Premier Christian Newscast

May 27 2024 87 ep. 40 mins 14
Premier Christian Newscast Podcast artwork

The podcast, brought to you by Premier, which takes you deeper into the stories impacting Christians around the world. Each week we’ll dig into a particular issue in the church world and go behind the headlines, hearing from those directly involved, experts, theologians, activists, journalists and others to make sense of the story and why it matters.

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Sexuality, persecution, abortion and mission: Has Christian journalism got it right?

May 27 2024 47 mins  
Sadly, today’s episode will be the last episode of the Premier Christian Newscast. To wrap the show up, we looked back over the last two years at what stories and topics have come up the most. What has been making waves in church news? What issues are we unable to move on from? And what might this tell us about what is going to be hitting the headlines in the years to come? Has t

The General Election

May 20 2024 47 mins  
All of the UK will be going to the polls soon in a general election, which is expected at some point in the autumn. After a drubbing in the recent local elections, Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are widely expected to be dumped out of office in Westminster too. And just as more and more Britons are abandoning the Tories, so too are Christians. This week we’re wondering how believe

Asylum seekers, baptism and the church

May 06 2024 52 mins  
The horrendous attack on a mother and her children by Abdul Ezedi, an Afghan asylum seeker, in Clapham earlier this year sparked a ferocious row. A string of politicians and right-wing media outlets accused churches of giving asylum seekers like Ezedi bogus baptisms after they had fraudulently converted to Christianity to boost their arguments to not be returned to their home count

Schism among the Methodists

Apr 29 2024 63 mins  
It’s not just British denominations which are splintering under the weight of their divisions. The United Methodist Church in the United States has also gone through a painful five years of divorce, with up to one in four congregations choosing to leave. The crisis was, inevitably, precipitated by deep disagreements over LGBT issues including same-sex marriage. When a crunch vote

The future of children's ministry

Apr 22 2024 40 mins  
It’s not just a toddler group. Emphasis on the ‘just’. That’s the title and message of a new report which urges churches to take their midweek parents and toddler groups more seriously. These groups are not just about toys on mats and beakers of juice for tired mums, but vital for children’s flourishing and also for drawing families into the wider church community. The re

The consultation and the compromise: Gay marriage and the Baptist Union

Apr 15 2024 49 mins  
It is not just the Church of England and the Catholic Church which has been wrestling with divisions over same-sex marriage in recent years. The Baptist Union is also split between those who believe God affirms gay marriage and those who hold to a traditional opposition to it. Yet unlike other denominations, the Baptists have come recently to an interesting compromise. Individual c

What's the point of ecumenism?

Apr 08 2024 55 mins  
Ecumenism. Even the word itself is probably putting some of you off right now. A tiresome bit of churchy jargon that has no relevance for your church or spiritual life, right? But working for unity across churches and denominations is for some a genuine passion, an urgent priority, even a lifetime’s ministry. Earlier this year, a group of Catholic and Anglican bishops spent sever

Faith in the beautiful game

Mar 25 2024 36 mins  
Many of England’s biggest football clubs – today some of the country’s largest entertainment businesses – were originally started by local churches 150 years ago. Fascinatingly, the connections between Christianity and football are not solely a historical quirk either. There are Christians playing the game at every level, managing teams and running clubs, while churches use

Gay blessings in the Catholic Church

Mar 18 2024 41 mins  
Just before Christmas, the Catholic Church surprisingly announced priests could offer pastoral blessings to same-sex couples for the first time. The announcement has been a jolt of energy to the church, delighting liberals who have been quick to publicise their blessings, and equally infuriating conservatives. Why has the backlash been so vociferous, and what might this mean for th

Money, politics, power and the church: The concerning tweets of Sir Paul Marshall

Mar 11 2024 29 mins  
Almost nobody has heard of Sir Paul Marshall until a few weeks ago. But, thanks to his Twitter account, the multi-millionaire hedge funder and media mogul has become briefly famous, or perhaps infamous. An investigation has revealed Marshall had a private Twitter account which had liked and re-posted dozens of hardline anti-Muslim and far-right tweets. As well as owning a slew of r