Displaying items by tag: United Kingdom

Ministers and health officials are working to contain any UK coronavirus outbreaks. Public Health England began ‘Early Warning’ (See) coronavirus tests on patients with coughs, fevers or shortness of breath at 100 GP surgeries and 8 hospitals. The tests are employed (regardless of patients not having travelled to infected areas) to give early warnings of a more widespread infection developing. One employee of Chevron Oil was tested for the virus and 300 London staff were advised to work from home, Crossrail and media firm OMD staff are also working from home as a precaution. May calmness replace any anxiety in communities as pre-emptive moves are made to contain infection. Several schools have closed after pupils returned from half-term skiing trips in Italy. Pray for a peaceful atmosphere to cover homes of families who are self-isolating. May all awaiting test results experience calmness. Pray also for waves of common sense to flow through the nation as the media give daily virus updates. See also A pastor calls for calm

Ministers pledged urgent action after it emerged that tens of millions of British foreign aid cash is funding schools in Gaza and the West Bank where textbooks on martyrdom and radical Islamism are used in school lessons. The money goes via a UN agency that some other nations have stopped financing because of concerns. The textbooks include a reading exercise for six-year-olds with the words 'martyr' and 'attack', poems for eight-year-olds include phrases such as 'sacrifice my blood' to 'eliminate the usurper from my country' and 'annihilate the remnants of the foreigners'. Teaching on Newton’s Second law for eleven-year-olds uses pictures of a boy with a slingshot targeting Israeli soldiers during the Palestinian uprising and nine-year-olds learn maths by adding the number of martyrs in Palestinian uprisings in textbooks illustrated with pictures of their funerals. Ten-year-olds learn that the most important thing is giving their life for 'sacrifice, fight, jihad, and struggle'.

England has received over 200% of its average February rainfall, with some areas experiencing a month's rain in 24 hours and landowners may be paid to let fields flood to protect towns. Pray for the farmers facing the challenges of caring for their livestock on land that is already inundated with snow now melting into saturated ground. Livestock have been lost. May God give them hope for the future. Pray for communities coping with the devastation of roads being cut off, cars under water, and railway lines under threat. Continue to pray for inner strength to fill those who have had their homes, businesses and possessions destroyed by flood water. Ask God to provide all the much-needed resources as (for example) Snaith Priory Church opens its doors as a rest centre, providing food, drinks and beds. Pray for all those working in the emergency services, repairing the infrastructure and building temporary flood defences wherever they are needed.

Reza Karkah, is an Iranian Christian living in Bradford with his wife Leigh and four-year-old daughter Bonnie. His bid for asylum has been rejected twice and he faces imprisonment, torture and separation from his English wife and child if the Home Office rejects his application again. Having re-launched his bid for asylum in the UK, he has good reason to believe he would be executed by authorities and exposed to vigilante violence if deported to Iran. His case is supported by the Christian Legal Centre and backed by expert witnesses. It exposes extraordinary assumptions made by Home Office officials that Reza, as a Christian convert, if deported to Iran would not face any risk of persecution. This is despite Reza’s Christian baptism alone being enough for him to be punished by death under Sharia Law. Since going public with his story, Reza's family in Iran have received threats on their lives.

Last year increased generosity from the public to food banks kept pace with the increased need for emergency food for people locked into poverty through benefit delays. Universal Credit is not the only payment with which people experience problems but key issues forcing people to food banks is the five week wait for a first Universal Credit payment. The charity said, ‘It is now time for our new Chancellor to do his part in the forthcoming Budget and match these acts of compassion by doing the right thing and putting money back into the pockets of people who most need support. It is in our power as a country to end the need for food banks. To reach that future, we need to make sure everyone has enough money for the essentials. The government’s first priority must be ensuring that our benefits system anchors us all from the rising tide of poverty by ending the five week wait for Universal Credit.’

In February 2019 the Church of England took a historic decision to have a loving, worshipping Christian community on every significant estate in England. That means offering enhanced support to existing churches and finding ways of planting new churches onto those estates from which they are absent. In 12 months they have been developing partnerships with people and organisations who share the Church’s commitment to renewing church life on the estates. These partnerships include other Christian denominations, mission agencies, Christian resource and training providers and the National Estates Churches Network which provides a support network and resources for estate leaders. During 2020 they will continue to use a range of written, spoken and social platforms to raise the profile of the ministry and attract able leaders to this work.

The Bishop-designate of Doncaster hosted a Wall of Hope in the cathedral over a three day period last year and was ‘overwhelmed’ by people’s response when over 10,000 people visited the wall to post a prayer. This year, Churches in Portsmouth Diocese are planning to host Hope Spaces in schools, village greens and shopping centres across the diocese during and after Thy Kingdom Come (21-31 May 2020), giving thousands of people who don’t know Jesus a chance to experience his love and hope for themselves. 41% of practising Christians say that a spiritual experience or an experience of the love of Jesus was a key influence in their coming to faith – so if we help more people to experience God’s love and presence, more of them will come to know him for themselves. To find out more about Hope Spaces click the ‘More’ button.

More rain is falling on flood-hit communities, adding to fears that rising river levels might overwhelm flood defences. By 20 February 1,400 homes and businesses were affected by floods following Storm Dennis, and 120 flood warnings remained in place, including six severe or danger-to-life one. Rivers are recording their highest-ever levels. Pray for the residents who are crying out for more to be done to stop repeat flooding. After 2015’s floods millions were invested in river flood defences. A Calder Valley flood victim spoke for hundreds when he said, ‘We can't carry on like this. We've got to stop the flooding problem at its source. That's the only way we are going to survive.’ More work needs to be done to slow down the rivers flowing off the moors, causing villages to flood. DEFRA is now creating a peat strategy (see) and ‘Slowing the Flow’, which improves drainage with bales of heather run-off; increasing rain absorbance by peat, improving land condition and cutting carbon emissions. 

In 2019 ‘Living Lent’ was produced by the Methodist Church, the Church of Scotland, the Baptist Union and the United Reformed Church. It continues in 2020, inviting Christians to make radical changes for the climate during Lent. Our lifestyles and choices mean we have played a role in damaging creation. Churches are responding to the climate crisis with Lent activities which include a lifestyle change - inviting people to make a positive commitment towards change, developing habits that last long after the forty days. Participants, starting on Ash Wednesday, will use daily reflections to explore how our faith and concern for creation connect, through the Bible, through art and through poetry. Individuals will support each other as a dispersed community, for example on Facebook and Twitter through the hashtag #livinglent2020. Also,, the Church of England 2020 ‘Live Lent’ course focuses on care for creation and on protecting the earth from climate change. See

On 12 February the Equalities and Human Rights Commission launched a legal challenge against Matt Hancock, secretary of state for health and social care, over the repeated failure to move people with learning disabilities and autism into appropriate accommodation. It stated, ‘We have long-standing concerns about the rights of more than 2,000 people with learning disabilities and autism being detained in secure hospitals, often far away from home and for many years. We have sent a pre-action letter to Mr Hancock, arguing that his department has breached the European Convention of Human Rights by failing to meet the targets set in tts Transforming Care and Building the Right Support programmes. These targets include moving patients from inappropriate in-patient care to community-based settings, and reducing the reliance on in-patient care for people with learning disabilities and autism.’