The former head of the Thinktank Christian Research said recently that church attendance among black communities continues to rise, while mainstream church attendance has hit an all time low in the UK.

Peter Brierley, former head of Christian Research, said that should the trend continue, by 2015 about 25 percent of churchgoers in England will be from non-white communities, according to Christian Today.

The Pentecostal movement in the UK has seen marked growth, and it continues to see increasing numbers of church attendees.

Black Christians keep faith alive in UK.

Meanwhile the mainstream Anglican, Catholic and Church of England are experiencing sharp decline, according to Bishop Llewellyn Graham of the Church of God, according to Black Mental Health UK.

Brierley attributed the growth in numbers of the black community churches to the fact that neighbors invite friends to their church, and the preaching is relevant and delivered with energy, BMH UK said.

Work leaders in black churches take the effort to recognize the needs of people from their communities–whether they are young people, the socially excluded or those with mental health needs, BMH UK reported.

Because black churches meet churchgoers at their point of need, church going gains relevance in the members’ lives.  They identify with the church, and going to service becomes something they genuinely want to do.

By contrast Brierley’s research showed a sharp decline in church attendance across English counties, with only 12 counties showing a six percent church attendance of the local population, and seven counties showing a five and one half percent or less church attendance of the local population, Christian Today said.

Should the current trend continue Brierley projects that all counties across the UK will have a churchgoing population of four and a half percent or less by 2020.

The decline is blamed on less evangelism and the increasing number of deaths among the aged, who comprise much of the population who attend church.

Of particular concern is the finding that 80 percent of those 15 years old or younger are not attending church.  Also, 75 percent of those aged 15-29 years do not attend church.

Brierley said that by 2020 many of the older churchgoers will have passed away.  Fifty years ago, over half of the people living in the UK attended Church on a weekly basis, Christian Today reported.

Despite the decline in church attendance, an estimated 58 percent of the population claims they have a belief in Christianity, whereas atheists and agnostics represent 33 percent of the population.

Forty five percent of adults still attend Christmas services, and 44 percent attend church weddings, baptisms or funerals, and just 31 percent attend church on Easter or Harvest festival.

Brierley’s research also pointed to the challenges posed by the aging clergy within the main denominations.

Bishop Graham said, “Ministers tend to attract members of their age, so to attract young people you need a younger minster,” the BMH UK  reported.

British pop star Adam Ant checked into a mental health facility in the UK recently, after an offensive outburst he made during a comeback concert in a church recently, according to the Daily News.

Ant, whose real name is Stuart Goddard, was the lead singer of Adam and the Ants.  He suffers from bipolar disorder and was sectioned under the UK Mental health Act of 1983, Spinner reported.

He is now at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, from where he released a statement that said, “Ant fans — please send me postcards at the Chelsea & Westminster hospital, Fulham Road.”  He discouraged fans from coming to the hospital because “it may upset the staff who have been really pleasant,” according to Spinner.

Ant’s treatment followed several controversial appearances, but the most discussed incident was an intimate show at a Christian charity event at a church in Hampshire on May 10, Spinner reported.

Goddard opened the show with the Rolling Stone song, “Symphony for the Devil.”  When the crowd jeered, Goddard told the audience to “f— off” and then walked off the stage, according to the Portsmouth News.

The event was partly to promote Ant’s new album, ‘Adam Ant Is the Blueback Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter,’ and partly to raise support for the Philippines Community Foundation the Portsmouth News reported.

Following the debacle, Ant in an interview called the locals “gangsters” and said the place was “worse than Birmingham or Manchester,” according to the Portsmouth News.

In Ant’s statement from Chelsea & Westminster Hospital he said he hoped to be back in good form later this year. “I am having a well earned rest at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and am painting and continuing being an art student,” he said. “I have a great view and am considering gigs later in the year,” the Spinner said.

Decreased financial and political commitment was blamed recently for the rash of measles outbreaks in 30 African countries.

If the trend continues, by 2012 some 500,000 may die from measles, reversing the gains of the last 18 years that were made against the disease, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Severe measles can incur complications such as blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhea and dehydration, ear infections or severe respiratory infections such as pneumonia.

Measles deaths among children under five years old fell to 118,000 in 2008 from 733,000 in 2000.

The disease tends to occur among poorly nourished young children with the most severe complications, according to Reuters.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the African countries that had the largest outbreaks are Zimbabwe, Chad and Nigeria.

Some 8,000 migrant children in Bulgaria also had the highly-contagious disease during the period,

WHO expert Peter Strebel said the World Health Assembly’s 193 member states, in their annual meeting in Geneva last Thursday, decided to aim for at least 90 percent measles vaccination coverage nationally by 2015, Reuters reported.

However these goals, while achievable, require a long and determined commitment by the states themselves.

Strebel said the assembly will also aim for 80 percent coverage in every district, and to reduce measles to less than five per million population, Voice of America said.

They also strive to reduce measles mortality by 95 percent compared to 2000 levels.  It costs less than $1 to vaccinate a child against measles, but two doses are required for full protection, according to Voice of America.

Meanwhile large cases of measles have also erupted in the UK, the USA and parts of Europe due to a flawed study that linked measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination to autism.

In Britain vaccination rates dropped below 90 percent last year following the autism scare, Strebel said.  However, after the study was proven to be flawed, in the U.K. in fact there have more recently been improvements in vaccination levels and disease spread has fallen to very low levels, Reuters reported.

Recent experiments from Newcastle University, England, that create embryos from two mothers and one father, have brought to the fore new ethical issues from pro life advocates, the Christian Telegraph reported.

According to the Christian Telegraph, the experiment seeks to address mitochondrial disease, an inherited illness borne by the mother.

Credit:lumix2004/sxc.hu

One in 6,500 children is born in England with mitochondrial disease, which can lead to muscular weakness, dementia, deafness, blindness and heart failure among others.

The mitochondria in cells get the energy from food and convert it into a form that the cells can use.

Mitochondria have 37 DNA which function mostly in energy-related ways to the rest of the body, and help to assemble protein building blocks, according to the President’s Council on Bioethics.

In the UK experiment scientists removed all the male sperm and female material from a fertilized egg—except the damaged mitochondria.

They then inserted it into another egg which had been emptied of everything except its healthy mitochondria.

The resulting new embryo was made largely of both parents’ 23,000 genes, plus the 37 mitochondrial DNA from the donor egg.  This experiment used embryos that originally had been newly conceived for in vitro fertilization (IVF).  The embryos that were left over became the material for the experiment.

Some 80 new embryos were made by the Newcastle team.  The experiment was licensed by the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HEFA), and was funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.

Of the 80, only eight percent or 6.4 embryos grew normally into blastocysts.  The blastocyst stage usually occurs 5 days after fertilization.

It has not yet implanted, but it has an inner cell mass which will become the fetus, and is surrounded by an outer ring that will become part of the placenta, according to the President’s Council on Bioethics.

The team that conducted the experiment believes they will have better results if they use normal embryos, and now hope to do so.  The experiment used faulty embryos which were discarded after IVF treatment and donated for research, according to Timesonline.

Opponents to the experiment have raised ethical concerns.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said the experiment kills and abuses human embryo.

SPUC communications manager Anthony Ozimic said, “Creating embryonic children in the laboratory abuses them, by subjecting them to unnatural processes.”

He also warned of possible “developmental abnormalities,” such as have resulted from IVF and cloning.

“Scientists should respect human life and pursue ethical alternatives which are much more likely to be successful in the long-term,” Ozimic said, according to the Christian Telegraph.

Dr. Donald Bruce, former director of the Society, Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland said, “If the Newcastle results are taken forward to medical application, they need to be applied under very strict controls, and only where serious disease is otherwise likely to result,” according to the BBC.

Readers of Timesonline also wrote their reactions.

Elaine Smith wrote:

“In most cases, I really do think all forms of IVF should be banned and adoption be made simpler and faster. There are 6 billion people on earth, and then these people spend all this money on having a baby that they could have spent adopting and helping some third world child.”

Barry Johnston wrote:

“I really can’t understand this. There are THOUSANDS of unwanted children in this country and beyond. Instead of spending billions trying to create a perfect child, why not give a child a near perfect life of love and acceptance?”

Ben Turner wrote:

“Coming from a person with a genetic disorder I can see how it is a gift to be born without one, especially if it is severe.”

In the UK, it is currently illegal to use this technique for fertility treatment.

Mandy Smith, the former child-lover and later wife of the Rolling Stone’s bassist Bill Wyman, said recently that the age of consent in Britain should be raised to 18.

Smith said at the currently legal age of consent, which is 16, girls are still emotionally vulnerable, and that even at age 18 some girls are still not ready for sex.  She adds, “You can never get that part of your life, your childhood, back.”

Bill Wyman and his Rhythm Kings Middelburg 27-01-2009/Credit: Jacco Barth

Parliament first established the age of consent in the UK at 13 years in 1875 in response to concerns that young girls were being exploited for prostitution.

The age of consent was amended to 16 years in 1885 under the Criminal Amendment Act because girls as young as 12 were still being sold in the sex trade.

Christian campaigner Josephine Butler, who fought to protect girls and prostitutes from exploitation, was primarily responsible for the changed law.

Two years ago Parliament passed a bill requiring Northern Ireland to lower its age of consent from 17 years to 16 years.  This caused a furor with Northern Ireland’s Legislative Assembly (NLA).

Some NLA warned this would only encourage sexual predators.  Belfast’s Rape Crisis Centre also objected to the change, saying the new law would make it more difficult for them to protect vulnerable girls.

Wild Child

In the 1980s Smith was deemed by media as London’s Wild Child.  She first dated Wyman when she was 13, and publicly admitted they had sex when she was 14 and Wyman was 48.

When Smith reached 16, the age of consent, their relationship became public and their marriage when she was 18 was depicted as a fairy tale wedding.  Two years later they divorced.

Today Smith is 39, single, celibate, and living out a revived Catholic faith.  She mentors young girls and is involved in charitable work.  She laments a childhood that she “could never get back.”

Smith says, “Sometimes, I drive through the city on a Saturday night and see young girls wearing hardly any clothes on their way to a nightclub, while others are being sick on the pavement from binge-drinking. They take their values from some rubbish TV show or wannabe celebrities.”  Smith’s father was absent since she was three, and she met Wyman in a club at a time when her mother was perennially ill.

Today Wyman is remarried with young children. In occasional interviews he refers to his “love affair” with Smith when she was 14 as a “midlife crisis.”

Writer Victoria Coren of The Observer wrote, “It’s not OK for a 48-year-old man to sleep with a 14-year-old, whoever he is. It’s not “a love affair.”

Smith says teenage girls today are caught up in a highly sexualized culture and its expectations.

“The girls I talk to are under pressure to be a certain way,” said Smith. “They think they should be having sex, living a certain life.”

Smith rediscovered her faith in 2005 and says “God is the only man in my life now.  The great thing about the Church is that you can go back. It’s never too late,” she said.

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1266664/Mandy-Smith-I-DID-sleep-Bill-Wyman-I-14–man-life-God.html#ixzz0lemZCzQJ

http://christiantelegraph.com/issue9556.html

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10042004.html

Unlike past British elections where publicly talking of religion by candidates was frowned upon and considered “un-British,” candidates today are pursuing the Christian vote more than ever.

The 2010 elections are marked with a desperate battle for marginal seats, and candidates are becoming more vocal about their beliefs in order to woo this sector, which is seen as a swing vote.

Gordon Brown at the IMF headquarters in Washington D.C. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has frequently referred to the "moral compass" he inherited from his clergyman father. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Zoe Dixon, chairman of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum admitted, “Certainly we try to mobilize the Christian vote in our favor in constituencies.”

Paul Woolley, director of the Christian think tank Theos said, “We did some research last year looking at the rhetoric of Gordon Brown and others in their key speeches and the extent to which they used Christian or theological or biblical language.”

Wooley noted that while secularism is gaining more ground in British public life, electoral parties are “working hard to make inroads into faith-based communities and organizations.”

Examples of these politicians include:

• Conservative leader David Cameron, who has called for a “Big Society,” in which the government will work in tandem with volunteer and faith groups.  In Cameron’s conference speech last year some parts seemed biblical in rhythm, and the sections seemed like the Sermon on the Mount, according to Wooley.
• Prime Minister Gordon Brown has frequently referred to the “moral compass” he inherited from his clergyman father.
• Liberal democrat leader Nick Clegg claimed that Christian values are “central” to his policies in a Daily Telegraph article entitled “Atheist Nick Clegg discovers religion in time for polling day”.

Meanwhile, Christians are being enjoined by faith leaders to participate more in political elections.

Preacher Canon J. John, who is prominent within the evangelical community in the UK, urged believers to do their best to find out about their local candidates.

“We might want to ask whether they are genuinely committed to moral values or do they simply adopt whatever is the current fashionable view? Does the candidate place their party’s ideology above everything else? Would they be prepared to vote against the party line on moral grounds,” he said.

A spokesman for the Christian Peoples Alliance, which is putting up 17 general election candidates, said, “We are building for the politics of tomorrow.”

The Westminster 2010 Declaration, signed by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey and Cardinal O’Brien, the leader of Catholics in Scotland, advised that

Christians should work to ensure “religious liberty and freedom of conscience are unequivocally protected against interference by the state and other threats”, while they “will not be intimidated by any cultural or political power into silence or acquiescence.”

The declaration goes on: “We call upon all those in UK positions of leadership, responsibility and influence to pledge to respect, uphold and protect the right of Christians to hold these beliefs and to act according to Christian conscience.”

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8607964.stm

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/clegg-lib-dem-values-are-christian-values/

The issue of Christian marginalization has gained new heat as the National Secular Society (NSS) recently accused Christian church leaders, including former Archbishop Lord Carey of Canterbury, of seeking special treatment at the Court of Appeals (CA).

In a separate instance Shirley Chaplin, a nurse, was banned by Devon and Exeter NHS Trust from wearing her crucifix on the job although she had done so without incident for the last 30 years.

This has sparked new debate among Christians, Muslims and secularists about the issue of discrimination of Christians in favor of secularists.

Stephen Evans of the NSS said “Equality for all before the law must be non-negotiable.”

However, Paul Diamond of the Christian Legal Centre filed the request on behalf senior church leaders after religious activists had already lost several cases of church discrimination.

Diamond also represents Gary McFarlane, who was fired from his job for refusing to give sex therapy to gay couples.

The church is requesting that McFarlane’s case is heard by a specialist panel of five judges with a proven understanding of religious issues.  They also requested that the panel is headed by Lord Judge and the Lord Chief Justice.

The Christian Concern For Our Nation (CCFON) website noted that senior churchmen felt the CA judges are biased against them.

Lord Carey and others said that in the long term there is a need to appoint a panel of judges – of all religious faiths – to hear sensitive religious rights cases.

In a separate instance Shirley Chaplin, a nurse, was banned by Devon and Exeter NHS Trust from wearing her crucifix on the job although she had done so without incident for the last 30 years.

Others Protest

Dr. Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford said secularism in Britain is “virulent”, and that Britain should be defending Christianity as the faith of the British majority instead of marginalizing it.

Hargey said “As a Muslim, I am filled with despair at the attitude of our politically correct officials towards Christianity” in his article entitled “What Has Britain Come to when it takes a Muslim Like me to Defend Christianity?”

Hargey expressed regret that the core of religious liberty, which was a “…cornerstone for our democratic, respectful and tolerant nation” is slowly ebbing.

Donald MacLeod, principle of the Free Church college in Edinburgh was featured in guardian.uk.com saying “Muslims may wear their burkas, gays their earrings and Sikhs their turbans, but Christians may not wear crucifixes.  Marriage is attacked because of presumed links with Christianity, and euthanasia promoted because it is presumed to have none.”

In the same article Mary Warnock said “We need an established church.  There are occasions when the cultural traditions and ceremonies of religion are essential, and nothing else will do.  Christianity is not just a private but a public matter, woven into our constitution and our shared imaginative life.”

Atheist leaders  Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens want Pope Benedict XVI to be arrested when he visits the UK in September for “crimes against humanity,” Christian Today reported.

Dawkins and Hitchens charges come amid reports that the pope had signed a letter in 1985 when he was known as Cardinal Ratzinger on behalf of priest Stephen Kiesle who was charged with sexually abusing boys under his watch in California.

The Vatican denies they tried to stonewall Kiesle’s defrocking and say that they are victims of a hate campaign generated by their unpopular stance on several issues including birth control and same sex marriage.  They maintain that sexual abuse by priests is limited and not as rampant as some media reports maintain.

Richard Dawkins. Atheist leaders such as Dawkins want Pope Benedict XVI to be arrested during his upcoming visit to Britain

Dawkins cited as precedent the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when he visited Britain in 1998.  Last year a British judge issued an arrest warrant for Israeli politician Tzipi Livni upon the urgings of pro-Palestinian activists, causing Livni to cancel her UK visit.

Human rights lawyers note that the Vatican is not a recognized by international law as a state, nor is it recognized by the UN.  For this reason, the pontiff’ does not merit diplomatic immunity.  However, the Vatican enjoys diplomatic relations with some 179 countries.

Pope Benedict will visit London, Glasgow and Coventry on September 16 and 19 to beatify 19^th century theologian Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Historically, the only pope who was arrested was Pope Pius VII by Napoleon Bonaparte, who held the pontiff prisoner for six years for excommunicating Bonaparte.