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Christianity is making a comeback in Europe – and it’s mostly thanks to Muslims, say experts in Islam and faith leaders. A soaring number of Muslims, many of them refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, are converting to Christianity, breathing new life into Europe’s once floundering Christian churches. The Muslims are flocking to various Christian denominations, experts said, including becoming Protestants, evangelical or Catholic. As many parts of Europe are becoming more secular and houses of worship are seeing congregants leave in droves, it is Muslim converts who are reviving struggling Christian churches

* In the last 30 years, more mosques and Muslim prayer centers have been built in France than all the Catholic churches built in the last century. * The Church of Santa Rita used to stand in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris. A few weeks after Father Hamel was murdered by Islamic terrorists, the French police cleared the church. It is now a parking lot. Police dragged the priests out by their legs as a Mass was being celebrated.* In France there are laws protecting old trees. But the state is free to flatten old Christian churches. The vacuums...

Recently, Barnabas Aid has drawn attention to the increasing hostility to evangelical Christians that has characterised some sections of the media and even some government institutions. Over the past 12 months we have seen Christian politicians asked overtly theological questions and attempts by some mainstream media in the recent UK general election to ”out” parliamentary candidates as Christians, declaring them “unfit” to hold public office because they held mainstream Christian beliefs such as believing in miracles. In other words, a significant parallel is now developing between how gay people were treated by the press a generation or so ago, and...

At least 547 young members of the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir in Germany were subjected to physical and in some instances sexual abuse over a period of 60 years, a new report says. The report accuses 49 members of the Catholic Church of carrying out the abuse between 1945 and the early 1990s. The alleged perpetrators are unlikely to face criminal charges because of the amount of time that has elapsed. Victims said the experience was like "a prison, hell and a concentration camp". The alleged physical abuse relates to children attending both the Regensburger Domspatzen's pre-school and high school,...

Two Christian street preachers have been found not guilty of inciting public disorder at Bristol Crown Court. In February, Michael Stockwell and Michael Overd were convicted at Bristol Magistrates Court of an offence under the Crime and Disorder Act, after police claimed that the crowd around them became disorderly as a result of their preaching. They appealed to the Crown Court and after a 3 day hearing on Friday were found not guilty of religiously aggravated harassment. Barnabas Fund provided an expert witness, who demonstrated that the content of their preaching was largely quotations from the King James Bible (the...

A Christian preschool in Sweden has banned children from saying grace at mealtimes, talking about the Bible, or saying “Amen”. The decision to forbid children at the school in Umea to engage in religious practices was reached after a school inspection. The municipality’s supervisors in charge of education noted that the Christian activities violate Sweden’s educational policies, Swedish National Broadcaster STV reported. Sweden’s Education Act prohibits schools from having confessional elements during school time and says children should be able to opt-out of religious practices. Inspectors believed the preschool, run by the Salvation Army, didn’t give children a choice as...

Bishop Stephan Ackermann of the Diocese of Trier, in Germany, has announced that the diocese will be closing almost all of its parishes. From Gloria.tv: Trier diocese, the oldest in Germany, will dissolve its 903 parishes and reduce them to 35, liberal Bishop Stephan Ackermann (54) explained on Friday during an information meeting of the diocese in Trier. He spoke of a “crisis”.Ackermann admitted that the new parishes will have nothing in common with the traditional ones “but the name”. Trier is the birthplace of Karl Marx. A Feature, Not a BugFor most Catholics in the English-speaking world, there...

<p>On the day after François Fillon’s victory in the Republican primary in France last November, the leftist daily Libération’s headline was: “Help, Jesus is coming back!” The reason for this distress call was that Fillon is known as a practicing Catholic, a faithful husband (unusual among contemporary politicians), and a regular visitor of the Solesmes Benedictine abbey, the symbol of the allegedly reactionary neo-medieval nineteenth-century religious revival. Worse, he is supported by many of the militants who organized the spectacular (albeit vain) mass demonstrations against the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2013.</p>

Berlin’s neutrality law is most often discussed in relation to the Islamic headscarf. But one Christian teacher has found that it applies to other religions as well. A Protestant teacher working in the Wedding district of Berlin was told to immediately stop wearing her cross necklace, the German Catholic News Agency (KNA) reported on Tuesday. Consistorial president of the Berlin-Brandenburg Protestant Church Jörg Antoine confirmed last week that the woman had been given the instructions, which were based on Berlin’s neutrality law that prohibits teachers and other public sector workers from wearing religious symbols. The neutrality law has generally applied...

Barack Obama is to visit Berlin on his first trip to Europe since leaving office. The former president will be in Germany on 25 May, the same day his successor, Donald Trump, is due in Brussels for a meeting of Nato leaders, in what is expected to be the incumbent US president’s first foreign trip since taking office. Obama will travel to Germany for the launch of a summer of celebratory events organised by the Protestant church to mark its 500th anniversary.

* British multiculturalists are feeding Islamic fundamentalism. Muslims do not need to become the majority in the UK; they just need gradually to Islamize the most important cities. The change is already taking place. * British personalities keep opening the door to introducing Islamic sharia law. One of the leading British judges, Sir James Munby, said that Christianity no longer influences the courts and these must be multicultural, which means more Islamic. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chief Justice Lord Phillips, also suggested that the English law should "incorporate" elements of sharia law. * British universities are...

BRISTOL, England, March 2, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – A British magistrate has convicted two Christian street preachers of disorderly conduct and using “threatening and abusive words … likely to cause alarm.” Their crime: speaking about Christianity in a sometimes-hostile crowd that includes Muslims, and LGBT supporters. At the time of the preachers' arrest, the arresting officer chided one of the men, saying, "People were getting angry. You were challenging homophobia. You were challenging Muslims." The officer accused them of "anti-social behavior." While the judge dismissed charges against a third man, he convicted Michael Overd and Michael Stockwell on Tuesday. They face...

Christian organizations in Norway plan to join a campaign to employ undocumented migrants, despite the threat of fines and imprisonment. Tor Berger Jørgensen, the former bishop of Sør-Hålogaland in northern Norway, launched the campaign last week, arguing that breaking the law in this way was not about saving money, but about providing a livelihood to people “in a hopeless situation”. The 71-year-old priest sent letters out to Christian organizations across Norway, asking them to give jobs to those who could neither return to their home countries nor get residency in Norway. He told the newspaper he was “optimistic” that his...

A passage from the Koran that denies one of the central tenets of the Christian faith was sung aloud at a cathedral service in Scotland. The passage from Surah 19, which specifically denies that Jesus was the Son of God and says He should not be worshipped, was sung during a Eucharist service at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow to mark the feast of the Epiphany.

CHRISTMAS treats have been taken off a menu and replaced with 'winter delicacies' over fears the phrase would offend Muslims. A function held at the Austrian embassy in Germany still served traditional festive fare such as Lebkuchen but rebranded them as 'winter delicacies'. The event was a presentation by the Chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek, who has written the book What Do Muslims Do at Christmas?: Islamic Faith in Everyday Life in Germany. The invitation to guests, from ambassador Nikolaus Marschik, was described as a “cosy get-together with winter delicacies.” A reporter attending the...

A traditional nativity scene will not be put up in a Belgian town this year, amid claims it was scrapped in order to avoid offending Muslims. A former leader in Holsbeek, about 20 miles outside Brussels - claims there will be no manger to mark the festival because it would be 'too provocative'. . . . The decision not to put a nativity scene up was supported by the ruling coalition of the Christian-Democrats and the Green Party. But the Flemish-nationalist N-VA party called for locals to attend the town’s next assembly meeting - and to each bring a nativity...

A truck has ploughed into a Christmas market in western Berlin injuring several people, local media reported, citing police. “Police confirm that a truck ploughed into a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin-Charlottenburg,” local newspaper Berlin Zeitung stated.

Fifty statues of Christ and other Christian figures have been defaced and smashed apart in a crime wave sweeping parts of Germany. Statues in the Münster region in the west of Germany have been targeted over a series of months – including one of Jesus which had its head lopped off, and many more missing limbs or other fragments. Mirko Stein of the Münster police told the channel: “large numbers of the people in the neighborhood where the sculptures are shocked and scared”. “Based on the intensity of the acts of the perpetrator, one can already conclude that this act...

The Serbian Orthodox Church holds a religious procession in Belgrade to protest the promotion of homosexuality and other attacks on Christian morality.

Norwegian Church Denounces Luther’s Anti-Jewish Writings November 25 STOCKHOLM — Norway’s state Lutheran Church has condemned the anti-Jewish legacy of Martin Luther, the 16th century German theologian who started the Protestant Reformation. In a statement issued Friday ahead of next year’s 500-year anniversary of the Reformation, the Church of Norway’s General Synod said some of Luther’s writings were later used in anti-Semitic propaganda, including in Nazi Germany. Noting that such propaganda was also spread in Nazi-occupied Norway during World War II, the synod said that “in the Reformation anniversary year of 2017, we as a church must clearly distance ourselves...