Queensland Synod News

Fiji is struggling to respond to the worst flooding in 50 years that has already left 11 people dead and over 10, 000 people homeless as well as destroying crucial infrastructure. Preliminary estimates place the cost of damages at approximately $32 million. The poorest have been hardest hit by the storms and thousands of affected people are pouring into schools ...

Major Christian denominations in Britain have said a month-long poster campaign on buses throughout the country promoting atheism will encourage debate and interest about God. Oxford University evolutionary biologist, Professor Richard Dawkins, in early January launched the first of 800 buses on regular routes throughout Britain bearing the slogan, "There’s probably no God – now stop worrying and enjoy your ...

Despite high-profile debates about sexuality within their denominations a new study has found U.S. theological students preparing for the ministry are not being adequately prepared to deal with sexual issues. The report, entitled "Sex and the Seminary", released on 8 January, says that U.S. theological education schools must do more to prepare their graduates so that they can better minister ...

Britain’s Jews have been advised to take extra security measures on the street, in homes, at synagogues, in offices and at recreation centres following attacks on them in London, Leeds, Manchester and other parts of the country. "We’ve received reports of 60 attacks since December 29, including two quite serious assault cases and an arson attack on a synagogue in ...

ACT International, a global humanitarian alliance of churches and agencies, says a hospital it supports in the densely-populated Shijaiya part of Gaza was reduced to rubble when the building was hit by an Israeli missile. Geneva-based ACT International said the health care centre in the east of Gaza will no longer be able to offer services to the residents in ...

Two clerics have joined Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, fasting in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe, which faces a collapsing economic and political order and reports of a military alert amid fears of a coup. Tutu made a call for support for the fast on South Africa’s Radio 702 on 11 ...

A South African bishop who came to prominence fighting apartheid has called Zimbabwe’s crisis a slow genocide. He was speaking during the launch by a civil society grouping of a campaign to highlight the "immoral" role played by South African government in supporting Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe. Bishop Paul Verryn, of the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg, which is housing ...

Civilians injured by bombings in Gaza are stuck in their homes without food and water, unable to seek medical attention, says the director of an Anglican hospital in Gaza City. Nurses working at the hospital are unable to reach their own injured children at home. The Al Ahli Arab Hospital has treated more than 100 patients since the onset of ...

The general secretary of the (Lutheran) Church of Norway’s council on foreign and ecumenical relations, the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, says he was summoned to the Israeli embassy in Oslo after criticising Israel’s use of military force in Gaza. In a 30 December letter to Israel’s ambassador in Norway, Fykse Tveit and Bishop Olav Skjevesland, the church’s presiding bishop, had ...

Two regional German Protestant churches situated among many of the historic sites associated with the 16th-century reformer Martin Luther have merged to form the Evangelical Church in Central Germany. The move unites the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia and the Evangelical Church of the Church Province of Saxony. "The witness of the Church will gain in appeal if we do ...