The most senior figure in the Church of Ireland has strongly rejected a former Archbishop of Canterbury’s arguments in favour of ‘assisted dying’. Archbishop of Armagh Richard Clarke said that he found Lord Carey’s comments in support of allowing the terminally ill to have help to end their own lives ‘perplexing’. Writing in a News Letter on Friday, the Primate of All Ireland, whose wife died from cancer five years ago, said that support for helping the terminally ill to end their lives was neither in keeping with Christian teaching nor even some secular understandings of the sanctity of life. Last month the generally conservative Lord Carey stunned Anglicanism when he said that he had changed his mind on the issue and would support a bill brought forward by former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer which would allow mentally-capable adults with less than six months to live to get help to end their lives. (See also Prayer Alert 27-2014

The Spending Plans Task Group of the Church Commissioners and Archbishops' Council has awarded £4.6m to projects from five dioceses from the new stream of Strategic Development Funding. Birmingham, Chelmsford, Leicester, Liverpool and Sheffield have all received grants for growth and change projects in their diocese. The funding is being awarded in several stages: the first applications for a pot of £7.5m were restricted to the poorest dioceses in the Church of England. The aim of the funding is to sit alongside existing funding distributed to dioceses each year, so they can benefit from a one-off injection of money to make a significant difference to their long-term mission and financial strength, by supporting major projects. The funding was awarded after a competitive process, in which dioceses were invited to put forward initial applications to the Task Group. Those proposals which met the criteria most strongly were then invited to submit detailed project plans. 

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an offensive advert featuring a digitally altered image of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil. The image depicted Jesus with his arm around a bikini-clad woman, holding a champagne bottle and celebrating a gambling win. The advert was placed by Sporting Index Ltd in the City AM newspaper. The ASA received 25 complaints - including one from the Evangelical Alliance - and found the advert ‘was likely to cause offence to a significant number of Christians, regardless of this humorous intention... because it depicted the person of Jesus in a context at odds with commonly held beliefs about the nature of Christ’. The ASA ordered Sporting Index Ltd not to use the image again and not to use ads in future which link gambling to sex.

Councils are to be given powers to stop funding early-years providers with links to extremism, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has announced. The move, in England, follows a letter-writing campaign by the British Humanist Association. Members wrote to MPs and responded to a nursery funding consultation, raising concerns about extremist links and creationist teaching in some nurseries. The Department for Education said the change closes ‘a technical loophole’. Mrs Morgan said that toddlers must learn ‘fundamental British values’ and that schools and nurseries that do not ‘support this aim’ should not receive public money. The move comes after allegations that hardline Islamists tried to take over some Birmingham schools in what was dubbed the Trojan Horse plot. Announcing the measures, Mrs Morgan, who replaced Michael Gove as education secretary in last month's Cabinet reshuffle, said there is no place for extremism ‘anywhere in the education system’.

In an interview for BBC Radio 4, the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, responded to recent calls from the National Governors' Association (NGA) for the practice of daily Christian worship in school assemblies to be abolished, reports Christian Concern for our Nation. Last week, the NGA, which represents school governors and trustees in England, called for the 70-year-old requirement, introduced by the 1944 Education Act to be scrapped since ‘schools are not places of worship, but places of education.’ Responding to the comments, Bishop Pritchard highlighted the ‘unique’ role played by school assemblies in both ‘building community’ and allowing children to ‘reflect on the deeper values that underpin the school community’ and shape society at large. He acknowledged that these values are drawn ‘very largely’ from the Christian faith, and that ‘so much of what has made us what we are, has come from a Christian source’. (See also Prayer Alert 25-2014)

An ethics committee has been set up to tackle moral issues faced by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and the area's police and crime commissioner. The independent committee is one of the first of its kind in the country and aims to make recommendations on moral and ethical dilemmas. It will look at issues such as surveillance operations and the use of body cameras and water cannon. Members of the public can make referrals to the committee. The panel of 13 is chaired by the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev David Walker. It includes retired NBA basketball player John Amaechi - who has helped organisations deal with ethical issues - and Ruth Bromley, ethics and law head at Manchester Medical School. GMP Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy said: ‘There are lots of grey areas in policing.’

New research from the housing and homelessness charity Shelter has found that 48 per cent of working 20 to  34 year olds live with their parents because they are unable to afford to rent or buy their own home. Data from the last census shows a quarter of all 20 to 34 year old working adults in England – 1.97 million people – are currently living with their parents. As the latest government figures show average house prices for first-time buyers in the UK have risen by 11.3 per cent in a year, Shelter is urging stronger action to help the 'clipped wing generation' fly the nest. Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: ‘The ‘clipped wing generation’ are finding themselves with no choice but to remain living with mum and dad well into adulthood, and those who aren’t lucky enough to have this option instead face a lifetime of unstable, expensive private renting.’

More than 1,500 babies were born addicted to drugs last year, according to statistics uncovered by a national newspaper. Since 2009, almost 8,000 babies have been born showing symptoms of drug withdrawal, the Daily Mirror found. The figures show ‘addiction is not just about individual choice – it affects children, families, communities and public services’, according to one think-tank. The Mirror used freedom of information requests to gain figures on the issue from NHS organisations, stretching back five years. An average of over 1,500 babies a year since 2009 were born showing ‘neonatal withdrawal symptoms’, the figures revealed. Most of the babies involved were born in England – some 6,600 – with over 700 in Scotland and almost 500 in Wales. In 2013 the figure for Great Britain stood at 1,536.

The new chief executive of LGBT activist group, Stonewall, has called for preschool children to be taught to ‘celebrate’ being gay as part of a proposed Government-funded campaign to tackle ‘homophobia’ in schools. Ruth Hunt said she wanted Stonewall to commission a series of books ‘celebrating difference in all its forms’ to encourage under-fives to ‘think about different families’, including same-sex households. ‘I think the next step is about going into preschools,’ she said. ‘I know from all my godchildren that the quality of children’s books depicting difference is dire.’ She added: ‘I really want to commission – and this is something we’ve got to talk about as an organisation – a suite of books that celebrates difference in all its forms for under-fives, with different families in it but also mixed-race people and sent into every preschool setting. That will take time too. But that is possibly one of the most radical campaigns we could do.’

The Prime Minister should ‘step in’ to prevent children being overwhelmed by TV adverts that ‘normalise and glamorise’ gambling, a columnist has said. Writing in The Times, Rachel Sylvester criticised the coverage of this year’s World Cup, saying that children ‘could not avoid being bombarded by a campaign to encourage them to take a punt on the outcome of every match’. She highlighted Ofcom findings, which show that four to fifteen-year-olds are exposed to an average of 211 gambling adverts a year each. She noted a 600 per cent increase in TV gambling adverts since Labour liberalised the law in 2007, allowing sports betting, online casinos and poker to be promoted on television. The Labour sports minister who introduced the liberalisation, Gerry Sutcliffe, has admitted his government got it wrong. We did not envisage so much advertising for sports betting before the 9pm watershed’.