The Augustinian Church Choir, from Erfurt, are visiting next month for a nine day tour to mark the partnership between the Diocese and the Erfurt Kirchenkreis in central Germany. 

The choir will visit churches and cathedrals across the county including the cathedrals of Bradford, Wakefield and Ripon, alongside Leeds Minster, Halifax Minster and St Margaret’s Church in Ilkley.

There will also be stops to visit York Minister and Ilkley Moor. 

The choir will perform work by Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Flor Peeters, Gustav Holst, Arvo Pärt and John Rutter.

The partnership between the two countries began formally on the 1st November 1997, growing out of an earlier link between Bradford and Erfurt that began in the late 1980s.

Rosalind Beeson, chair of the Diocese’s Erfurt and Leeds link group, said: “We are delighted to welcome the Augustiner-Kantorei to perform in venues across West Yorkshire.

“It will be wonderful to hear this massed choir perform sacred choral music from a wide range of composers from the 15th to the 21st centuries.

“This visit builds on two recent choir tours to Erfurt from the Bradford area in 2013 and Bradford Cathedral Choir’s centenary tour earlier in 2019.

“We are very glad to be able to reciprocate and to strengthen our partnership with Erfurt, recognising our shared musical heritage.”

Alex Berry,…

The storm hit Mozambique, on the south eastern African coast, on 15th March this year and went on to reap destruction in bordering Malawi and parts of Zimbabwe

The 105 mph winds and heavy rain caused devastating flooding, ruined crops and battered homes.

Reports suggest over 1000 people died.

Edgar Jone, Tearfund’s representative in Mozambique was there at the time and lost part of his home. He told Premier: “After six months, we still have two million people are still living in need of food and we have got 77,000 people are still living in temporal displacement camps in Mozambique.

Most of our infrastructure has been destroyed such as roads, electricity or water supply, hospitals and schools.”

Mr Jone said the government had started rebuilding infrastructure but that the humanitarian needs are desperate, with the church playing a role in trying to limit the effects of the storm.

“What the church is doing now, we are involving church leaders to pray for people that lost their family members and also awareness on risk, disaster, risk management and also climate adaptation to warn people are continuing to stay in a risk area and also churches are helping to map the secure area and resettle people from the risk area to a secure area.

“We request prayers for long term recovery because climate change is coming to stay and…

The Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that a lawyer for Dr Ulrich Klopfer’s family contacted the coroner’s office on Thursday about possible foetal remains being found at the home in an unincorporated part of Will County in northeastern Illinois.

The sheriff’s office said authorities found 2,246 preserved foetal remains, but there’s no evidence medical procedures were performed at the home.

The coroner’s office took possession of the remains. An investigation is under way.

Dr Klopfer, who died on September 3, was a long-time doctor at an abortion clinic in South Bend, Indiana.

It closed after the state revoked the clinic’s licence in 2015. The Indiana State Department of Health had previously issued complaints against the clinic, accusing it of lacking a registry of patients, policies regarding medical abortion, and a governing body to determine policies.

The state agency also accused the clinic of failing to document that patients get state-mandated education at least 18 hours before an abortion.

Dr Klopfer was believed to be Indiana’s most prolific abortion doctor, with thousands of procedures performed in multiple Indiana counties over several decades, the South Bend Tribune reported.

Christian, Mike Fichter, the president of the group Indiana Right to Life, said in a statement that “we are horrified” by the discovery of the foetal remains at Dr…

Jarrid Wilson, the associate pastor of the Californian church, took his own life on Monday.

He had a wife and two young sons and lead the young adult ministry. 

Wilson ran the mental health charity Anthem of Hope and was open about his struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts, inviting people to donate to 

In a talk called ‘Hope has the last word’ at the church’s mid-week service, the main pastor spoke about how suicide was not the answer and tried to answer people’s questions.

Laurie started: “When I heard the news that Jarrid was gone and I just couldn’t believe it” and explained how he was up at 3:30am listening to a podcast when he saws texts from his own son about Jarrid’s death

“I screamed, I yelled ‘No, God, no!’

“People think that us as pastors and spiritual leaders are somehow above the pains and struggles of everyday life. We’re supposed to be the ones that have all the answers but we don’t, we’re just like you, we need to reach out to God for his help and strength everyday.”

He addressed people‘s concerns, saying: “Jarrid had put his faith in Christ and that is why I believe right now he is in the presence of the Lord in heaven – a very important thing to remember.

“One dark moment in a Christian’s life cannot undo what Christ did for us on the Cross.”

He added: “We need to remember what Jarrid told us in his best days, not his worst” and added…

The debate, released on Friday 13 Sep, features Weinstein in conversation with Professor Alister McGrath and explores the question “Religion: Useful Fiction or Ultimate Truth?” and was filmed in front of a live audience at The Institute of Mechanical Engineers in Westminster, London. It is the first episode to be released in the second season of The Big Conversation from Premier Christian Radio’s faith debate show Unbelievable?. The first season had over 5 million engagements across video, podcast, broadcast and print.

Weinstein, who describes himself as a ‘Professor in Exile’ after he was forced to stand down from his position at Evergeen State University in 2017 after confrontations with student protestors over ‘political correctness’ on campus says that belief in God has been an important evolutionary development to make sure people behave well. “The deity is a hack, right? It hacks a structure in a way that functions… How do we learn what it is wrong? These things are induced in us through a mechanism. In Catholicism, the fact that you do wrong and that wrong counts against you in a way that you can relieve yourself of the debt but you have to confess it to somebody who is then in a position to give guidance to you. Again, it’s a hack. It correctly teaches you that this is wrong through some mechanism that has to be instantiated in the real world and it…

The President of Liberty University, a private evangelical university in Viginia, has been accused of taking advantage of his position and acting in his own interests by current and former top staff at the institution.

Jerry Falwell Jr. is a friend of Donald Trump’s, a lawyer and became head of the university when his father died in 2007.

Articles in US media this week claimed to have spoken to several anonymous souces and uncovered a culture of fear and nepotism and claim that Falwell directed business decisions to favour his family and friends. 

Falwell criticised the articles and called it a ‘criminal conspiracy’ against him, saying he will get the FBI involved. 

In response, many who attend the university have wanted to highlight the distinction between the university, the student body and President Falwell. 

Around twenty students prayed to start their demonstration and held signs with Bible verses on. 

The student protest at Liberty has begun with prayer. About 20 people are participating as dozens of other students look on. pic.twitter.com/XfYC2WUV63

— Richard Chumney (@RichChumney) September 13, 2019

Students stood on campus discussing it with each other and talking to the press. 

Loved being able to discuss positive, bold change with the LU Student Body today#StudentsforChange

A 2006 housing ruling – the Joint Ministerial Decree on Religious Building Permits – states that religious groups must get approval from their local community, by way of signatures, to build a ‘house of worship’.

It says there must be 60 signatures from households of a different faith and a list of 90 potential members, as well approval from higher district authorities.

However, Christians say they cannot get enough signatures from Muslims in their communities, who make up 79 per cent of the nation, and that churches are therefore not getting built.

According to religious freedom charity Open Doors, a Baptist church on the island of Java had building work stopped in August because their building permit – granted in 1998 – had expired.

Government offices also broke up a church service in August in Riau, on the island of Sumatra where a Pentecostal congregation was worshipping in the yard of their church because the building had been sealed off by the authorities citing the lack of a building permit.

The church’s pastor, Ganda Damianus Sinaga, has applied for a permit but is finding it difficult to get one issued.

A Pentecostal church in Yogyakarta, also on Java, had applied for and obtained a permit but local authorities revoked it because the church failed to meet the requirement of using its building ‘frequently’.

Before the decision, threats had been made to…

Mugabe, who had been receiving treatment in Singapore for poor health, died on 6th September at the age of 95.

The controversial figure, who many saw as a tyrant but others admired for liberating the country, was ousted in a military coup in 2017.

His funeral on Saturday took place at a national sports stadium in Harare, the capital, and was attended by current president Emmerson Mnangagwa and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. 

A letter signed this week by seven Catholic Bishops of Zimbabwe read: “Some dwelt on his broad education and others on his achievements from the liberation struggle to State House as a principled person, liberator, his empowerment of the black majority, pan-Africanist, etc.

“We, the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, agree with most of these attributes but they also raise a key question, ‘What went wrong?’ The intentions and the objectives were good but the manner of achieving them raised a number of ethical questions. This is where we, as a country, went wrong and continue to go wrong to this day.”

They specifically detail where they feel Mugabe’s leadership strayed into dangerous territory: “We are deeply concerned about the reported nocturnal visits by unknown masked men, beatings, torture, sexual assaults, abductions, harassment of dissenting voices and violent repression of demonstrations by Police.

“Such acts…