Changing Times
It’s not just Brexit, but with the rise of religious persecution and attacks on our freedoms, we need to respond in prayer and action like never before
MPs voted by a majority of 230 to reject the Withdrawal Agreement from the European Union that Theresa May had struck with the EU. The defeat on January 15 put Brexit in doubt. However, it could also be seen as strengthening the case for Brexit without a deal. After all, the majority of UK voters voted for Brexit, with no condition that it should be tied to any deal.
Leave the EU without a deal in March 2019, is the title of a very popular online petition that I urge all readers to sign and share with like-minded people. The link to the petition is: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/ 229963
The petition to the UK Parliament states: “We are wasting Billions of pounds of taxpayers money trying to negotiate in a short space of time. Leaving the EU in March 2019 will allow the UK good time to negotiate more efficiently. The EU will be more eager to accept a deal on our terms having lost a major partner.” At the time of writing this petition has secured at least 337,421 signatures. Pray that the UK will have a complete Brexit very soon.
Attacks on our freedoms
Barnabas Fund launched a publication to celebrate 300 years since the first abolition of a Test Act which is said to have ushered in an age of religious liberty in the West. The “golden era” of religious liberty may be coming to an end unless people stand up for freedom and resist “Test Acts”, declared a leading British politician Sir John Hayes MP, at the launch of the Barnabas Fund publication. Test Acts were laws that made eligibility for certain jobs, public offices or even studying at university conditional on an individual affirming a particular religion or set of beliefs.
The publication, How Britain led the world in developing freedom of religion, was launched at a meeting chaired by the Conservative MP in the Palace of Westminster on 15 January 2019. The event, attended by a number of Parliamentarians and their representatives, celebrated the 1719 repeal of the Schism Act, which had excluded non-Anglicans from becoming school teachers. The remaining Test Acts were repealed between 1828 and 1871 and led to religious freedoms developing in the UK and spreading around the world. Both the USA and Australia wrote into their constitutions provisions to prevent any kind of Test Act ever being introduced.
In his foreword to the booklet, Sir John Hayes argues that people are being persecuted for their religious beliefs to this very day. He writes that religious persecution is not the preserve of distant dictatorships and that, “the struggle for religious freedom in our own nation has not been a straightforward one. After centuries of struggle, freedom triumphed.” To support Barnabas Fund’s ministry to persecuted Christians worldwide phone: 0800 587 4006.
Schools under pressure
On 11 January 2019 Christian Concern reported on the pressure by the UK Government on faith schools to teach and promote the LGBT agenda. Roger Kiska, from their sister organisation, the Christian Legal Centre, wrote about how equality law claims that some people are created more equal than others “… and that we must celebrate their particular protected characteristic, even if it violates our conscience to do so. This concept becomes particularly insidious when agencies of the government begin usurping the role of parliament to extend their ‘moral’ influence over the rest of us.”
Draft guidance issued by the Department for Education in March 2018 fundamentally shifts education policy to require privately-funded faith schools to teach that homosexual behaviour and transgenderism represent equally valid alternative lifestyles. All earlier guidance and, much more importantly, the 2014 Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations themselves, had no such obligation.
The proposed advice has been challenged by Orthodox Jewish parents on the grounds that it violates freedom of religion, parental rights and compels speech by forcing faith schools to teach things contrary to their deeply held beliefs. Kiska commented “they are right to make such a challenge and I commend them for taking this brave stand. Does the rule of law have any meaning if unelected civil servants can compel schools to act in a manner which undermines the laws parliament put in place to protect faith schools? Does it have any meaning if they can undermine the rights of the parents who send their children to those schools? There is a ‘t’ word for state action which compels a new morality and it is not tolerance; it is tyranny.”
Independent faith schools exist partly because the law obliges the United Kingdom to respect the right of parents to raise their children according to their own religious traditions. Forcing these same schools to ‘actively promote’ behaviour or themes which are considered to be sinful for those traditions cuts to the very heart of why we have laws which protect religious freedom in the first place.
Kiska stated “if the proposed advice becomes the new standard for independent faith schools, and the bar which their respective inspectorates judge them by, there is a very real chance that this could signal the death knell for Christian schools which genuinely want to stay true to their ethos.”
Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre are encouraging all of us to take a stand for Christian education and for our children’s future and to write to our local MP at: House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA and to the Secretary of State for Education, the Right Honourable Damian Hinds MP at: Department for Education, Piccadilly Gate, Store Street, Manchester M1 2WD.
Other agendas
Please pray that faith schools will not be forced to ‘actively promote’ behaviour or themes which are considered to be sinful in their traditions. Christian Concern also reported that in January the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the State had not violated the parents’ rights when, in 2013, police seized the children of a Christian family in Germany, putting them into care for 3 weeks because they were being home schooled – which is illegal in Germany.
With state-funded schools increasingly teaching non-Christian views and promoting LGBT lifestyles, home education freedoms are an important option for Christian parents. “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it”. (Proverbs 22:6) To support Christian Concern’s work to defend Christian values and protect the religious liberty of Christians phone: 020 3327 1120
Unfortunately there are many in the UK Government, Parliament and the Civil Service who are determined to impose support for the LGBT agenda on others as well as imposing other initiatives that undermine the natural family, parental authority and religious freedom. If we are not vigilant and willing to challenge such moves then eventually we will find that a lot of our freedoms have simply disappeared.
War on the unborn
Alina Dulgheriu has been permitted to appeal against Ealing Council in London, regarding its Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) that bans peaceful pro-life vigils around the Marie Stopes abortion clinic. The Court of Appeal has agreed to consider her appeal against Ealing Council’s PSPO. Alina is a mother who was provided support to keep her baby by a pro-life vigil outside an abortion clinic. In order to enable other women with crisis pregnancies to obtain such crucial lifesaving support she launched legal action against the buffer zone in April 2018. In July, although the High Court acknowledged that her rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly had been infringed, it still upheld Ealing Council’s PSPO. Please pray that Alina’s appeal will be completely successful and encourage others to also pray for this. If her appeal is successful it will help save the lives of many unborn babies who will otherwise be killed by abortion.
In ancient times both abortion and infanticide were very common. But the scale of abortions in the ancient world were nothing as high as they are today in the UK, where modern technology and instruments have enabled the conduct of abortions to occur on an industrial scale. The Early Christians had a clear understanding of right and wrong regarding the treatment of vulnerable children. If they saw young unwanted children abandoned by their pagan parents to die from exposure, as was common in ancient times, they would take swift action to rescue the children and bring them up as their own. They also received clear, uncompromising and Biblical teaching from the Church on abortion.
In Britain the liberalisation of access to abortion with the 1967 Abortion Act has resulted in the industrial scale slaughter of unborn babies. On average over 500 unborn babies are killed by abortion every day in the UK. Nearly 9 million unborn children have been Killed by Abortion in the UK so far. The actual figure is very much higher than that, in the tens of millions or even more, when one takes into account all the descendants that those slaughtered babies would eventually have had if they had been permitted to live.
The Centre For Bio-Ethical Reform UK (CBR UK) exists to educate society on the humanity of the unborn child and the injustice of abortion, using images of aborted children and other evidence and to support those who have been hurt by it. Their mission is: To make abortion unthinkable. By publicly displaying images of aborted children CBR UK is simply exposing the grisly truth of what abortion does to unborn children. To support the lifesaving work of CBR UK, please make a cheque out to: CBR UK and send it to: CBR UK, 23 New Broadway, Tarring Road, Worthing, West Sussex BN11 4HP. You can help save lives!