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The Bishop of Manchester is calling on the government to guarantee a maximum four-week waiting time for Universal Credit claimants as pressure piles on ministers to pause the benefit system rollout. David Walker told Christian Today the government should pick up the burden for delays in the process rather forcing vulnerable people to rely on […]

How old is the universe? Scientists say it’s around 14 billion years; young-earth creationists, perhaps around 10,000 years. For Archbishop Ussher, however, today’s the day: because according to him, the world was created on October 23, 4004 BC. The Gulf of Mexico seen from the International Space Station.Reuters Ussher was the Archbishop of Armagh in […]

Judging by the first episode, the BBC’s Gunpowder offers plenty of dramatic bang for the licence-payer’s buck. But this tale of a thwarted 17th-century terrorist outrage has got viewers fizzing with outrage. Even today, when extreme on-screen violence has been normalised (who, after Game of Thrones, is going to be worried by anything at all […]

A number of senior church leaders in Perth are coming together to launch Australian Christians for Marriage Equality in support of the ‘yes’ vote in the country’s postal survey on gay marriage. Anglican, Catholic, Quaker and free church leaders united to join the national campaign in a sign of how the poll is fracturing Australian […]

The Greek Orthodox Church is hitting back at claims it has a prayer for people undergoing gender transition while strictly opposing any liberalising of the LGBT-rights laws. Reports last week suggested a prayer, written by a senior Orthodox bishop in the 1980s and published in a book of prayer endorsed by the Church’s synod, affirmed […]

Unsplash A pastor has married six couples in one go after receiving what she says was a vision from God. Pastor Tanelle Welft-Dixon, 43, said that God had asked her to marry people who have been ‘living in sin’ or who couldn’t afford to wed, according to local Cape Town news website iol. The couples […]

L’Arche founder Jean Vanier outside his home in Trosly-Breuil. Vanier has won the 2015 Templeton Prize for affirming life’s spiritual dimension.Reuters Jean Vanier, the Canadian Catholic philosopher and theologian who founded L’Arche, the community for disabled people and their carers, is recovering in hospital after having a stent fitted. A spokesperson for Vanier, who is […]

For anyone who works with children and young people in a church setting, Naomi Thompson’s book Young People and the Church since 1900 contains a stark warning. It covers a time when ministry among children in the UK was at its numerical peak before virtually disappearing. In the late 1800’s more than 2 million children […]

Pope Francis has rebuked one of his Cardinals in a row over whether Rome can ‘impose’ its interpretation on different bishops’ conferences around the world. Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, wrote a commentary claiming he could still tell different areas of […]

Catholic heads in the UK are issuing a robust defence of the Church’s abortion teaching after criticism of bishops’ stance from within the Catholic hierarchy. Describing having a termination as a ‘grave decision’ the two leaders of the Catholic Church in England, Wales and Scotland attack the ‘contradiction’ in abortion laws for disabled babies and […]