Displaying items by tag: United Kingdom

In the past two months fifteen UK churches have been sent anonymous threatening letters telling them to stop services or be attacked. The letters were handwritten, threatening petrol bomb attacks and mass stabbings. ‘Stop all your services straight away’, said one letter sent to a Sheffield church. ‘If you don’t, your church will be petrol bombed while in service. Continue behind closed doors and your congregation members will be stabbed one by one. Blood on your hands. You have been warned.’ One of the handwritten letters, bearing a West Midlands postmark, demanded that they stop their services and threatened to bomb the church. Services are continuing, and police have been deployed to the churches affected. A local faith school decided to withdraw pupils from services after they received the threatening letter. A police investigation has been opened, and inquiries are ongoing. See also last week’s article on violence against clergy here

Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt recently launched a government review on the global persecution of Christians. He stated, ‘The UK can and must do more for the many Christians facing persecution and discrimination worldwide, but first we must look to our own discrimination against Christians at home’. The Sunday Times says that the Government is ‘repeatedly failing to provide sanctuary in Britain for a fair proportion of Christians’, and warns that this policy ‘appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims and risks embarrassing the Government’. Barnabas Fund is also calling for an end to discrimination against persecuted Syrian Christians seeking a safe haven in the UK. MP Sir John Hayes called for people to stand up for religious freedom and warned, ‘The “golden era” of religious liberty may be coming to an end. Religious believers are facing increased pressure to restrict their faith to the private sphere’.

Christian Concern for our Nation asks, ‘Is the widespread availability of halal products an example of Islamic religious freedom? Or does halal have a deeper effect on society?’ Its new report shows how halal spreads through supply chains impacting laws and economics, and recommends how to deal with the deepening roots of sharia. The report states, ‘The aim of Islam is to create a supreme worldview, whereby all other laws come under Islamic law. Halal food markets, Islamic dress markets, sharia-compliant finance and banking, Islamic education, sharia courts.’ See also article 1 in the Europe section, on sharia law.

Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, has called on social media giants to ‘purge’ material promoting self-harm and suicide, in the wake of links to teenager Molly Russell's suicide. They could be banned if they fail to comply. The 14-year-old took her life after viewing disturbing content about suicide on Instagram. Her father believed Instagram ‘helped kill my daughter’. Instagram owners, Facebook, said they were ‘deeply sorry’. The charity Papyrus, working to prevent youth suicide, had a spike in calls to their helpline after the BBC reported the link between suicide and social media. Meanwhile, Facebook removed 364 ‘fake’ pages (with 790,000 followers) for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour as part of a network that originated in Russia. Facebook said the page administrators and account owners represented themselves as independent news pages or general interest pages, but all were linked to employees of Russian-owned Sputnik and the facts were false. See

In 2019, its 40th anniversary, Spring Harvest’s theme is Unlimited: When You Pray. There will be many stands promoting prayer, and many talks and seminars to encourage people to grow in intercession. Musalaha, one of the exhibitors, will invite people to pray for its work. It is a non-profit organisation promoting reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. Palestinian Christians will be present on all three sites: manning stalls, participating in seminars, and even appearing the main stage at two venues. Please pray for Musalaha and for all the prayer organisations exhibiting this year. Pray for arrangements to go smoothly, for people to be inspired and responsive, and for a wave of intercession to sweep across the nations. See

In some European territories sharia law is applied, challenging human rights. Greek Muslims in Western Thrace use sharia judicial power to rule on disputes concerning inheritance. Muslims can choose between a mufti or Greek courts. In the UK, the ‘Islamic Sharia Council’ is an independent arbitration tribunal issuing private law decisions and able to grant Islamic divorces. These divorces may also be included in a civil procedure. There are believed to be some thirty sharia councils, affiliated to local mosques. In Russia’s Northern Caucasus: family and property matters are usually judged under sharia law under the guise of ‘tradition’. Women and girls are victims of violence and discriminatory practices such as early marriage, abduction for forced marriage, ‘honour’ killings, female genital mutilation and polygamy, despite the provisions of Russian federal law. In Turkey Muslim religious education is compulsory in schools. The government publicly favours a Muslim viewpoint, linking Turkish nationality with Sunni Islam.

Justin Welby has spoken of his daily discipline of praying in tongues and seeking words of knowledge and prophecy from others, in an interview with Premier at the launch of ‘Thy Kingdom Come’, now in its fourth year. He said, ‘It’s not something to make a great song and dance about. Usually it’s extremely early in the morning and not an immensely ecstatic moment.’ Speaking in tongues, words of knowledge, and prophecy are common practices in Pentecostal and charismatic churches. ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ has united over a million Christians from more than 65 different denominations and traditions, in 114 countries, to pray for evangelisation. During prayer times many noticed that God’s Spirit came.

J John has recently commented: ‘However Brexit is resolved, it offers both encouragements and challenges to us who pray. Brexit is a symptom of a world that appears to have gone off-script. Many of the pillars of our world have either been destroyed or are shaking badly. Within a lifetime we have gone from a culture founded on solid Judeo-Christian values to one in which the only fundamental truth is that there is no truth. In the dysfunctional world we live in, prayer and praising remind us that, however spectacular the damage to these pillars is, they do not in fact hold up the world. Underneath and over this world is God, and he remains immovable. Psalm 11 says, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord is on his heavenly throne.” Nothing has changed. Prayer reminds us that where the world sees only instability, we can focus beyond to eternal stability.’

From 20 January, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) joined in a week of prayer for Christian unity and dedicated prayer for the political situation in the UK. CTBI said, ‘This is a time in which many feel anger and anxiety over the future, and we need to pray that those who have the heavy burden of political leadership in our country may find a unity that brings our communities together in the task of serving the common good.’ Archbishop John Sentamu has encouraged everyone to pray three times a day, at 6am, 12 noon, and 6pm. He has written a special prayer to use: see

Conservative MP Crispin Blunt has tabled a motion for the tradition of saying prayers at the beginning of parliamentary business to be abolished. This call comes with the backing of eight other MPs and the National Secular Society (NSS). Mr Blunt, an honorary associate of NSS, stated on its website, ‘Whilst religious worship occupies a strong part in some people's lives, it should no longer play a role in the way we conduct our political affairs as an independent, open and diverse nation’. The House of Commons’ main daily prayer, first used in 1558, asks for God’s guidance so that MPs ‘never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals’. Keith Vaz suggested an amendment to Blunt’s motion, resulting in the bill saying the opposite of its author’s intention: see