This year’s Good Friday, falling on March 30, 2018, will mark the fifth anniversary of the Pro-Life Action League’s Way of the Cross for Victims of Abortion, commemorating the 60 million  children lost to abortion since its legalization in 1973. The number of abortion facilities where this solemn prayer vigil will be observed has doubled since the nationwide event was launched in 2014, growing to nearly 100 locations coast-to coast this year. Crowds of mournful pro-life advocates will gather outside of abortion vendors, including many run by Planned Parenthood—the nation’s largest abortion chain—to pray for an end to abortion on this Christian holy day.

“Good Friday marks the bleak day that Jesus suffered and died on the Cross as an innocent victim,” remarked Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League and national coordinator of the event. “Two thousand years later, innocent unborn children made in His image are suffering and dying every day through abortion. Through our Way of the Cross prayer vigil, we forge a spiritual link between Jesus on the Cross and the unborn victims of abortion.”

Scheidler observed, “We hear cries for social justice all around us—and we should heed them all. Christ identified Himself with the prisoner, the homeless, the immigrant. But He also identified Himself with the unborn when he became…

Despite repeated calls to address the issue, the Episcopal Church U.S.A. remains in denial about alcoholism and addiction among its leaders, according to a recent report to the General Convention.

The report was commissioned shortly after the 2015 conviction of former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, Heather Cook, for the death of a 41-year-old father in a drunken hit-and-run incident.

Among several recommendations to leaders of the 1.7 million-member Church, the report calls for “actions that promote a significant cultural shift in the Episcopal Church.”

“These recommendations address the problem of impaired leaders, but they also diagnose and suggest treatment for an impaired system that maintains denial and helplessness toward addiction, mental illness, and physical disease,” the Commission on Impairment and Leadership, which produced the report, said.

“In spite of the efforts over the last four decades by individual dioceses and the General Convention to…

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby told a national commission investigating child sex abuse that his church has not done enough to root out the problem.

Welby, the leader of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion — who himself has come under some criticism for his handling of abuse cases — told the commission Wednesday (March 21) that the church needs new powers to safeguard children.

He said reading about abuse and listening to survivors was particularly painful because the church had failed victims of abuse by Anglican priests.

“You see this extraordinary and atrocious willingness to turn a blind eye to things going very, very seriously wrong and entirely damaging human beings for their whole lifetimes,” Welby said.

Welby is the most high-profile witness so far to give evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, a commission charged by the British government to head a wide-ranging investigation into the failures of 13 institutions in England and Wales to protect children.

His appearance took place as part of a three-week-long hearing into the Anglican Diocese of Chichester, where there have been several cases of abuse.

Welby called for a heightened state of alert on sexual abuse. “We have to get word to the culture that if anything is seen as untoward, every regular member of the church, everyone who knows, who is…

A Baptist church in North Carolina has discontinued funding to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship because the congregation feels the organization’s new hiring policy opening the door to LGBT employees isn’t inclusive enough.

On Sunday, members Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in Cary voted to halt church funding to the 1,800-church CBF in response to the fellowship’s recent decision to update its hiring policy to allow for the hiring of practicing homosexual employees.

Although the new policy announced in February as a result of the CBF’s two-year “Illumination Project” opens the door for prospective gay employees, it still prohibits gay individuals from being considered for leadership roles within the organization.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the congregation explained that it will suspend funding to Cooperative Baptist institutions “until their leadership rescinds a hiring practice discriminatory to LGBT people.” It also urged other churches to do the same.

“We have been told that most positions are open to LGBT people, but most is not enough,” a letter from the church to CBF leadership reads. “Any discrimination is too much discrimination. That discrimination against LGBT people extends…

The case against him – brought by a police officer whose protection he sought against two blackmailers – was “clearly fabricated”, his lawyer said after the 13 March acquittal.

Anjum Sandhu, from the north-eastern city of Gujranwala in the Punjab Province, went to the police in May 2015 to report that Javed Naz and Jafar Ali had extorted 20,000 rupees ($200) from him and were demanding a further 50,000 rupees ($500).

The two men were arrested, but they told the police that Sandhu, during a discussion at his school, had “used blasphemous words” and that they had a recording of him doing so.

Napoleon Qayyum, a human rights activist and relative of Sandhu, said at the time that “the blackmailing involved an audio recording of a voice that sounded like Sandhu’s. Naz, with the help of his friend, Ali, produced an audio recording with a similar voice to Sandhu’s and threatened him with dire consequences if he did not give them the money they demanded. When they once again demanded money, Sandhu consulted with his friends and lodged a complaint with the police. The police, rather than registering a blackmail case, demanded further money from Sandhu, knowing he was running a chain of schools as a successful business”.

When Sandhu tried to make a First Information Report at the police station, which, under Pakistan’s Criminal Procedure Code, should…

International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that Boko Haram has released all but one of the Dapchi schoolgirls who were kidnapped on February 19. The only girl who was not released is also the only Christian among the group. Her name is Leah Sharibu and she is only 15 years old. 

The girls were released by Boko Haram in a ceremony in the town of Dapchi. The terrorist organization reached an agreement with the Nigerian government that there would be no interference with the return. In the early hours of March 21, Boko Haram drove into the town with nine trucks and unloaded all of the girls, except the five that died during the kidnaping, and Sharibu. 

One of girls who was released confirmed to The PUNCH, “One girl, Leah, is still with them [Boko Haram] because she is a Christian. About five are dead but it was not as if they killed them – it was because of the stress.”

Saddened by the continued absence of his daughter, Nata Sharibu, Leah’s father, told RayPower 100.5, a Nigerian radio station, “They gave her the option of converting in order to be released, but she said she will never become a Muslim.” He continued, saying that he is “very sad [that she has not been freed] but [is] also jubilating, too, because [his] daughter did not denounce Christ.” 

It has also been nearly four years since the abduction of the 276 schoolgirls from Chibok. Today, there…