Ongoing concern in ‘new’ Syria
Luke Randall
Date posted: 21 Jun 2025
Uncertainty remains for Christians in Syria six months on from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) overthrowing of Bashar al-Assad’s government. While they are meeting together, they remain concerned about the future under President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s rule.
Martin Parsons, CEO of The Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution, believes a recent meeting between US president Donald Trump and al-Sharaa carries “seismic importance” for the future, with the first meeting between US and Syrian leaders in 25 years representing a huge shift in approach.
news in brief
Nigeria: Christians killed
Forty-two people have been killed in Christian communities in Taraba state, north-east Nigeria in a devastating attack by Fulani herdsmen. Attackers invaded homes and murdered residents, leaving destruction and burning houses in their wake, while hundreds of others fled the scene.
Morning Star News reports that the governor for the Karim Lamido Local Government Area has pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice and provide safety to the community, which has been left in ruins. Witnesses said that the “tragic” attacks have “brought untold pain and disruption” to their lives.
Franklin Graham UK tour prompts support – and caveats
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 26 May 2025
American missionary Franklin Graham, son of renowned evangelist Billy Graham, is bringing his evangelistic tour to the ExCel venue London this June – despite recently provoking concern among some UK evangelicals.
The event comes as part of Graham’s God Loves You Tour, which aims to partner with local churches to share “the simple message of God’s love”. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) are hoping to draw thousands to the venue, as they did when it was last held there in 2023.
Donald and the fig leaf
Ben Tannett
Date posted: 26 Feb 2025
Dear Editor
I hesitate to write anything about Donald Trump as it may quickly become out of date - he is proceeding at a frenzied pace. So I’ll remind readers of three assertions which were made about him long before the 2024 election. These are just examples, there are many others.
Firstly, Trump lies on an industrial scale (his false claim to have won in 2020 caused an insurrection). Secondly, his sexual immorality has long been public knowledge. Thirdly, it was asserted that he regularly cheated the contractors who worked on his properties (see James 5:4).
earth watch
Why aren't Christians leading on climate change?
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 27 Jan 2025
Donald Trump is now President of the most economically powerful nation on the planet and – the President-elect is self-avowedly no friend of God’s creation.
He has signed an order to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change and has pledged to roll back Biden’s clean energy law, the Inflation Reduction Act. And he’s doubling down on oil and gas: ‘Drill, baby, drill’.
Trump 2.0: Understanding why people support him
Jonathon Macdonald
Date posted: 24 Jan 2025
Many British Christians are terrified of any association with Trump-supporting American Evangelicals.
I remember reading an article recently which mentioned an English congregation who had gone as far as removing the word ‘evangelical’ from their name to avoid giving the impression the church was too closely related to those west of the Atlantic. There are even some for whom this fear of association descends into an antipathy bordering on disgust.
the ENd word
How vulnerable was Jesus?
Jon Barrett
Date posted: 23 Jan 2025
One of the habits we’ve developed as a church staff team is to have a book that we commit to reading and discussing as part of our weekly staff meeting. Normally we opt for something theological but occasionally, to keep things lively, we go a bit rogue.
Recently we’ve been on one of our excursions into left field and have been working through Brené Brown’s bestselling book on the subject of vulnerability, Daring Greatly. In all honesty, to employ a clerical metaphor, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg of a book.
Is the UK church ready for Trump 2.0?
Ben Chang
Date posted: 20 Jan 2025
Today sees the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States.
Over on this side of the pond, polling consistently confirms that most of the British public have a pretty dim view of Trump. At best, he is seen as a ridiculous clown who cannot string a sentence together. At worst, he is viewed as a wannabe autocrat who idolises Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. However, he won a resounding victory in the Presidential election and his party gained control of both the House and Senate.
Jimmy Carter funeral: a testimony to his 'deep' Christian faith
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 10 Jan 2025
For anyone who hadn’t appreciated that the late US President Jimmy Carter was a Christian with a deep faith and love for God, his funeral service on 9 January has left no doubt.
The BBC currently has a programme on famous names who died in 2023 called Lives Well Lived. The typical worldly measure of a life well lived is their achievements, wealth accumulation, status, and doing good. Viewers of Jimmy Carter’s funeral service and its attendees were offered a far more valuable measure of a life well lived: a higher godly standard.
Great men?
The “great man theory” of history, often ascribed to the 19th-century philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle, has a lot at least superficially going for it.
The concept posits that “universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators,” as Carlyle puts it.