Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?

The closure of the 40-year-old engine plant, which employs 1,700 staff has insisted that falling demand for petrol cars is to blame and not Brexit.

The Bishops’ Adviser for Church and Society in the Church in Wales, Canon Carol Wardman told Premier the impact will be felt in the whole community.

Speaking during Premier’s News Hour, she said: “It’s a major blow. South Wales is an area that’s been hugely affected by industrial decline.

“We’ve had British Steel originally then Tata cutting back there.

“Of course a lot of people were employed in the coal mining industry, which of course has pretty much disappeared, and now this news. So, it is a major blow for the area.”

The US carmaker has been accused by the Unite union of breaking “promise after promise” to the UK.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: “Ford’s decision to shut its Bridgend engine plant in 2020 is a grotesque act of economic betrayal.

“These workers and this community have stayed faithful to Ford, as have UK customers – this is still Ford’s largest European market – through thick and thin, but have been treated disgracefully in return by this company.

“Ford broke promise after promise to the UK. First, it was that it would build 500,000 engines at Bridgend. That fell to a quarter of a million, then fell again and again.

“The company has deliberately…

According to Christian charity Housing Justice, the number of people sleeping rough across England has increased by 165 per cent since 2010.

Bishop Rob Wickham has dedicated 20 years of service to the homeless and was recently appointed as Chair of Housing Justice.

He said the attitude towards housing needs to be readdressed.

“When we see homelessness, or substandard housing as something which is accepted in a society, we have missed the point,” he said.

“Housing has been, for too long, a commodity to be used for personal gain or profit.

“Houses are not purely economic units, but need to be places of liveability and flourishing.”

Bishop Rob said he believes Christians have an opportunity to “shape the housing landscape”.

Last year, Housing Justice provided over £220,000 in grants to community projects supporting rough sleepers and moving people into settled accommodation.

Bishop Rob added: “I long to see a Britain where night shelters are not needed, but in the current period of time, Christians are stepping up and supporting, loving and cherishing those with no home, for whatever reason.

“Our night shelters are needed now more than ever.”

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John Parker, a clergyman in the Diocese of Chelmsford, recently left his position as a school governor at a C of E primary school because of the school’s handling of a child’s gender transition.

A child in the school changed gender and members of staff and the school governors were given training by the organisation Mermaids, who said gender was like a dimmer switch and not an on-off light switch.

Rev Parker was unhappy that the matter was not discussed in advance of the transition and that he felt there had been no time made for talking about safeguarding nor the morality of it in a Christian school.

He said in a statement a week ago that leaving was his own decision but also suggested the Bishop of Chelmsford had implied he should leave the denomination.

Rev Parker wrote: “This situation, in its entire disregard for the Christian children and parents in the school, and those of other faiths and philosophies, presented the clearest possible instance of what Bishop Stephen had previously told me – that my Biblical views on sexuality were not welcome in the Church of England and that I ‘could leave'”.

On Tuesday, Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell issued a statement saying: “John Parker and I have always had a warm relationship and I was sad to receive his letter or resignation. I certainly did not, as has been claimed, ask or imply that he should leave the Church of England…

Cardinal George Pell is the most senior Catholic to be convicted of child sex abuse and is appealing those guilty verdicts in the Victoria state Court of Appeal.

Prosecutor Chris Boyce told the three judges on Thursday that the convictions largely based on the testimony of a single accuser should stand.

“The complainant was a very compelling witness,” he said.

“He was clearly not a liar, not a fantasist.”

A jury unanimously convicted Pope Francis’ former finance minister in December of orally raping a 13-year-old choirboy and indecently dealing with the boy and the boy’s 13-year-old friend in Melbourne’s
St Patrick’s Cathedral in December 1996.

Pell had become archbishop of Melbourne only months before.

One of the boys, now in his 30’s, is the key prosecution witness.

The other died or a heroin overdose in 2014, apparently without ever alleging he had been abused.

Pell was also convicted of an act of indecency against the complainant by squeezing his genitals as they passed in a cathedral corridor in early 1997.

Mr Boyce said the complainant spent more than eight hours in the witness box and underwent “searing” cross examination during Pell’s original trial in the Victoria County Court that ended with a deadlocked jury in September last year.

“If it was a fantasy, at some point you’d expect the cracks to appear,” he said.

A second jury convicted Pell after watching a…