“Don’t take care, take risks,” is the advice that Canon Andrew White has for Christians in Britain.

In the latest Twurch of England podcast, the Vicar of Baghdad warns of a precarious future for Iraq’s dwindling Christian population.

“I don’t think [the future] is very positive,” he said.

“I think it’s very, very fragile, and I think without supporting the church there, there is no chance of the church continuing.”

Canon White leads St George’s church, the only Anglican church in Iraq and home to one of the country’s largest relief operations, providing food, financial assistance and healthcare.

The clinic alone serves 150 people a day, including the local Muslim communities, and its stem cell centre is one of the foremost in the world, having treated more than 3,500 patients.

With the withdrawal of US troops, there are fears of more conflict as political factions remain fiercely at odds with one another.

Canon White said the political situation in the country at the moment was “terrible”.

“We have to deal with religious leaders,” he said. “In the words of William Temple, ‘When religion goes wrong, it goes very wrong,” and religion …

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He’s loved and loathed for his tough talk on the church in the 21st century, and this time he’s taking aim at Britain.

Pastor Mark Driscoll has previously asserted that it’s time for Christianity to “man-up” and drop the image of Jesus as a long-haired man in a dress “drinking decaf and in touch with his feelings”.

The Mars Hill pastor continues on a similar theme in an interview with the latest edition of Christianity Magazine in which he suggests that preachers need to become more like drill sergeants if they are to attract young men to church.

In excerpts released ahead of the magazine's publication on Sunday, he claims that young men will not go to church so long as there are “guys in dresses preaching to grandmas”.

While many Christians take issue with Driscoll’s manner and ideas, others are wondering if they are behind the phenomenal growth of his Seattle-based church from a handful of believers meeting in his living room 16 years ago to a multi-site church based at 14 locations across four states.

Image is a problem Driscoll sees across the US, but when it comes to Britain there is …

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A meeting of Catholic bishops and archbishops has concluded with a call to Israel and Palestine to sustain talks towards a lasting peace in the region.

The communiqué warned that dialogue between the two was being “threatened and undermined by extremism and intolerance of the other”.

“Blaming the other is an abdication of responsibility and a failure of leadership, a leadership that the people so desperately need,” they said.

Signatories of the communiqué from Britain included the Archbishop of Liverpool, the Most Rev Patrick Kelly, and the Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt Rev William Kenney.

The Church leaders were keen to stress their equal support for both sides in the conflict.

“We have heard and we make this conviction our own: to be pro-Israeli has to mean being pro-Palestinian.

“This means being pro-justice for all, whose certain fruit is lasting peace.”

They called upon both sides to demonstrate tolerance, “courageous leadership”, forgiveness and humility.

“Political leaders of both sides and our own countries need to show courage, resolve and creativity so the simple hopes of the majority for peaceful co-existence are realised,” they said.

“The fidelity to their way …

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Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has called for greater respect to be shown towards the values of churches and Christian agencies.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the former Bishop of Rochester welcomed the Prime Minister’s recent affirmation of the crucial role of Christianity in providing a moral framework for Britain.

However Bishop Nazir-Ali questioned the extent to which David Cameron’s support for Christianity would bear on policy-making and legislation.

“The [Christian] tradition must remain central to our public life,” he said.

Specifically, the bishop called for the improvement of religious literacy in the civil service, parliament and local authorities.

“What Cameron has said about the ways in which Christian ideas are embedded in our constitutional arrangements is simply not understood any more in the corridors of power,” he said.

“A disconnected view of history and the fog of multiculturalism have all but erased such memory from official consciousness.

“A concerted programme is needed if this literacy is to be recovered and used.”

The bishop linked the lack of religious literacy to the place of Christianity in the teaching of British history.

He wrote: “Michael Gove has rightly seen that history cannot be …

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Christian groups are among the signatories of an open letter to the new North Korean leader appealing for an end to human rights abuses in the country.

The letter says that the 24.5 million people in North Korea are “living in fear” of arbitrary detention, disappearance, torture or death.

The groups condemn the decades-long mistreatment of North Koreans at the hands of the regime, including the detention of an estimated 200,000 men, women and children for political reasons in prison or labour camps.

They ask for an end to the incarceration of relatives of political prisoners because of ‘guilt by association’.

The political elite are condemned by the groups for living “like royalty” while millions of North Koreans suffer in the face of widespread hunger, malnutrition and a lack of healthcare.

The human rights groups call upon North Korea to meet its obligations under international treaties.

They want to see access granted to human rights monitors from the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The letter has been sent by the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), an umbrella group of 40 human …

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