years. But in recent decades the numbers of those choosing to hold these pivotal life moments inside a church building have been plummeting sharply. In this week's episode we discuss whether Christians should be concerned about this trend and wh…

Last month, the Rwandan capital of Kigali was the unlikely host of a gathering which will shape the future of the world’s third-largest Christian denomination – the Anglican Communion. Hundreds of conservative and evangelical delegates from across the world met in Kigali under the banner of Gafcon – the Global Anglican Future Conference. And there,…

The coronation service was unmistakably first and foremost a service of Christian worship. Charles came not to be commissioned into a constitutional role, but to anointed into a sacred, almost priestly, calling. And yet despite all this, in many ways, this month’s coronation was perhaps the UK’s first post-Christian enthronement. The country’s reli…

Believers living under repressive regimes or surrounded by violent extremists are still tragically subject to traditional persecution – imprisonment, physical attack, verbal threats and harassment, and even death. But increasingly persecution comes via the internet, on social media platforms, and sometimes even via the smart devices Christians use …

“Without faith, places of worship and people of faith, this country would be poorer, blander, and less dynamic. Faith is a force for good, and the Government should do more to both understand and release the potential of this fantastic resource.” Those are the words of Colin Bloom, the government’s faith engagement advisor, in the conclusion of his…

A new survey of more than a thousand churches has concluded weekly attendance has dropped by about 22% on average since before the pandemic. Intriguingly, the research also suggested a large part of this decline was because churches had cut the number of services they offered during the lockdowns and not resumed all of these post-covid. What lesson…

Last month, staff at BBC local radio stations went on strike in protest at major cuts heading their way. Among locally-produced shows due to be scrapped to make millions of pounds of savings are Sunday services and religious broadcasting, mostly to be replaced by programming produced nationally. These cuts come at a time when Christians from variou…

Denominations are much quicker to close down churches based in poorer areas than those serving the rich. That’s the headline finding a report from the charity Church Action on Poverty, which scrutinised five denominations in Greater Manchester to examine what churches were shut down and where over the past decade. Is this indicative of a loss of fa…

It’s hard to spend any time in the church these days without constantly coming up against so-called Christian celebrities. Whether it’s worship leaders, authors or big-name pastors and speakers, it seems the entire infrastructure of the church relies on these high-profile individuals who have become famous for their ministries. But is any of this a…

Almost exactly ten years ago, on 13 March 2013, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became Pope Francis. In the subsequent decade, this previously obscure Argentinian cleric has revolutionised the papacy while steering the Catholic Church through sweeping reform, inside and out. He’s scandalised conservatives and thrilled some progressives, while overturning …