These articles were first published in our August edition of the newspaper, click here for more.
The Graduation and Awards Ceremony of Highland Theological College UHI took place in Dingwall Free Church on 1 July with almost 40 awards being made, ranging from PhD to Doctor of Ministry to Honours degree and Access Course.
Amongst the many graduates Graeme Payne, the former Dundee United football player and Petra Gurney, who was brought up in a Romanian orphanage in the 1980s and moved to Scotland when she was adopted.
It was announced in June that parents will be consulted by the Welsh Assembly over plans to ban smacking.
Labour First Minister Carwyn Jones announced in May that ministers would seek to outlaw the defence of ‘reasonable chastisement’. Currently, parents are allowed to use smacking as a form of discipline and a poll in 2014 showed that almost seven in ten people in Wales opposed a parental smacking ban.
In 2015, there was a total of 203,096 abortions performed in the UK.
98% of all abortions were performed on the grounds that having the baby would be detrimental to the mental health of the mother. 27% of the abortions in England and Wales went to women who had already had at least one abortion and 1,030 of these had already had four or more previous abortions; 50 women were having at least their ninth abortion.
Aisling Hubert, who brought a legal challenge to bring two doctors caught offering 'gender abortions' to justice, is now to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) it was reported in June.
Aisling's application for Judicial Review of the court's refusal to prosecute the doctors, was rejected in December. Her appeal to the ECHR will call on all of Europe to prohibit abortion on grounds of sex.
Genesis’ teaching on marriage needs to be ‘reconsidered’, a Church of England Bishop stated in mid-June.
The Rt Revd Paul Bayes, the Bishop of Liverpool, is one of a number of Anglicans who have contributed to a book on ‘Revisiting scripture and sexuality’. In it, he says: ‘Some reconsideration of how we should now understand the Genesis perspective on marriage is necessary, as well as exploration on how far that should affect the underlying principles.’
Around 40 primary schools in England have introduced ‘gender neutral’ uniform policies that support boys wearing skirts it was reported in June.
The policy has been Educate & Celebrate which has received £200,000 from the Department for Education to provide equality and diversity training to school staff. It provides a sample gender neutral uniform policy on its website. One of the schools involved, in Birmingham, said it aimed to promote ‘each child’s right to express their gender and personality in whichever way feels right for them’.
Leaders from Britain’s main faith communities have condemned intolerance amid mounting reports of racist abuse in the wake of the EU referendum result.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Chief Rabbi and senior imams have all spoken out against division and expressions of hatred. Police recorded a 57% increase in hate crime complaints in the four days following the referendum.