A three-year-old examines Easter
Supermarket shelves have for weeks been full of Easter Eggs, Easter bunnies and hot cross buns, to remind us that ‘Easter is coming’. A three-year-old’s comments on Facebook remind us of how far the commercial marketing of Easter has removed us from our Christian tradition. You can watch her conversation with her daddy by clicking the ‘More’ button. A few of her comments were, ‘I don’t understand what Easter’s all about. Why do you give me chocolate at Easter, when you say it is bad for me? We learn about Easter at nursery school. Are Easter bunny and Jesus best pals? Is the Easter bunny in the Bible? Does Jesus carry a basket of eggs all the time? Does Jesus like chocolate?’
False charges against street preacher
Pastor David Lynn leads a Toronto church and has preached on the streets for 22 years without conviction. He also heads up Christ’s Forgiveness Ministries, which has 40,000 supporters and a YouTube channel with 8.8 million views. When he preached outside Barking tube station on 20 March, he was arrested and kept in custody for over 20 hours. David began preaching at 1 pm, and at 3.30 pm a group of supporters joined him. He preached about people searching for love in the wrong places; only through a right relationship with Christ can this deep need be satisfied. A large crowd formed, and David handed the microphone to onlookers to allow them to respond to his preaching. Fortunately his preaching was videoed, so that when a lady accused him of calling her ‘perverse’ and ‘sinful’ the footage of the event did not substantiate her complaint.
CofE would be shut down if it were a school
A lawyer representing survivors of clerical sex abuse in the CofE said at a public hearing, ‘The Church of England is an inappropriate organisation to have charge or care of children and vulnerable adults, and would have been closed if it were a school.’ The inquiry used the diocese of Chichester as a case study to investigate the CofE’s failure to protect children from sex abusers. Another lawyer said, ‘Over the past three weeks I have been struck by how inappropriate the Church as an organisation is to have charge or care of children and vulnerable adults. Personally, I would not want my son to spend a moment in the company of a member of this organisation.’ The lawyers were struck by the ‘impotence’ of the Archbishop of Canterbury to hold bishops to account, calling it a deep-seated cultural and structural problem.
Disturbing sculptures highlight male suicides
Suicide claims the lives of over 6,000 British men and women every year, and is the single biggest killer of men under 45. An artwork called Project 84 highlights the fact that an average 84 men in the UK take their lives every week. The sculptures, of anonymous men with hoodies tied tight around their faces, were installed on the roof of ITV’s ‘This Morning’ studio on 26 March and were created with the support of bereaved family members. They were designed to give pause for thought to those passing by on the street below. Some viewers branded the artwork 'insensitive' and 'disturbing'. ITV’s backing of the artwork is designed to initiate conversations around male suicide and the need for better suicide prevention and bereavement support.
