Queensland Synod News

Churches in England and Scotland are taking part in wedding fairs this year in campaigns to encourage couples to get married and to do so by marching down the aisle rather than into a registry office. The (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland’s Shaw lands Kirk in Glasgow was to host its own wedding fair on 10 March. Resident minister, the Rev. ...

Three British churches have renewed their call for the British government not to replace the country’s Trident nuclear weapons system in advance of a parliamentary debate and expected vote on 14 March. The joint statement by the Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed Churches comes as Britain considers whether to build a new generation of missile launching submarines costing upwards of ...

The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Malawi has condemned the country’s government for granting a mining license to the Paladin Resources Company of Australia to start mining uranium. The commission of the Roman Catholic Church in the Mzuzu Diocese noted in a 2 March statement that the government granted mining permission despite calls from church and civil society ...

Membership in traditional Protestant denominations continue to decline, while membership in Pentecostal churches and other non-Protestant bodies continue to increase, yearly data collected and released by the US National Council of Churches shows. The NCC’s Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches for 2007 – data collected by US churches in 2005 and then reported to the NCC in 2006 – ...

A US church official says Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he does not deny the Holocaust occurred but he told a visiting Christian delegation "that its disastrous effects are exaggerated to provide legitimacy for the state of Israel". "Why should Palestinians suffer for the anti-Semitism of Europeans?" Ahmadinejad told the delegation at a meeting on 24 February, Shanta Premawardhana, ...

In the quiet Jerusalem suburb of East Talpiot, a tomb claimed by a US documentary team to be the last resting place of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, has become the centre of a worldwide controversy. The Discovery Channel will on 4 March screen "The Lost Tomb of Jesus". It will claim the 2000-year-old tomb could hold the remains of ...

The presiding bishop of the US Episcopal (Anglican) Church Katharine Jefferts Schori does not want her church to leave the Anglican Communion over a demand made in February by leaders of the worldwide grouping that it not ordain homosexuals as bishops. She reiterated a call for both sides in an ongoing debate about the ordination of openly gay bishops and ...

The increasing political influence of evangelical Christians in Canada is changing the face of the movement for Christian unity in that country. More than half the members of the Canadian legislature belonging to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party are evangelical Christians, according to an article published in a recent edition of Walrus magazine, a Toronto-based world affairs magazine. "They ...

Students at Brisbane Boys’ College at Toowong raised almost $400 cooking and selling pancakes to raise funds for UnitingCare the Uniting Church’s Community service agency. Twelve boys from Year 10, all members of BBC’s Inter-School Christian Fellowship group, cooked and sold 250 pancakes for Uniting Care’s annual Pancake Day. This was the third year that BBC boys had participated in ...

Tracey Watt and her husband Garry have nothing but praise for Blue Care Cooinda ─ a homelike residence that recently opened for short-term planned overnight respite in Warwick. The couple regularly use the service as caregivers for their daughter Hannah, 13, who has a disability. Tracey said the overnight care meant they could relax, knowing Hannah was safe and well ...