The number of state religious secondary schools in Coventry is up by a third with the opening of two new faith schools this week.

When Sikh free school the Seva School and Muslim free school the Eden Girls School are fully open there will be six state secondary faith schools in Coventry.

The existing four are Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School, Cardinal Newman Catholic School, Bishop Ullathorne Catholic School and the Coventry Blue Coat Church of England School and Music College.

The city’s first Sikh school, the Seva School, has opened in the former Dartmouth School buildings in Tiverton Road, Wyken.

The school will eventually take primary and secondary pupils but has started out this year by taking just younger primary pupils.

The buildings in Tiverton Road are a temporary home ahead of a move to a permanent site in the city.

The Eden Girls School is also in temporary buildings in Lincoln Street, Foleshill, while permanent buildings go up alongside.

Led by headteacher Asiyah Ravat, teachers at the all-girl Muslim school aim to get pupils into top universities and then to jobs at successful multinationals.

It’s the second Muslim school for the city. The other one, Coventry Muslim School, is fee paying and doesn’t get government funds.

Judith Everington, a former religious education teacher in Coventry who now works at Warwick University’s Centre for Education Studies, said: “I see this as a tremendously important and valuable development.

“Coventry has always been a multi-ethnic multi-faith city yet for a long time there have only been faith schools with a Christian foundation.

“This has been a long time coming. Hats off to everyone involved.”

A third new secondary school has also opened in in the city as the new term has begun this week.

The WMG Academy for Young Engineers has opened in Mitchell Avenue, Canley.

WMG Academy WMG Academy

The school for 14 to 18-year-olds concentrates on subjects such as maths, physics, art and design.

It has close links with Warwick University nearby in Gibbet Hill Road.

Pupils have been spending the first few days doing project work at Warwick University before settling in to the gleaming new £10.5 million building.

The school is a University Technical College, a new kind of school independent from councils linked to universities and overseen directly by the government.

Original Content by Coventry telegraph

What role does religion play in American attitudes towards Israel? An analysis by Frank Newport, the editor-in-chief of Gallup Inc., reviews 14 annual Gallup polls from 2001 to 2014 in which respondents answer the same question, “In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” The numbers offer insights different from what one might expect.

The study starts with two basic facts: First, looking at the whole sample of about 14,000 American adults, 59 percent answer that they have more sympathy for Israelis and 16 percent say they have more sympathy for Palestinians, a ratio of almost 4-to-1. Second, Newport finds that “Religious Americans are significantly more likely than less religious Americans to be sympathetic to the Israelis,” confirming what common sense already tells us.

That said, his numbers contain several noteworthy subtleties:

A near-linear relationship exists between church attendance and outlook: 66 percent of weekly or almost-weekly church goers favor Israel, as do 58 percent of monthly and seldom church-goers and 46 percent of never church-goers. Conversely, sympathy toward the Palestinians is also near linear: 13 percent, 16 percent, and 23 percent, respectively.
In both cases, any church attendance at all makes Christians more alike to each other vs. those who never attend, a difference that has somewhat widened recently.
When one looks at religious groups, Jews, Mormons, and non-Catholic Christians are the most pro-Israel; Catholics match the national average; other religious groups and the non-religious are the least pro-Israel. Click here to view graphs.
Political views and religiosity both influence Americans’ view – but as independent variables.
Political views matter more than religiosity: “nonreligious Republicans are more likely to sympathize with Israelis than highly religious Democrats.”
Church attendance has more of an impact on Republican views than on Democratic ones.
Israel brings together two very politically dissimilar groups, church-attending Christian Republicans and Jewish Democrats.

Some reflections on these figures:

(1) Although religiosity helps explain the difference between the United States and Europe, politics has more importance: that even irreligious Americans favor Israel 2-to-1 marks them as very different from their European counterparts.

(2) Given the prominence of Jewish anti-Zionists in the academy, the media, and in Hollywood, the 93-to-2 Jewish support for Israel comes as a surprise, suggesting that the most accomplished and articulate Jews tend to be disproportionately hostile to Israel. Perhaps this is their way of fitting into the leftist institutions where they work and hope to succeed?

(3) One wishes the “Protestant” category provided further details on the various denominations. How much do the mainline churches differ from the evangelical ones? Do the adherents of anti-Israel churches follow their leadership in this regard? Are there important changes over time? Gallup should inform us about this in the future.

(4) Muslims are lumped in with other non-Christians but have a unique profile. In Canada, whose Muslim population differs substantially from the American one, pro-Israel Muslims number about 20 percent. I estimate that pro-Israel American Muslims number half that percentage, or less. Also of note: religiosity among Muslims has the opposite influence than among Christians, making them less pro-Israel.
In conclusion, Israel benefits from the fact that Americans remain in large part a religious people. But declining religiosity bodes ill for the Jewish state.

Original Photo by Daniel Pipes

The senior pastor of the largest Latino-led church in San Diego has been named president of The Hispanic Mega Church Association, where he will work to bring the country’s largest Hispanic congregations together.

Pastor Sergio de la Mora says isolated churches are no longer relevant to the nation and believes in joining forces as a cohesive and collaborative church at large.
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“For every nationality, every demographic and every social circle, today is the dawn of a new day. And our responsibility as the local church is to lead this shift in power and influence by leading our families, communities and nation to experience a Heart Revolution,” de la Mora said in a statement.

The Hispanic Mega Church Association is a division of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference/Conela, which represents about 500,000 churches throughout the U.S. and Latin America.

De la Mora’s experience as pastor of Cornerstone Church has placed him in position to lead the HMCA as he has built a multiethnic church that is relevant in its approach to reaching thousands of individuals, without compromising the gospel.

“Sergio De La Mora embodies the qualities of the 21st century bi-cultural, bi-lingual leader with the ability to network and amplify the voices of America’s Hispanic multi-ethnic mega church pastors,” said Dr. Samuel Rodriguez, president of NHCLC/Conela.

De la Mora’s multi-campus church has been recognized by Outreach Magazine as one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with a weekly attendance of over 4,000. However, de la Mora, a second generation Mexican-American, says it is the church’s message, not demographic, that attracts people to the church’s several campuses throughout Southern California and Mexico.

“Because God is raising us second generation Latinos, He’s breaking rules by using people like us. I believe that God is saying to America, ‘give me permission to use people who you wouldn’t think I can use,” de la Mora, told The Christian Post in a previous interview. “I think the next movement of God is going to be done by people who allow God to use them to break rules so people’s image of God is enlarged.”

Aside from leading Cornerstone, de la Mora also runs the Turning the Hearts Center aimed to meet the needs of the emerging Latino Christian community. The non-profit organization is designed to empower youth and families and restore family unity and self-sufficiency through a variety of programs, seminars and support resources.

He also hosts an annual Heart Revolution Conference that brings together renowned church leaders with the purpose to revolutionize the hearts of the next generation. The conference has reached thousands of individuals and featured various Christian speakers and musicians from throughout the world since 2008.

Dela Mora is author of The Heart Revolution: Releasing the Power to Live from the Inside Out and is currently working on another book, The God Who Breaks The Rules.

Original Photo by Jessica Martinez

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said he continues to support the city’s St Patrick’s Day Parade Committee after it lifted a ban prohibiting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups from marching openly in the annual event.

The cardinal, who will be the grand marshal of the 254th St Patrick’s Day parade next March, said in a statement on September 3 that neither he nor his predecessors determined who could or could not march in the parade.

He said he has “always appreciated the cooperation of parade organisers in keeping the parade close to its Catholic heritage”.

“My predecessors and I have always left decisions on who would march to the organisers of the individual parades,” the cardinal’s statement said.

“As I do each year, I look forward to celebrating Mass in honour of St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland and the patron saint of this archdiocese, to begin the feast, and pray that the parade would continue to be a source of unity for all of us.”

The parade committee’s decision comes in an effort to defuse the controversy that arose prior to this year’s parade over the exclusion of gay banners in the annual celebration of Irish and Catholic heritage.

The ban led New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to refuse to march earlier this year. Guinness also withdrew its sponsorship.

The NBC television network, which has broadcast the parade for years, also was prepared to drop coverage of the event unless a compromise was reached to allow a group of the network’s gay employees to march under a banner identifying the organisation, Irish Central reported.

There was no immediate word on whether the decision would lead to a wider gay presence in the parade.

Original Photo by Catholic News Service

A Ukrainian Church leader said Western governments need to use “all available means” to curb Russian military interference.

“Every right-thinking European should realise that what’s happening here has worldwide implications,” said Bishop Bohdan Dzyurakh, secretary-general of the Ukrainian Catholic Synod of Bishops. “Besides violating all international law, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is also showing the kind of security the world can expect from a nuclear-armed Russia. He will go as far as he’s allowed to go.”

In a September 4 interview with Catholic News Service, Bishop Dzyurakh said Putin and Russia had “violated all norms of international security.” He said that, under a 1994 memorandum, Russian, US and British leaders had promised to respect and refrain from using force against the “independence, sovereignty and existing borders” of Ukraine.

He said it was time the international community stopped “imagining it can talk to this aggressor and lead him to peace, and began using all available means to bar him.”

“Innocent civilians are dying here every day, and we still hope Western governments will take their obligations seriously, and go beyond merely expressing concern and displeasure,” he said.

The same day the bishop spoke, Nato leaders met in Wales and criticised Russia for further destabilising Ukraine, where at least 2,600 people have died in fighting between government and rebel forces since April.

Bishop Dzyurakh said Catholic life was now “practically paralysed” in rebel-controlled areas, where Church members were preoccupied “only with surviving the terrible conditions.”

He added that separatists in Donetsk had claimed to “have the addresses of all faithful and clergy” of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and said many Catholics had gone into hiding.

Church sources told CNS a Catholic convent belonging to the Immaculate Conception order had been seized by separatists in Donetsk, where Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop Stepan Meniok had also been thrown out of his residence.

They added that a local Catholic priest had been “imprisoned and tortured” by pro-Russian fighters, while another was being hunted because he backed the Kiev government.

Bishop Dzyurakh said he believed the separatist campaign in eastern Ukraine had been orchestrated from the start by Russia’s special services and now had to be backed with direct Russian intervention because of the success of Ukraine’s counter-insurgency. He added that Putin claimed to be defending the “Russian-speaking civilian population” of eastern Ukraine, but had in reality destroyed it by wrecking the region’s infrastructure.

“This merely shows he isn’t concerned for the welfare of these people — only for his own neo-imperialist ambitions,” the bishop said.

“Unfortunately, the Western sanctions policy isn’t effective. As a Ukrainian citizen, I think other means must be used, not excluding military action, to stop this aggression, defend our nation and restore the international order Putin is destroying. By helping us in this way, the international community will be helping itself.”

Earlier, a bishop from Ukraine’s smaller Latin-rite Catholic Church told Vatican Radio that some of his church’s members had been forced to flee rebel-held areas, making Catholic life impossible.

Poland’s Catholic bishops said they believed their country was now also threatened by events in neighboring Ukraine.

“These events violate the right of nations to choose their own path and are causing justified concern about our own homeland’s future,” the Polish diocesan bishops said in an August 31 statement marking 75 years since the outbreak of World War II. “We appeal for effective action to stop the tragedy of this war through peaceful means.”

Original Photo by Catholic News Service

Francis became the first pope to address students on five continents simultaneously when he took part in a Google Hangout yesterday (video).

The Archdiocese of New York has offered to take over the Cause of Archbishop Fulton Sheen “in an attempt to move it forward” (Elizabeth Scalia, Brandon Vogt).

Church leaders have criticised Venezuela’s Socialist Party after it urged members to pray to “Our Chávez who art in heaven“.

We must “do all we can” to protect Middle Eastern Christians from ISIS, the British ambassador to the Holy See has said.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan says Vatican officials now display “a refreshing honesty that one did not always detect before“.

Paul Vallely argues that “a new historical moment has arrived” at the Vatican.

And yesterday Diego Maradona enjoyed his second emotional encounter with Pope Francis in less than a week (video).

Follow me on Twitter @lukecoppen for updates throughout the day.

Original Photo by Luke Coppen