Queensland Synod News

The one thing Matt Noffs of the Ted Noffs Foundation was not going to tell students at Cromwell College during his presentation entitled ‘Sex, Booze and Honour Rolls’ was not to drink. Thanks to a UC Foundation grant, the co-ed Uniting Church residential college on campus at the University of Queensland brought Matt up from Kings Cross, Sydney, to talk ...

Pentecostal and so-called non-mainline Protestant churches show continuing growth in the United States, while mainstream churches continue to lose membership, according to the latest annual figures on US church membership. The largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, showed a decline in membership, while the Roman Catholic Church, the largest single church body, showed a slight ...

Visitors and members of the 11th Assembly can look forward to an exciting Bible Study program headed by one of Africa’s most gifted evangelistic preachers, Rev Dr Mvume Dandala. A South African Methodist, who served as the Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church in Southern Africa during and after the apartheid era, Mr Dandala promises to bring a fresh take ...

South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been honoured by the South African Mint at a ceremony in which he struck a commemorative gold coin celebrating his achievement. "We are too prone as South Africans to sell ourselves short," Tutu, the former head of the country’s Anglican church said at the 28 March ceremony. "We have so much ...

Security forces in West Papua continue to hunt down students who were involved in the March 16th demonstration in Abepura. Around 1,000 people are said to be hiding in the hills near Jayapura while twenty people have been hospitalised after being beaten by the police. Approximately 200 Papuans have now crossed onto Papua New Guinea to seek protection from police ...

An Afghan man who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam has been freed after a court in Kabul dismissed the case against Abdul Rahman following worldwide appeals on his behalf. Earlier 41-year old Rahman had declared he was ready to die for his faith. He had faced possible execution under Sharia, strict Islamic law, for converting from Islam ...

Global church leaders in many parts of the world have expressed relief and joy at the release of three members of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) held hostage in Iraq. Members of churches supporting the group said attention should also continue to be paid to the thousands of Iraqi detainees and captives, the British think tank and advocacy group Ekklesia on ...

The Muslim Council of Wales has accepted the apology of Christian leaders outraged that the editor of an (Anglican) Church in Wales magazine published a cartoon of Prophet Muhammad next to God and Buddha in heaven saying – "Don’t complain – we’ve all been caricatured here." Meurig Llwyd Williams, the archdeacon of Bangor, resigned on 21 March after the Archbishop ...

The Uniting Church has welcomed the Government’s decision to grant protection visas to 42 West Papuans who arrived in Cape York on 18 January . Uniting Church President, the Rev. Dr Dean Drayton said the decision to grant protection sends a clear message that the Australian Government is taking seriously the issue of human rights abuses in Papua. ‘By making ...

Canon Gideon Byamugisha, the Ugandan Anglican priest who became the first known African church leader to declare he was HIV-positive, says the world could be free of AIDS by 2025 if it confronts hurdles like stigma and inaction in dealing with the pandemic. "I am beginning to see a world free of AIDS," Byamugisha said on 15 March in Nairobi where ...