Christian school education has a long history in China, going back at least to Robert Morrison’s Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca in 1818. In fact, thirteen of the country’s premier universities were once Christian. That all changed after the current government took power in 1949.
Galatians is widely accepted as Paul’s first epistle. It emerged in response to a radical disruption of the Jewish faith following the resurrection of Jesus. Almost 2,000 years on, we can too easily gloss over the shocking nature of this shift, which became a schism, and then an entirely independent religion with unbroken spiritual roots in the history of Israel and Judaism.
The stubborn myth that science and faith are diametrically opposed gets knocked about in the current exhibition on ‘the creation of science’ in the Catherijne Convent Museum I visited in Utrecht this week.
We live in a world of paradoxes and tensions. In our consumer driven world which screams, “Buy! Buy! Buy!,” we see a growing undercurrent towards minimalism where, “Less is more.” We feel the tug-of-war between needs and wants. And on opposite ends of the spectrum, sit those with seemingly endless choices and those who have just about none.
Easter, 2022, two months after the Russian invasion began, Volodymyr Zelensky led his nation in prayer for Ukraine from the St Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv in a pre-recorded video.
All religious festivals provide opportunities to think about God and eternity. Easter provides a particular opportunity to think about Jesus: who He is and what He has done.
We can have peace with God. This is the key message of Easter. Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection makes it possible for us to have a right relationship with God. A right relationship with God ends the spiritual and other wars raging within us, and causes the turmoil in the environment around us to cease.
Pastor John Cao from Hunan, who was imprisoned for seven years in Yunnan, China, was released on March 4, 2024. He was escorted from Kunming, Yunnan province, to Changsha, Hunan province, by four police officers.
Scandals regarding racism, antisemitism and anti-Muslim rhetoric flood social media and column inches, as protests turn bloody and ripples of war reach our shores. As a result the challenge of protecting UK citizens whilst safeguarding fundamental human rights like freedom of assembly, speech and belief intensifies.
In the broader public discourse, there is a prevalent tendency to focus on house churches or unregistered churches, which capture the limelight in media discussions. However, it is imperative to broaden our perspective and not disregard the significance of official churches or registered churches. According to official statistics, these churches command a substantial membership, exceeding 46 million individuals.
