Queensland Synod News

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 ...

A film about the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire 200 years ago has been condemned by some black leaders for reducing the suffering of enslaved Africans to "a mere bit part". Lee Jasper, the equalities adviser to the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has accused Michael Apted, director of "Amazing Grace", of "prettifying" the horror of ...

For most of the 150 delegates who travelled to Germany for a gathering of church leaders in historic Wittenberg, the trip was a matter of a few hours, thanks to one of the many low-cost airlines that now ply Europe’s skies. But for Anglican Bishop Richard Chartres of London, who has pledged to refrain from air travel for a year, ...

Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria says the US Episcopal Church will be asked to leave the worldwide grouping of Anglican churches if it refuses to promise that no one living in a same-sex relationship will be made a bishop. "If they agree to stop, there will be a huge celebration of the [Anglican] communion," Akinola told journalists in Nairobi ...

Religious groups including the World Council of Churches and the US National Council of Churches have joined international companies and civic groups in backing what has been hailed as a major statement on climate change. "Global warming is an urgent problem that is not only affecting God’s planet but also God’s people," said the Rev. Robert Edgar, general secretary of ...