Sadly, today’s episode will be the last episode of the Premier Christian Newscast. To wrap the show up, we looked back over the last two years at what stories and topics have come up the most. What has been making waves in church news? What issues are we unable to move on from? And what might this tell us about what is going to be hitting the headlines in the years to come? Has the Christian media got too distracted by culture war political nonsense, and missed the more important stories right under our nose? How do we faithfully go about trying to decide what to cover and what to ignore?

We’ll be joined by Sam Hailes and Emma Fowle from Premier Christianity magazine to look back at what the Newscast feed tells us about the state of the church, and to consider what stories we expect to be keeping us busy throughout the rest of 2024 and into the future.

All of the UK will be going to the polls soon in a general election, which is expected at some point in the autumn. After a drubbing in the recent local elections, Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are widely expected to be dumped out of office in Westminster too. And just as more and more Britons are abandoning the Tories, so too are Christians. This week we’re wondering how believers are thinking about the parties, the politicians and the policies ahead of going to the polls. Many in Westminster expect this to be a tumultuous and history-making election, but how engaged is the church this time round? Where do Christians stand on the big flashpoints and debates? Is there really any meaningful Christian vote for parties to lobby for? And what do the Christian activists in the main parties make of it all?

Guests:

• Andy Flanagan, Christians in Politics

• Hannah Rich, Christians on the Left

• David Burrowes, former Tory MP and now the Conservative Christian Fellowship

• Elizabeth Jewkes, Liberal Democrat Christian Forum

The horrendous attack on a mother and her children by Abdul Ezedi, an Afghan asylum seeker, in Clapham earlier this year sparked a ferocious row. A string of politicians and right-wing media outlets accused churches of giving asylum seekers like Ezedi bogus baptisms after they had fraudulently converted to Christianity to boost their arguments to not be returned to their home countries. But is any of this actually happening? What is actually happening on parishes and congregations up and down Britain which do minister to asylum seekers? And why have Christians become the lightning rod for politicians’ anger over the asylum system in the first place?

Guests:

• Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford

• Krish Kandiah, director of the Sanctuary Foundation

• Steve Tinning, public issues enabler for the Baptist Union

• Emily Shepherd, CEO of Welcome Churches

• Mike Coates, vicar of All Saints, Liverpool

It’s not just British denominations which are splintering under the weight of their divisions. The United Methodist Church in the United States has also gone through a painful five years of divorce, with up to one in four congregations choosing to leave. The crisis was, inevitably, precipitated by deep disagreements over LGBT issues including same-sex marriage. When a crunch vote in their assembly came, the conservatives won and yet it is the conservative churches which have left, some to a brand-new breakaway denomination. In some ways the split has been amicable and orderly, and yet it has also caused huge pain for others on both sides. What does the future hold, both for the conservative churches which have left and for those who remained? And is the path of mutually agreed separation a good model for other denominations experiencing similar fractures?

Guests this week:

- Tom Berlin, UMC bishop in Florida

- Gregory Palmer, UMC bishop in Ohio

- Timothy Tennent, president of Asbury Theological Seminary

- Heather Hahn, assistant news editor for United Methodist News

- Megan Fowler, religion journalist and contributing writer at Christianity Today

It’s not just a toddler group. Emphasis on the ‘just’. That’s the title and message of a new report which urges churches to take their midweek parents and toddler groups more seriously. These groups are not just about toys on mats and beakers of juice for tired mums, but vital for children’s flourishing and also for drawing families into the wider church community. The report is one of a number of recent initiatives trying to reignite ministry with children, which had been hammered by the pandemic, where lots of young people lost touch with the church during lockdown and never came back. How we are doing at relaunching children’s ministry since then? Is it properly integrated with the rest of our church lives? And what about those thousands of churches that don’t really have any young people any more? Is Christianity becoming a religion for grown-ups only?

It is not just the Church of England and the Catholic Church which has been wrestling with divisions over same-sex marriage in recent years. The Baptist Union is also split between those who believe God affirms gay marriage and those who hold to a traditional opposition to it. Yet unlike other denominations, the Baptists have come recently to an interesting compromise. Individual congregations are at liberty to host same-sex weddings or not to, according to their consciences. But gay Baptist ministers will not be allowed to themselves enter same-sex marriages. What has led the Baptists to this unusual position? Could it be a solution other denominations should explore? And, can this settlement hold into the future?

Guests:

• Ashley Hardingham, affirming Baptist minister

• Chris Goswami, traditionalist Baptist minister

• Mark Woods, Baptist minister, writer and formerly editor of the Bapist Times

Ecumenism. Even the word itself is probably putting some of you off right now. A tiresome bit of churchy jargon that has no relevance for your church or spiritual life, right? But working for unity across churches and denominations is for some a genuine passion, an urgent priority, even a lifetime’s ministry. Earlier this year, a group of Catholic and Anglican bishops spent several days in discussion, joint services, pilgrimages and worship together. As these kind of ecumenical events always do, it ended with lots of warm words, a fairly vague joint communique, and promises to do it again in a few years. But did it actually change anything on the ground? Are denominations as separate as Catholicism and Anglicanism actually serious about trying to reunite? Should it be taken more seriously by ordinary churchgoers and ministers, or is it just cups of tea and endless talking shops?

Guests this week:

• Christopher Landau, Anglican priest and director of ReSource, a charity promoting Charismatic renewal

• Jan Nowotnik, national ecumenical officer for the Catholic Church in England and Wales

• Paul Murray, professor of systematic theology at Durham University

• Shermara Fletcher-Hoyte, principal officer for Pentecostal, Charismatic and Multi-cultural Relations at Christians Together in England

Many of England’s biggest football clubs – today some of the country’s largest entertainment businesses – were originally started by local churches 150 years ago. Fascinatingly, the connections between Christianity and football are not solely a historical quirk either. There are Christians playing the game at every level, managing teams and running clubs, while churches use the sport for both outreach and pastoral care. So much so that even the thoroughly secular Football Association held a jamboree at Wembley Stadium last year to celebrate the interplay between the beautiful game and Christianity. This week’s episode digs deeper into the links between the church and our national pastime, exploring everything from muscular Christianity to faith literacy to evangelism inside the dressing room.

Guests this week:

• Michael Wakelin, Norwich City fan and former BBC religion producer who organised the FA’s Wembley event

• Graham Daniels, former player and manager, now director at Cambridge United and head of Christians in Sport

Just before Christmas, the Catholic Church surprisingly announced priests could offer pastoral blessings to same-sex couples for the first time. The announcement has been a jolt of energy to the church, delighting liberals who have been quick to publicise their blessings, and equally infuriating conservatives. Why has the backlash been so vociferous, and what might this mean for the remaining years of Francis’s pontificate? Is it actually that big a reform after all, or has it all been blown out of proportion? Will it entrench schisms within the Catholic Church worldwide or push the denomination firmly towards progressive reforms in the future?

Guests this week:

• Catherine Pepinster, freelance Catholic journalist and former editor of The Tablet

• Charles Collins, managing editor of Crux, a leading Catholic news website

Almost nobody has heard of Sir Paul Marshall until a few weeks ago. But, thanks to his Twitter account, the multi-millionaire hedge funder and media mogul has become briefly famous, or perhaps infamous. An investigation has revealed Marshall had a private Twitter account which had liked and re-posted dozens of hardline anti-Muslim and far-right tweets. As well as owning a slew of right-wing media outlets, Marshall is also deeply embedded in the church world, sitting on boards and funding projects including the HTB church planting network and the Church of England’s new Centre for Cultural Witness. Should we care that a man who has pumped in millions of pounds into church ministry may hold in private quite extreme views? Are Christians too casual about partnering with people who actually hold very different values to them? How should we think about the growing numbers of Christian figures who are getting involved in right-leaning politics, and perhaps drifting towards the radical fringes in the process?

I’m Tim Wyatt, and you’re listening to the Premier Christian Newscast. This week, I’m joined by Sam Hailes and Emma Fowle from Premier Christianity magazine to discuss Paul Marshall’s dubious tweets, and what this might tell us about conservative politics in the church.