The Christian Voices

Franklin Graham, a strong supporter of Donald Trump, regularly tours across the US speaking on the state of the nation and urging people to engage politically Despite numerous venues cancelling Franklin Graham's evangelistic events, his UK tour is going ahead "as originally planned", the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association UK (BGEA UK) has said. Liverpool ACC, the FlyDSA Arena in Sheffield, Glasgow Hydro, Arena Birmingham, ICC Wales and Milton Keynes Arena have all cancelled his summer tour events following pressure from LGBT+ campaigners.  The venue for a finale event scheduled for October 4 has also not yet been determined.. The Utilita Newcastle is the only venue not to have cancelled his event but local Pride campaigners and Newcastle City Council leader Nick Forbes are putting pressure on the venue to pull the plug. A petition started on Change.org by Northern Pride calling on Utilita to cancel the event has been signed by over 5,000 people. Northen...

I've written a couple of times recently about the problem that the much of the church in the UK has in reaching poorer communities ( here  and here ). One of the reasons often cited for this is that when people become Christians, they automatically start to adopt habits and attitudes that move them into the middle class and away from their roots. My observation, as a lad from a council house who became a believer over 45 years ago, is that there is a lot of truth in this – it certainly describes much of my experience. I'd also suggest that it shows that we are doing something very wrong! The thing is, there is nothing inherently Christian about the British middle-class dream of having a professional job, owning your own home, having 2.4 children and eating hummus on toast. The notion of cosy suburban living has been sold to us by everything from TV sitcoms to the lifestyle pages of the newspapers and as Christians we've generally accepted this norm without ...

01/29/2020 Washington D.C. (International Christian Concern) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Lahore has acquitted and ordered the release of 42 Christians accused of participating in the deadly Youhanabad riots that followed the bombing of two churches in 2015. The verdict was reached after settlements were agreed upon with the families of two Muslim men who were wrongfully killed by the rioters. On March 15, 2015, suicide bombers from the Pakistani Taliban attacked Christ Church and St. John’s Catholic Church in the predominantly Christian neighborhood of Youhanabad, located in Lahore, Pakistan. As a result of those attacks, 15 people were killed, including 11 Christians and four Muslims. Following the bombings, enraged Christians took to the streets in protest. There, two Muslim men, Babar Noman and Hafiz Naeem, were wrongfully accused of participating in the bombings and were lynched by the mob. In response...

1/31/2020 Turkey (International Christian Concern) – On Tuesday, Osman Kavala again appeared in a Turkish courtroom as the trial continues regarding his alleged involvement in so-called masterminding the 2013 Gezi Park Protests. Defense lawyers requested that the judges recuse themselves, on the basis that the court had listened to additional witnesses without allowing their or Kavala’s presence. When the judges refused, 50 defense lawyers walked out of the courtroom in protest and Kavala was remanded back to prison. There are 15 other defendants on trial alongside Kavala, but he is the only one who remains in jail. His case is an example of Turkey using the judicial system to censor critics and has serious implications for religious minorities. As a philanthropist, Kavala’s work encompasses many cultural and historical angles. A significant amount of his work involved the publication of numerous books on the Armenian Genocide, a topic which Turkey actively discoura...

01/30/2020 Nigeria (International Christian Concern) – There were at least 16 Christians killed in attacks in Plateau State, Nigeria by Fulani militants. These involved multiple attacks in areas of Plateau State that have been prone to attacks before. First, on Jan 1, Ngam Stephen Dachung was shot and killed by militants when they attacked his village of Rim. Rim has been attacked on numerous occasions over the past ten years and has never had help from the Nigerian government to rebuild. Second, on January 8, thirteen Church of Christ in Nation members were slain in Plateau state’s Kulben village, Mangu County. This attack was reportedly conducted by at least 20 Fulani militants. Area residents said that they have long lived in peace with the roaming herders, and were surprised by the attack. Finally, militants raided the village of Torok in Riyom where they killed Rueben Bulus. Riyom county is near Bokkos county which was part of the largets recent attack in Paltea...

01/31/2020 Washington D.C. (International Christian Concern) – When I first saw them walking along the beach, I knew it wasn’t for a day of play. But, I couldn’t have imag­ined what was to come. Each victim, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, was escorted by an ISIS soldier. They were forced to kneel, their sentence was read out, and the knives were revealed. That’s when the horror began. For a more than a decade before ISIS’s mass beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians, ICC tried to wake the Western media and Western Church to the rise of radical Islam around the globe. Given ICC’s focus on persecution, we knew that most instances of modern persecution are driven by radical Islam. We witnessed radical Islam’s worldwide expansionist movement, and we weren’t afraid to be vocal (or politi­cally incorrect) about it. Unfortunately, for many years, our message often fell on deaf ears. That changed after the mass beheading. There were no more raised eyebrows or suspicions w...

P ro-life advocates and ministry leaders are challenging the results of a new study that found that most women do not suffer emotionally after an abortion, and that over time, they are less likely to express regret. Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) followed 667 women across 30 clinics after they received an elective abortion, finding that the majority had either positive feelings or no emotion at all toward their decision both a week later (71%) and five years later (84%), according to a study released last week in the journal Social Science & Medicine . Corinne Rocca, one of the study’s authors and UCSF professor, said that the study proves that the idea that women will develop negative emotions after an abortion is a “ myth ” and a “ red herring .” Rocca has also participated in multiple research studies and written several articles for the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood. While pro-choice advo...