Premier Christian Newscast

In France, Emmanuel Macron has launched a new fund to raise hundreds of millions of euros to pay for the preservation and renovation of ancient church buildings across the French countryside. The move has excited church conservation types on this side of the Channel, as a possible model to follow to safeguard our crumbling Christian buildings which can no longer rely on local tithes or cash-strapped denominations to pay for essential maintenance. But how can we safeguard Britain’s Christian heritage in an era of rapidly declining church attendance and growing secularism? Should taxpayers be expected to foot some of the cost? Or is it a waste of time to worry about maintaining medieval buildings which are in the wrong places, impossible to heat, and no longer able to sustain a congregation anyway?

Guests this week:

- Rachel Morley, director of the Friends of Friendless Churches

- Eddie Tulasiewicz, head of policy and public affairs for the National Churches Trust

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the famous atheist and scourge of Islam, has suddenly announced she has now become a Christian. Many in the church have reacted with excitement that a prominent anti-religious voice has switched sides. But others have been scornful, noting her article explaining the conversion seems focused on Christianity’s role in the culture war and fails to mention Jesus or the cross. Why do we end up arguing so much about celebrity conversions like Ali’s? Should we be wary of public figures whose embrace of Christianity may have ulterior motives? Are we seeing the first inklings of a broader return to faith by public intellectuals and the final nail being hammered into the coffin of New Atheism?

Guests this week:

- Andy Bannister, evangelist and director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity

- Emma Fowle, deputy editor of Premier Christianity magazine

- Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s article ‘Why I Am Now A Christian’: https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/

- Andy’s article for Premier Christianity: https://www.premierchristianity.com/apologetics/from-islam-to-atheism-to-christianity-the-unlikely-conversion-of-ayaan-hirsi-ali/16741.article

It’s not only the Church of England that has been having big synods recently. Throughout October, hundreds of bishops and others from the Catholic Church gathered in Rome for their own synod. But unlike the regular twice-yearly meetings the C of E has had for decades, this synod is a much larger, and rarer event. It’s all part of Pope Francis’s efforts to erode the hierarchical nature of the church and shift its culture towards one where the voices of ordinary lay churchgoers are more prominent. Conservatives fear this is the beginning of a process which could see traditional doctrines around women’s ordination, priestly celibacy, and gay relationships abandoned. But the Vatican insists this is actually all about what it is calling ‘synodality’ – a new way of doing church together, rather than immediately moving to debate the hot-button issues which divide Catholics.

Guests this week:

- Austen Ivereigh, Catholic writer, biographer of Pope Francis, and attendee at the synod

- Gill Goulding, theologian at the University of Toronto, nun, and member of synod’s theological commission

- Catherine Pepinster, journalist and writer, former editor of Catholic newspaper The Tablet

- ‘The Keys and the Kingdom: The British and the Papacy from John Paul II to Francis’, by Catherine Pepinster: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/keys-and-the-kingdom-9780567666314/

- ‘Pope Francis and Mercy’, by Gill Goulding: https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780268206444/pope-francis-and-mercy

Last week was a momentous one in the long-running civil war over same-sex relationships in the Church of England. Just like in February, a session of the General Synod – the church’s elected parliament – was almost entirely focused on scrutinising the bishops’ plans to offer formal services of blessing for gay couples in church. The lengthy and at times torturous debate offered a window into a church bitterly divided, almost 50-50 before liberals and conservatives, and how the country’s largest denomination is still trying to tease out a way of reconciling these two, perhaps irreconcilable, groups.

This week’s episode goes inside the synod debate over three days, and then we hear from representatives from each side on how they react to the ultimate vote in favour of the plans for same-sex blessings.

Guests this week:

- Ed Shaw, pastor at Emmanuel Church, Bristol, and ministry director of celibate same-sex attracted evangelical charity Living Out

- Helen King, historian and prominent progressive Synod member

- The Bishop of Lancaster, Jill Duff

- Neil Patterson, Anglican priest, and chair of the Synod gender and sexuality group

- John Dunnett, national director of the Church of England Evangelical Council

The increasingly dictatorial government of President Daniel Ortega has turned its oppressive gaze onto the Catholic Church in Nicaragua in recent years. Angered by the church sheltering anti-government protesters in 2018, the state has intimidated, harassed, detained and exiled numerous church leaders and Christian activists. But many within the Catholic Church, which represents the vast majority of Nicaraguans, have continued to speak out against Ortega’s human rights abuses despite the persecution. This week, Kelly Valencia from Premier’s news team shares the story of Bishop Rolando and Father Ramiro, who have suffered escalating oppression at the hands of the Ortega regime.

(Correction: at one point Kelly mistakenly says that Father Ramiro was exiled with a further 190 or so others. The correct figure is 222.)

- Open Doors has more information on the persecution of Christians in Nicaragua https://www.opendoorsuk.org/persecution/world-watch-list/nicaragua/

- The US Commission for International Religious Freedom has a useful page on Bishop Rolando, including a selection of new coverage of his case https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-victims-database/rolando-alvarez

- This CSW article covers the latest forced exiles of priests by the Ortega government and the continued imprisonment of Bishop Rolando https://www.csw.org.uk/2023/10/20/press/6100/article.htm

Europe is often described as the world’s first post-Christian continent. In what was the cradle of Christendom, a tidal wave of secularisation has swept through from the post-war era onwards. But while mainline and established denominations – whether Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox - have if anything seen even more decline than we have here in Britain, there are some small signs of new life. A new breed of church planters are beavering away, trying to figure out how to bring to faith young adults who are two if not three generations post-Christendom.

In this week’s show we’re speaking to three ministers trying to revive Christian faith in some of the hardest soil for the gospel on Earth. What do 20 and 30-something Europeans actually think about the church as it quickly recedes from its previous position of unquestioned cultural dominance? How can you re-intrigue folk with the Christian story when so much of it is both boringly familiar and totally irrelevant? And what might have to change about how we do church to build new communities of faith in places where Christianity has once reigned supreme but now collapsed?

Guests this week:

- Tim Vreugdenhil, CityKerk, Amsterdam

- Rene Breuel, Hopera, Rome

- Emmanuel Tsoutsas, Pangrati Evangelical Church, Athens

Find out more about the Europe Collaboration here - https://www.europecollaboration.com/

17 October marks the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Eight years ago the UN set itself the ambitious target of eliminating severe poverty globally by 2030. But despite almost a century of steady progress, numbers of people living on less than $2 a day have actually started increasing, not dwindling down to nothing. What’s gone wrong? Why are we struggling to press forward with development in the world’s poorest communities? And was eradicating poverty ever really on the cards? This week we’re speaking to theologians and Christians working in aid and development to find out how the church is mobilising to try and push ahead in the battle to end poverty. But we’re also pondering Jesus famous words that poor will always be with us. What exactly did he mean by that, and should believers be joining the UN is aiming for total eradication of poverty?

Guests:

- Mark Preston, senior director of partnerships at Compassion UK

- Elizabeth Myendo, Tearfund’s operations lead for Southern and Eastern Africa

- Justin Thacker, theologian and author of Global Poverty: A Theological Guide

- Noirine Khaitsa, senior manager for Compassion International, based in Uganda

- Chris Shannahan, Methodist minister and theologian at the University of Birmingham

“Martyrs are more numerous in our time than in the first centuries: they are bishops, priests, consecrated men and women, lay people and families, who in the different countries of the world, with the gift of their lives, have offered the supreme proof of charity.” Those were the words of Pope Francis as he announced he was setting up a new commission to record Christians who died for their faith in the 21st century. Martyrdom has a long history stretching all the way back to Stephen in the book of Acts, but for those of us in the safe West we rarely think about it happening right now, in the third millennium. Yet by some counts, there are more martyrs now than ever before. Where and why are Christians dying today in the world? And how can we be inspired and encouraged by their example, or is the glorification of martyrs actually something which should have died out centuries ago?

Guests this week:

- Archbishop Angaelos, Coptic Orthodox Church

- Andrew Boyd, Release International

- Mervyn Thomas, Christian Solidarity Worldwide

Mostly, we can only guess what clergy in the Church of England think about any number of hot button issues, but last month The Times conducted a fascinating survey of 1,200 serving vicars, rectors and curates. For the first time in about a decade, we can dig into a much more representative sampling of what the clergy think, on everything from same-sex marriage to the establishment of the church, from slave trader statues to the future of church decline in Britain. Does it matter that three-quarters do not believe Britain is a Christian country any more? Do they expect their own parishes to survive the decline of Christianity in the coming decades? Should the C of E allow gay couples to marry in church? We’re joined by Sam Hailes and Emma Fowle from Premier Christianity magazine to talk through all this, and much more…

Read The Times’s survey and feature on it here - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/church-of-england-christianity-survey-gay-marriage-sex-female-archbishop-70ck07sj6