A teacher at a school in Bristol was fired from her job in July 2016 for telling students about her Christian beliefs and reported to the Prevent, the Government’s anti-terrorist agency, as a radicalisation threat. Svetlana Powell, a teacher at T2 Academy, was asked about her faith by an argumentative student; other students then asked similar questions and she decided to use the discussion to accommodate the activities of the day’s lesson plan on cultural issues. The argumentative student asked for her personal views on homosexuality and whether a fellow (lesbian) student would go to Hell; Ms Powell replied that she personally believed that homosexual activity was against God’s will but that God loved everyone regardless of what they did and who they were, and that the historic Christian view is that God has provided a way of salvation of everyone who repents. Some students later complained and Ms Powell was suspended from work the following day; invited to a disciplinary hearing the day after, too soon to obtain legal representation; and then dismissed immediately on the grounds that she could not control her students and that her comments were offensive to some students, without right of appeal. At her employment tribunal, her lawyer contrasted Ms Powell’s treatment with that of a fellow left-wing atheist teacher about who students had complained that he spent most of his time in class “preaching to them on the daily basis about how terrible England is and how many innocent people the government has killed, as well as why Jesus never existed”; had once shown students a sketch of a naked woman with her legs open and vagina showing; and had allegedly twice told a student to “get the f*** out of my classroom”. The punishment this teacher received was to be told off and to have his probation period extended by three months.
At another school in Oxford in November 2017, a Christian teacher at a Stonewall school was suspended and may lose his job after saying “Well done girls” to a group of female students, one of whom had declared herself to be transgender. He immediately apologised, aware that the Stonewall’s schools have a heavily pro-transgender policy including requiring teachers to use gender-neutral pronouns for transgender students – which the teacher avoided by referring to students by name at all times. However, the transgender girl’s parents complained about him (for the second time; the first had been when he handed out Christian leaflets at a gay pride march).
In Canada, the government continues to follow similar trends. It has been confirmed that their policy that employers must support abortion in order to receive summer student job grants applies to church groups; a Christian school in Kingman, Alberta has lost its funding from the local school division because it refused to exclude Biblical teaching in homosexuality and other Christian teaching that could be deemed offensive from its syllabus; and the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, taking part in a recent televised public debate, told off a questioner for using ten term “ mankind” saying “we like to say peoplekind”.
The London Assembly as voted to call on the Mayor of London “to clarify the powers available to [police] to arrest and prosecute” pro-life campaigners who pray near abortion clinics and offer support to mothers, accusing the campaigners of “harassment”. However, the pro-life group concerned say there has not been a single conviction or caution from police in their 23 years of prayer vigils.
Persecution of Christians in some countries continues to go far beyond loss of employment. A Catholic mother of two young children in Vietnam who used social networks to denounce restriction of civil freedoms and prevalence of corruption among the leaders of the Communist Party has been sentenced to 9 years in jail for “propaganda against the state”. A Christian high school student in Nairobi was beaten and knifed by fellow students for refusing to convert to Islam. A 13 year old Pakistani Christian girl was attacked and raped while working in fields near Gurjanwala; the assailant was apprehended because the girl’s father’s landlord became upset and chose to have the incident announced in local mosques. In China, where many churches have had the Cross forcibly removed from their buildings, authorities have destroyed an $2.6 million megachurch in LInfen by setting off explosives inside it. In DR Congo, where protests against the president’s refusal to step down from power have spread inside churches, eight Christians have been killed by police who opened fire and used tear gas inside churches. A former Christian governor of Jakarta, Indonesia is serving a two year jail sentence after he was falsely accused of blasphemy in 2016; an edited Facebook video that showed him allegedly blaspheming the Quran, although Basuki Tjahaja Purnama had really issued a warning against politicians who used the Quran for political advancement. And a Cuban Christian dissident was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison late last year after authorities raided his home and confiscated Bibles and crucifixes; a police official said, “Misael, in addition to being a counter-revolutionary, you are also a Christian. You should look at us, we are revolutionaries and we don’t believe in your God. Our God is Fidel Castro”.
However, there has been some good news. In Indonesia, 9000 Christian prisoners including Purnama were given a reduction in their sentences on Christmas Day, although the maximum reduction was two months. One of the 270 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from Chibok in Nigeria 4 years ago has been returned to her home after being found wandering in a forest. A Burmese widow who fled with her husband as Christian refugees to Ides Moines, Iowa, only to see her husband killed in an attempted robbery six years later, has been given a home after a community appeal raised $300,000. And 51 girls have been rescued by police from an Islamic seminary in Lucknow, India after complaining that the manager would beat them and molest them; after investigation, the police agreed this had been happening.
The March for Life has taken place in numerous capital cities, with marchers carrying signs with messages such as “I support a woman’s right to be born”: “Keep your philosophy off my biology”; and a cut-away picture of a pregnant women with the simple caption, “Love them both”. President Trump became the first sitting US President for 45 years to give a speech to the March, after which the Senate agreed to vote on a pro-life bill that Trump had called for in his speech. The Bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation. The Trump administration also declared the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade legal decision that first permitted legal abortion in the USA to be “Sanctity of Life Day”.
A Bill that has been passed by the US House of Representatives requires abortionists to immediately provide emergency medical care to an infant born alive during an abortion. Abortion providers Planned Parenthood described the Bill as “unnecessarily inflammatory”.
Bermuda has become the first country to repeal same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage became legal in the British Overseas Territory in summer 2017 because of a decision by the Supreme Court, despite a landslide rejection in a 2016 referendum. However, a recent change of Government led to a swift change in the law, introducing “domestic partnerships” -- a form of civil partnership – instead of marriage.
The UK government may well introduce civil partnerships for heterosexual couples. The change appears inevitable under equality principles, but it has long been resisted by governments because of the cost of giving marriage-equivalent pension rights and other benefits to unmarried heterosexual couples. A Bill to change the law, introduced by a Conservative MP, has been given an unopposed second reading – any Bills the Government wants to kill off are normally disposed of at this stage.
In sport: American sportsmen and women are sometimes mocked for dedicating their sporting success to God. However, the Philadelphia Eagles team that recently won a surprise victory in the Superbowl is perhaps the most actively Christian team in the NFL at present. The team organises two Bible studies per week plus a Saturday night “pray and talk” time; star quarterback Carson Wentz is outspoken about his faith; backup quarterback Nick Foles, who won Most Valuable Player in the Superbowl, is taking seminary classes to become a pastor; and wide receiver Marcus Johnson was baptised by his teammates in a hotel swimming pool. Tight end Zach Ertz, who scored the final touchdown in the Superbowl, said: “Making disciples of Christ is the number one priority in in our lives. Football is a platform that we have to spread the word.”
And finally, police in Montreal attempted to write a ticket for an illegally parked snow-covered car, only to discover that the entire ‘car’ – shaped like a DeLorean DMC-12 – was made of snow. A 33 year old machinist and artist had created it as a prank for snow removal crews, but the police found it first. The artist admitted what he had done and the police wrote him a ticket that said, “You made our night!”
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