News and Views 15th August 2025 

 

Society and Politics

• Christian Institute takes legal action over Civil Service ‘Pride’. The Christian Institute is launching a legal challenge against the Civil Service, claiming its endorsement of LGBT Pride breaches rules on impartiality. Its legal action follows a recent High Court ruling against Northumbria Police, which said participation in Pride marches breached the force’s impartiality duties. Deputy Director of The Christian Institute Simon Calvert said: “… no one can deny that the LGBTQ Pride movement and its hard-line gender ideology are profoundly political … Pride London, for example, attended by Whitehall-based civil servants, has even banned political parties because they don’t support its political demands, which include puberty blockers and gender self-ID.” Calvert continued: “I’ve been shocked by how many civil servants wear Pride lanyards in our meetings with them, even when those meetings are specifically about the clashes between LGBTQ politics and the Christian faith … It certainly does not communicate the kind of neutrality that taxpayers expect of civil servants.”
• Entertainer toy shop owner hands business to staff. Christian businessman Gary Grant, founder of The Entertainer toy shop chain, is handing over ownership of his business to the 1,900 staff who helped build it. His multi-million pound empire spans 160 shops across the UK. Grant said the decision followed years of prayer and planning, particularly after the challenges of Covid-19. Staff reaction has been positive. Grant’s Christian faith has influenced major business decisions over the years, including a refusal to open on Sundays and careful consideration of what products to sell. “I have wanted to be, for my staff and for the wider public, a good witness in the way we have chosen to run our business”, he shared. Rather than retire, Grant plans to focus more time on Restore Hope, the Buckinghamshire charity he and his wife founded 20 years ago.

Israel / Gaza Conflict

• Israel verifies Gaza journalist was Hamas terrorist. The world’s media mourned the death of a top Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist in an IDF strike on Monday, while doubting or altogether omitting strong evidence presented by the IDF showing that he was a commander of a terrorist cell in a Hamas guided rockets platoon and that he received a salary from Hamas. The IDF presented a copy of an internal Hamas document where Anas al-Sharif was registered as a soldier and team commander, as well as a photo showing him embraced by former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 2023 attack against Israel. One veteran Palestinian journalist admitted that “Most of the journalists operating in Gaza are affiliated with one group or another, otherwise they cannot operate.” Al Jazeera – and especially its Arabic-speaking channel - has long strongly supported Hamas, never criticising the group. 
• Media ignore the evidence. The Guardian sensationally claimed that “Israel is wiping out the witnesses”, while Sky News said Israel had only produced limited evidence for its claims. Both the BBC and The Telegraph said the documents presented by the IDF appeared to be selected screen grabs of electronic spreadsheets, and it was impossible to verify them independently. Israel’s left-leaning newspaper Haaretz claimed that with over 200 journalists killed so far in the Gaza conflict, including at least 10 from Al Jazeera - Israel's targeting of Palestinian reporters cannot be collateral damage; rather it is deliberate strategy. Reporters Without Borders, a media freedom group, said the allegations against al-Sharif were "baseless" and called on the international community to intervene. Honest Reporting has exposed the bias of such media outlets. 

Gaza Photo Manipulation

• Gazan photos – staged and manipulated. Western media outlets have been publishing images purporting to be of desperate Gazan women and children holding out empty pots for food at a food distribution site, but which were in fact staged and manipulated. Other photos show that the women are actually standing opposite freelance photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, commissioned by the Turkish news agency Anadol. The photos show mainly women and children, but other photos at the same distribution site show mostly adult men calmly waiting for and receiving food. These were not shared by the world’s media, while Fteiha’s photos have been published by major outlets like CNN, BBC, and Reuters. Fteiha has previously posted videos to social media saying "f*** Israel" and works for a news agency that speaks directly to the Turkish president, who has had ties to Hamas.
• Exposing Hamas’ photo propaganda campaign. German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung found that many of the Arab photographers operating within the Gaza Strip have Hamas connections. A historian and photography expert, Gerhard Paul, told the paper that, in southern Gaza, “Hamas controls 100 percent of image production” to generate Western sympathy while inflaming anger toward Israel. The ‘women and pots’ story follows the similarly-misleading pictures of Gazan children being portrayed as starving when they were actually suffering from genetic diseases. Neither of the stories, of course, denies that many in Gaza suffer from genuine hunger.

Church Issues

• Prosperity gospel driving Nigerian Christians from Christ. Prosperity gospel theology – imported from the United States – has overtaken large swathes of the Nigerian Church, replacing the gospel message of deliverance from death and sin. As a result, tragically, in recent years, there has been a mass exodus of Nigerian youths out of the Church and back into the African traditional religion, especially in the south-east of the country. Many have been disillusioned by failed promises of financial breakthrough, hypocrisy, greed, financial exploitation, and the wide gap between the rich and the poor in the Nigerian church. The prophecies of financial breakthrough given to them by their pastors did not come to pass, leading many of them to simply abandon Christianity altogether, hoping they can make money instead by appealing to their ancient gods.

Persecution of Christians

• Increasing attacks on believers in India’s Chhattisgarh state. Hundreds of Christians have been evicted from their homes and banned from their villages in the landlocked central Indian state of Chhattisgarh because of their faith in Jesus. Hindu nationalists, seeking a purely Hindu nation, are increasingly forcing Christians to become homeless and destitute. Chhattisgarh has become one of the most notorious Indian states for violations against Christians. In the Kanker district, 36 members of eight Christian families were assaulted by a Hindu mob last weekend on their way home from church. Later, going from door-to-door, the attackers pulled people out of their homes and beat them with sticks. Meanwhile, a senior politician in Maharashtra, India’s second-most populous state, has provoked outrage after reportedly publicly offering a cash reward for violent attacks on Christian missionaries and leaders. Read also.

Archaeology

• Researcher claims Shroud of Turin reveals Christ's blood type. An Italian researcher made shockwaves last year when he claimed that a macroscopic and microscopic analysis of the bloodstains on the famed, controversial Shroud of Turin were consistent with the torture and crucifixion of Jesus Christ as described in the Gospels. The claims were repeated by Protestant Bible scholar and author Jeremiah Johnston in a recent interview with American commentator Tucker Carlson. "The Shroud has type AB blood, identified as Semitic, present in only six percent of the population, confirmed as human and male, ruling out animal blood or a hoax," Dr Johnston said. The ‘blood type’ theory also features in an hour-long documentary by Christian TV network TBN, which likewise insists the cloth is the genuine burial shroud of Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church, too, has in general supported the authenticity of the Shroud. 
• New 3D analysis reopens debate into Turin Shroud. But a new study by Brazilian 3D designer Cicero Moraes suggests that a real body would create distorted features on the cloth due to the way fabric drapes over curves – not the seemingly ‘perfect’ image on the Shroud. This, Morases states, points to an artistic origin rather than a miraculous imprint. This echoes earlier evidence from radiocarbon dating carried out in 1988, which placed the Shroud’s creation between 1260 and 1390 AD—well after the time of Christ. Further forensic studies in the 1970s and 1980s identified pigments such as red ochre and vermilion, commonly used in medieval painting. Most experts accept as valid the radiocarbon dating and do not regard the shroud as dating to anywhere near the time of Christ. The debate - and conjecture - continues. 

Worldwide

• Iran's unprecedented crackdown against dissent. Iran's rulers are carrying out one of the most visible and deadly crackdowns in decades, with mass arrests, political trials, and executions surging at an alarming pace – all with the aim of silencing dissent. Human rights advocates say the scale is staggering, with over 700 executions already recorded so far this year – 110 in April alone - the real total likely to be thousands more. Girls as young as nine can be sentenced to execution; for boys it's 15. Executions are also at a 10-year high in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
• Iran’s triple crisis: water, power and heat. Meanwhile, Iran’s capital, Tehran, faces its worst water crisis in decades, with residents receiving notices urging them to conserve 20% of their water usage. The country’s 150,000+ religious centres, military bases and seminaries, on the other hand, freely consume as much water as they want. The Iranian government recently declined an offer of aid from Israel to help solve its water crisis – hatred of ‘the little Satan’ seemingly coming before the well-being of its people. Power outages, combined with record-breaking heat, have added significantly to Iran’s woes.

Immigration

• Crimes committed by migrants living in taxpayer-funded hotels. Hundreds of asylum seekers have been charged with criminal offences in the UK in the past 3 years – including rape, murder, assault, arson, robbery, dangerous driving, fraud, possessing indecent images of children and supplying drugs. This destroys the commonly-purported argument that immigrants are no more likely than Britons to be involved in crime. Assault was the most common crime migrants were accused of, followed by theft, drug-related offences, sexual assault and weapon-related crimes. A single hotel in central London has seen 41 migrants charged with a total of 90 offences. Around 30,000 migrants are currently staying in UK hotels, which are typically turned over entirely to migrants, with normal custom turned away. Just this week, an illegal immigrant stabbed a fellow asylum hotel resident 15 times in a frenzied attack, while a Nigerian man who sexually assaulted a young woman next to Bournemouth beach avoided jail. Read also here, here and here. 

Antisemitism

Recent cases – virtually all within the past week – of antisemitism and strong anti-Israel sentiment include (but are by no means confined to) the following:

• UEFA dragged itself into a political storm by displaying a giant “Stop Killing Children – Stop Killing Civilians” banner on the pitch before the Super Cup in Udine, Italy. Jewish groups say it plays into an age-old antisemitic slur and breaches its own rules on political messaging. Meanwhile, it has been revealed that banners calling for Israeli hostages to be released were confiscated at another UEFA match, in Romania. 
• Two men recorded themselves driving around Salford and spraying adults as well as children wearing Orthodox Jewish clothing with water guns. 
• The Vatican’s daily newspaper has accused Israel’s founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion and current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of weaponising the Bible to obliterate Gaza.
• British Police told an anti-Semitic abuse victim 'to just stop posting' online about Gaza.
• A Jewish man in Montreal was attacked & beaten in an unprovoked assault during broad daylight in front of his 3 young children. Police reportedly took ‘forever’ to come to the scene.
• The Toronto International Film Festival cancelled an Oct. 7 documentary, claiming the filmmakers needed Hamas’ permission to use publicly available bodycam footage of the massacre.
• Almost all Jewish families in France are discussing the possibility of moving to Israel due to the terrible antisemitism they have been experiencing and the lack of a firm response from the authorities.
• The entrance to the Israeli Embassy in The Hague was smashed and covered in red paint.
• A Paris air traffic controller harassed El Al pilots over the radio, just days after vandals targeted the Israeli national carrier’s offices in the French capital.
• A Jewish passenger aboard a JetBlue flight was served a kosher meal labelled with the slur “Zionazi,” one of numerous recent antisemitic incidents across multiple airlines.