Queensland Synod News

A decision by the highest court of the Anglican Church of Australian clearing the way for women to become bishops has been welcomed by supporters of the measure, but criticised by opponents as being potentially divisive. "The innovation will inevitably create ongoing difficulties around the church for decades to come," Sydney’s Anglican archbishop, Peter Jensen, said in a statement in ...

The World Council of Churches has warned of an "exodus" by the small Christian community of Iraq and said the country’s leaders and foreign governments need to install the rule of law and restore a multi-cultural balance in society. "The flight of Christians from Iraq is a sign of the failure of policies that were purported to bring stability and ...

The US Federal Bureau of Prisons has said it will return "non-approved" religious books and other materials that were removed from the shelves of federal prison libraries because of concerns over the threat of terrorism. The prisons bureau had come under pressure from religious groups and some US lawmakers over the original measures, called the "Standardised Chapel Library Project". This ...

Belief in God seems to be making way for a modern form of ancestor worship in the Netherlands, says a Dutch academic who has embarked on research into non-religious death rites. "The priest and the pastor are increasingly sidelined, but the need for rites related to death remains. People are now negotiating with funeral companies about their own rites," Eric ...

Alpha Rex Emmanuel Humbard, who has been called the world’s first televangelist, and who conducted the funeral of Elvis Presley, has died at the age of 88. A former itinerant preacher who settled in Akron, Ohio in the early 1950s, Humbard was the first US evangelist to build a ministry through television programming. He made his first on-screen broadcast in ...

TOWNSVILLE’S STABLE on the Strand is an annual ecumenical event attracting thousands of people. Held from 19-23 December, Stable on the Strand offers a unique Christmas experience for visitors and volunteers alike. The combined churches present the message of Christ’s birth through drama, song and many other activities in a festival atmosphere. This year guest artists will include singer-songwriter Colin ...

WITH MORE than 14 million books in print, award winning US author Philip Yancey surprised a Brisbane business luncheon by announcing he didn’t have any answers to offer. “I don’t have all the answers. I have questions and that’s how I usually choose what to write about – I choose something I don’t know the answer to,” Mr Yancey said. ...

The Copenhagen diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark has taken the denomination into cyberspace through the Web-based virtual world called "Second Life". On this site, the online church can be found on the "island" called "Danmark", and its priest, an "avatar" (online 3D representation) called Pellegrina, is a priest in real life as well, the denomination said on ...

The national council of the (Lutheran) Church of Norway is recommending to the denomination’s general synod that it allow homosexuals in registered partnerships to serve as bishops, priests, deacons or catechists. However, a bishop should still be able to refuse to ordain people in same-sex registered partnerships if the bishop believes it would be a violation of church teaching to ...

A new United Kingdom report has revealed that faith schools are turning their backs on their original remit to tackle the poor and vulnerable, and selecting proportionately more white, middle-class pupils. Faith schools are ‘cherry picking’ too many children from affluent families and contributing to racial and religious segregation, according to the most extensive research of its kind, based on ...