Church News

• Christians, Muslims and Jews to share 'churmosquagogue' in Berlin. On the site of a church torn down by East Germany’s communist rulers, a new place of worship is set to rise that will bring Christians, Jews and Muslims under one roof. The €47m “churmosquagogue”, designed by Berlin architects Kuehn Malvezzi, will incorporate a church, a mosque and a synagogue linked to a central meeting space. “The idea is pretty simple,” said Christian theologian Roland Stolte, who helped start the project. “We wanted to build a house of prayer and learning, where these three religions could co-exist while each retaining their own identity.” Read more here.
• £10,000 fine for worship service in pub car-park. Around 30 worshippers attended a church service in their vehicles before being fed outdoors on the outskirts of Nottingham last Saturday. The organisers of the event have been issued a whacking £10,000 fine by the police because the pub car park was "evidently not a place of worship", and the organisers had been warned several times previously. Organiser, Chez Weir said she was seeking to bless homeless people with a simple meal, and will contest the fine. Current guidance defines a place of worship as a building used for regular religious ceremonies, communal worship or similar gatherings by religious organisations, but also covers "premises when being used for religious gatherings, even when their primary purpose is not for religious gatherings”. Read more here.

Society and Politics

• Police forced to issue apology after claiming 'being offensive' is a crime. Merseyside Police were heavily criticised after using the slogan, "Being offensive is an offence" on a mobile billboard, set alongside an LGBT rainbow flag in the Wirral. The British public clearly understood the law better than Merseyside Police, who, after much ridicule on social media, were forced to later clarify in a statement that “being offensive is not in itself an offence" (or at least, not yet). Read more here or here.
• Amazon bans Christian philosopher's trans critical book. Amazon has yet again been accused of censorship, after removing a bestselling book by a leading Christian political philosopher that challenges the prevailing transgender ideology. "When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender moment", by Ryan T Anderson, was published in 2018 and went on to become a bestseller. The study is widely regarded as an accurate and accessible presentation of the scientific, medical, philosophical and legal debates surrounding the trans phenomenon, which doesn’t engage in heated rhetoric. The deeply worrying move is seen as part of Amazon’s increasing censure policy, reminiscent to some of the Soviet-era practice of airbrushing history books that contain inconvenient facts. Read more here.

World Events

• Leading US ‘prophet’ suspends online ministry following false re-election prophecy. A US pastor who consistently prophesied that Donald Trump would win his 2020 re-election bid has issued a video, entitled “I Was Wrong”, urging charismatic leaders to think more carefully about the content of their prophecies. Back in November Jeremiah Johnson argued that the only alternative to the truth of the ‘Trump-will-win’ prophecies being issued by scores of charismatic ‘prophets’ was that they were possessed by demons - something he clearly didn’t believe. After Trump lost the election, Johnson claimed that the election was “stolen” from Trump. More recently he has admitted he got his prophecy wrong. Read more here and here.
• Churches in France concerned over proposed freedom of religion restrictions. Frustrated by years of terrorism inflicted by radical Islamists, France’s parliament is debating a law to end Muslim separatism, which will lead to greater monitoring of religious associations. The move is seen as highly welcome by many, not least because in the last six years, France has suffered 25 deadly jihadist attacks, killing 263 people. But French evangelicals fear their churches will become collateral damage. French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin even claimed recently that “evangelicals are a very important problem”. Clément Diedrichs, general director of the National Council of Evangelicals in France said he is very worried about recent developments. “This law will allow the prevention of religious expression in society”, he said. Read more here.
• US ‘Equality Act’ calls Bible “bigoted” and attacks religious values, rabbinical group claims. The Coalition for Jewish Values, an American group representing over 1,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis, has called for the rejection of America’s Equality Act as “a direct attack on Jewish religious values and practices.” The letter lists numerous aspects of observant Jewish practices which would be grounds for a discrimination complaint under the proposed legislation, including separate seating at weddings, single-gender dancing, and especially the very concept of marriage as a sanctified union between man and woman (called “kiddushin” in Hebrew, from the word “kadosh,” holy).

Israel and the Middle East

• One of world’s oldest Esther scrolls moved to Jerusalem. A rare scroll of the biblical book of Esther, believed to have been penned in the mid-15th century in the Iberian Peninsula, has been donated to the National Library of Israel and made available online ahead of this year’s Purim festival. The artefact is one of the world’s oldest known Esther scrolls. It recounts the story of Jewish deliverance during the Achaemenid Persian Empire in around the 5th century BCE, and is traditionally read during the Purim holiday. Read more here.

Upcoming Events

• Navigating the Pandemic Fog. A Zoom conference is being held on Saturday, 6 March 2021, 9.30–1pm, to consider – from both secular and biblical perspectives – what has been happening in our world since the beginning of last year and the onset of the Covid pandemic. The conference, which is organised by a group of interested Christians from across the UK, will also look at where these events might be taking us and how we can understand them through the lens of God's word. More information, and registration details are available here.