Churches across Britain are being asked to ‘adopt’ care homes to provide comfort and succour to lonely dementia sufferers. When former nurse Tina English had a vision of churches across Britain adopting care homes to alleviate a crisis, she did a simple sum. ‘There are about 50,000 churches in the UK and 17,500 care homes,’ she says. ‘I thought, if one in three churches started a care-home-friend project there would be a lot less isolation and loneliness.’ Tina, director of Care Home Friends, now has the chance to make it happen after receiving funding from Cinnamon Network, a Christian charity, to start projects across the country. A video that she posted on YouTube has been an effective recruiting tool. She has built up a network of fifty volunteers visiting seventeen care homes in the borough of Richmond upon Thames over the past two years. ‘God has given me a heart for older people,’ she says.

The jihadists’ fetish for anniversaries should not go unnoticed. The barbarity on 3 June in London was four years to the day after Drummer Lee Rigby’s murder by terrorists. Haras Rafiq of the Quilliam Foundation (an Islamic thinktank) has called on political parties to take terrorism threats more seriously, with strong, committed leadership. He said: ‘Barely thirty words appear on counter-terror in the three major parties’ manifestos - not the razor-sharp focus that the single biggest threat to our way of life warrants. It is time for British Muslims to self-diagnose the malaise seeping through our community. It is not enough simply to distance our faith from these monsters: we must categorically refute the Islamist ideology that fuels their twisted worldview. We must hold our community, our religious leaders and our mosques accountable when they say something that just doesn’t sound right. We must work together and collaborate on counter-extremism programmes such as Prevent.’ (See article below, on Prevent)

Islamist groups in Britain are undermining the fight against terrorism by peddling ‘myths’ about the government’s key anti-radicalisation policy, according to the country’s most prominent Muslim lawyer. Nazir Afzal, a former chief crown prosecutor, warned that some groups were spreading misinformation about the Prevent strategy, set up by the Blair government to intervene early and to provide support for those deemed at risk of being drawn into violent extremism. Prevent is estimated to have an annual budget of £40 million, but has faced criticism for implying that Muslims are a ‘suspect community’ full of potential terrorists. Mr Afzal condemned ‘self-appointed’ community leaders who present Muslims as victims and not as those who are potentially becoming radicals. He singled out the Islamist-dominated Muslim Council of Britain, saying its annual general meeting last year stated ‘nothing about radicalisation and nothing about the threat of people going to Syria’.

The Church of England will vote in July on creating a ‘baptism-style’ service for congregants who have changed their sex. The proposed service will celebrate the person’s transition from one sex to another. Transgender priest Rev Rachel Mann, rector of St. Nicholas Burnage and a minor canon at Manchester Cathedral, praised the scheduled vote on the issue. ‘Trans people feel powerfully called to be recognised in their “chosen” name’, Mann said. ‘An opportunity to be publicly introduced to God is therefore significant. I think this is what the proposed liturgy aims to do. It will be symbolically powerful. The extent to which it is baptism will be debated by General Synod, of course, but this liturgy is a welcome move to affirm trans people.’ Others have spoken out against being so welcoming of the transgender lifestyle. Speaking recently on Radio 4, Mann said this is not a ‘transgender’ liturgy but a ‘transition’ liturgy, solely for people who have had sex change operations.