Spain’s New Atheist Prime Minister Looking to Integrate Muslims, Remove Catholicism From Schools – Urban Christian News

Atheist politician Pedro Sánchez was sworn in as Spain’s new Prime Minister on Saturday, for the first time in the country’s modern history without the presence of a crucifix or a Bible at the ceremony.

In his oath there was no mention of God, and he chose to use the Spanish word for “promise” instead of “swear.”

“I promise by my conscience and honor to faithfully fulfill the obligations of the office of president of the government with loyalty to the King, and to keep and enforce the Constitution as the fundamental norm of the State,” Sánchez said on Saturday in the translation provided by CNN.

Catholic publication The Tablet laid out several concerns on Wednesday with Sánchez and his PSOE Socialist Party platform, accusing them of being anti-Catholic but pro-Islam.

It pointed out that Sánchez has vowed to remove religious symbolism from institutions, as well as to end public funding for the Catholic Church, which is the largest church in the country. Additionally, he has said he will remove religion from the school curriculum.

At the same time, he has offered a hand to Spain’s minority Islamic community, saying that he will pay special attention to the “full incorporation of Islamic communities into the European project and for the recognition of the Arab contribution to the European culture.”

In other statements he has said that he does not want “any religious denomination having preferential treatment,” though he has also said that he will support legislation “in which ideological, religious, cultural and gender convictions and expressions are…

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Kidnapped US Missionary Jeff Woodke is Alive, Says Niger’s President

Kidnapped US Missionary Jeff Woodke is Alive, Says Niger’s President



A US missionary kidnapped in Niger in October 2016 is alive, according to the West African nation’s president.


Jeff Woodke, who worked for Jeunesse en Mission Entraide et Developpement (JEMED), a branch of the US-based Youth With a Mission, was abducted by unknown assailants late in the evening of Friday 14 October, 2016, from the town of Abalak in northern Niger.


For 20 months, there has been no news of Woodke, but on Monday, 4 June, President Mahamadou Issoufou told TV channel France24 that both he and a German aid worker kidnapped in April this year are alive.


“We have some news; we know they’re alive,” the president said. “We continue to create the conditions for their release. Perhaps the contacts that are underway will help to achieve that goal.”


It is the first proof of life since the kidnapping of the two Western citizens in the Sahel country.


Little had been known, or at least divulged, about Woodke’s condition or location, other than that his captors were tracked to neighbouring Mali by Nigerien authorities. No group has publicly claimed responsibility.


Last July, a coalition of jihadist groups active in the Sahel region (Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen, also known as the Group to Support Islam and Muslims), affiliated to Al-Qaeda, released a video showing six foreign hostages, including three missionaries, but not Jeff Woodke.


The…

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Man held on suspicion of murder as 100-year-old woman dies after being robbed on the way to church

Zofija Kaczan suffered multiple injuries in the attack on 28th May and died in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Derbyshire Police said a 39-year-old man who had previously been arrested on suspicion of robbery has now been arrested on suspicion of murder.

 

He remains in custody and is being questioned.

Ms Kaczan was approached from behind, knocked over and had her handbag snatched at 8.45am, close to the junction of St Chads Road and Empress Road in Normanton, Derby.

The bag, made of green fake leather with gold clasps, was found at the junction of Moore Street and Normanton Road.

 

She was  left with a fractured cheekbone but managed to stumble into St Maksymilian Kolbe Polish Church, still clutching one of the bag’s straps.

 

Police are still keen to speak to anyone who saw a beige Seat Leon car seen close to the scene of the mugging and found abandoned two days later.

Officers are appealing for anyone with dashcam or CCTV footage that shows the vehicle with the registration plate SL02 KVZ to come forward.

Stay up to date with the latest news stories from a Christian perspective. Sign up to our daily newsletter and receive more stories like this straight to your inbox every morning.

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Premier Christianity News.

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J.D. Greear is Ready to Give Southern Baptists a Makeover

J.D. Greear is Ready to Give Southern Baptists a Makeover



J.D. Greear preaches an uncompromising faith in a straightforward, unapologetic fast-clip monologue.


“Is it possible to be a lukewarm Christian?” he asked his listeners on a recent Sunday morning at The Summit, his North Carolina megachurch.


Standing onstage in gray jeans, a polo shirt and a scruffy stubble, he likens halfhearted Christians to lukewarm coffee. Hot is good, so is cold, he said. But lukewarm coffee makes you want to spit it out.


“There’s no middle ground,” he implores. “You’re either committed to the mission and living all in for Jesus, or you’re not.”


Greear’s sermons draw crowds of nearly 11,000, including an enviable number of college students and young adults, to hear a bracing Christian message he calls a mixture of truth and grace: Sin is real. There’s no salvation outside of faith in Jesus. God’s grace is amazing, but may not last.


It’s the same kind of unvarnished evangelical message he now hopes to parlay into what may be his new role, as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant group.


Southern Baptists meeting in Dallas June 12-13 will pick their next president, and the 45-year-old Greear is widely expected to win. (Ken Hemphill, 70, a former seminary president, has also allowed his name to be placed in the running.)


If he does, Greear will become the youngest SBC leader in nearly…

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Nun rejects ‘hard as nails’ evidence given at child abuse inquiry

The woman, now in her mid-70s, denied being someone that youngsters would have been scared of.

She agreed there was “probably” a strict regime at Nazareth House in Aberdeen but told a probe she had not witnessed any abusive practices at the orphanage.

 

The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI), sitting in Edinburgh, is continuing its examination of four former children’s homes operated by the Catholic congregation the Sisters of Nazareth in Scotland.

The inquiry has previously been told of various alleged abuses at the institutions.

The witness, who cannot be identified, said she worked at its homes in Aberdeen and Lasswade, Midlothian, from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s.

Senior counsel to the inquiry Colin MacAulay QC told the nun about evidence from another witness who described her as the children’s “mother” at the Aberdeen home, tasked with looking after them and controlling them.

“She was hard as nails and we were scared of her but at times she was alright,” the man said in a statement read by the QC.

Asked if she agreed with that assessment, the sister replied: “Not really.”

“Did you get an impression that children might have been scared of you?” Mr MacAulay continued.

“No,” the nun answered.

The inquiry heard how the man had recalled a time when he dropped a Bible and “got a skelping”, adding the nun “had a terrible temper on her”.

“Do you think you had a temper?”…

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Christian groups welcome Supreme Court’s abortion decision on Northern Ireland

Currently, terminations are only legal if a woman’s life is at risk or there is a permanent or serious danger to her mental or physical health.

On Thursday, the court ruled they had no jurisdiction to declare the current rules ‘unlawful’ but did say Northern Ireland’s laws are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, namely Article 8, which protects the right to respect for private and family life.

They therefore suggested that the law should be changed by saying what ruling they would have made had the case been valid.

Although ‘radical reconsideration’ was recommended, Christian groups have welcomed the ruling that the Northern Ireland Human Rights commission cannot interfere with the law themselves.

Peter Lynas, the director of the Evangelical Alliance in Northern Ireland said: “This is a welcome judgment. It is obviously not a cause for celebration, but rather a moment to pause and be thankful for the lives this judgment will save.”

“We acknowledge that this is a technical victory; however, it is important to note that the Supreme Court has dismissed the case brought by the Human Rights Commission. In doing so, it has made clear that there is no human right to abortion.”

He also made the distinction between the the right to terminations in extreme circumstances and the right generally: “From a human rights perspective, the only discussion is…

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UMC Minnesota Conference Removes ‘Father’ From Apostles Creed for Worship Service

(Photo: Twitter/Keith Mcilwain)An edited version of the historic Apostles’ Creed, which replaces gender specific language like “Father” with “Creator,” which was used during worship at the United Methodist Church’s Minnesota Annual Conference in 2018.

The Minnesota Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church edited the historic Apostles’ Creed so that it removed references to God as “Father” for a worship service.

The Apostles’ Creed is an affirmation of Christian faith that goes back to the early Church and is still common in many churches that include liturgy as part of worship.

At the multiday Minnesota Conference, which went from May 30–June 1, liturgical folders reportedly included a copy of the creed that removed gender specific language for God, changing “God the Father Almighty” to “God the Creator Almighty” and “Jesus Christ His Only Son” to “Jesus Christ God’s Only Son.”

The Christian Post reached out to the Minnesota Conference for further details about the edited creed and its use, and will update this piece when a response is received.

The Rev. Keith Mcilwain, pastor at Slippery Rock United Methodist Church in the Western Pennsylvania Conference, posted an image of the edited creed on social media.

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The day that changed my life forever

Today is my thirty-eighth wedding anniversary. I am to be congratulated. According to my friends, my wife is to be consoled.

I cannot imagine my life without Janet. The world knows what an amazingly gifted teacher, writer, and minister she is. Our family knows that she is the very same person in private that she is in public. Her passionate commitment to her Lord, her family, and her calling animates everything she does.

I remember well the moment I first saw her: she walked into our sophomore English class at Houston Baptist University, smiling. I’d not seen that done before.

I had to know more but soon discovered that she had boyfriends. One after the other. I was finally able to get in line for a date. Two years later, we were married.

“If any of you lacks wisdom”

I will spend eternity thanking God for leading us to each other. But I cannot tell you precisely how he did. He used feelings, circumstances, and other people. There came a time when we simply knew that we knew we were to be married.

If I had to prove to her that she should marry me, I’d still be single.

We are facing many dilemmas today for which we need God’s direction. For instance, the American Bible Society is being criticized for requiring employees to affirm a statement of moral commitments. Among them: “I will seek to refrain from sexual activity outside of the marriage covenant prescribed and exemplified in the Bible: ‘a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will become one,’ symbolizing the relationship between Christ and His Church (Matthew 19:5; Ephesians 5:31).”

We now live in a day when a ministry dedicated to distributing the Bible is criticized for affirming biblical morality.

More Americans are suffering from depression, stress, and anxiety, a trend making news following Kate Spade’s tragic death this week. According to a new study, nearly half of American veterans who need mental health care don’t receive it.

We…

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Donald Trump commutes sentence for Christian minister backed by Kim Kardashian

“BEST NEWS EVER!!!!” was the Twitter response from Kardashian West.

Alice Marie Johnson, 63, has spent more than two decades behind bars and was not eligible for parole.

 

She became an ordained minister while behind bars and mentored women in prison. She was released hours later and ran into her family members’ arms.

 

Michael Scholl, a member of Johnson’s legal team, said she was released just before 6pm from federal prison in Aliceville, Alabama. Relatives were there to greet her as she experienced freedom for the first time since the 1990s.

Footage from local news station WVTM-13 showed Johnson running towards her family, throwing her arms wide open and embracing them in front of a crowd of onlookers.

“Everybody was crying and hugging,” Mr Scholl said.

Unlike a pardon, the commutation will not erase Johnson’s conviction, only end her sentence.

Mr Scholl said Johnson would be returning to Memphis and was planning to spend time with her family. He earlier praised Mr Trump for “a courageous move” and described Johnson as overwhelmed by the news.

 

Mr Trump’s decision comes amid a recent flurry of pardons issued by the president, who has seemed drawn to…

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Allocating blame and punishing guilty won’t solve societal problems linked to Grenfell fire says bishop

Rt Rev Dr Graham Tomlin delivered the Premier Lecture on Wednesday night with a stark warning that we could see something similarly tragic happen again unless we rethink what it looks like for people to live together in society.

While saying there is a need to hold people to account, he called for a societal change which sees people loving their neighbour whatever their social standing.

 

“If the Inquiry produces its results, culprits are identified and perhaps given prison sentences, that would satisfy a certain need for justice, or even revenge, but it still would not resolve anything fundamental.

“If we allocate blame, punish the guilty, and then carry on as before, then there is no guarantee that something like this will not happen again, or even more, we will perpetuate the deeper conditions and attitudes that led us to this point.

“We might even issue new types of building regulations, or safety measures in construction, but even that I suggest would not be enough.

“The kind of repentance that Jesus calls for, and indeed the Grenfell Tower fire calls for is deeper – a radical look at the way we live together in our society.”

https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Weekday/Woman-to-Woman/Interviews/Life-after-Grenfell by Revd Micky Youngson

 

Next week marks the first anniversary of the fire.

Bishop Graham was speaking as the public inquiry into the fire is in full swing.

He suggested there were many reasons for the fire…

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