News and Views 12th September 2025
The USA

• The tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk. Assassinated MAGA influencer and Trump ally Charlie Kirk was shot on Wednesday whilst leading an event at Utah Valley University which, ironically, was promoting free speech (Read also). He was just 31, and married with two young children (watch here). As well as being enormously influential in encouraging young people to vote Republican, he also was an equally strong voice for Jesus, and the organisation he founded, Turning Point was strongly Christian and family based. Kirk had hundreds of thousands of followers online, and he loved to engage in open debate about his faith (eg watch here and here), keen to win souls at every opportunity. 
• Kirk put faith before politics. Minutes before being shot in the neck, Kirk was sharing Bible scriptures with the crowd. He quoted  2 Corinthians 5:15: "And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." He always put faith before politics. "He never used violence but was threatened every day with violence by those who couldn’t contend with logic and truth”, said his friend and former pastor, Rob McCoy. Kirk was also pro-Israel, and his videos also show him debating the war in Gaza with college students. He had travelled to Israel twice, including for the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem. Regrettably, many left-leaning social media commentators have openly celebrated Kirk's death (read also here, here and here), which has led to even deeper divisions in American politics (read also here).

Church Issues

• White House asks for one hour of prayer per week. The White House issued detailed prayer guidance this week (prior to the death of Charlie Kirk), urging Americans to pray an hour a week for the country. “Will you join with at least 10 people to meet each week for one hour to pray for America?” the White House site says. President Trump announced the initiative at the Museum of the Bible, surrounded by mostly Christian supporters, including Franklin Graham, Paula White-Cain and Eric Metaxas. While the prayer initiative is considered to be within the bounds of the Constitution, some Christian leaders have concerns that it is largely an effort to support the initiatives of the Trump administration. At the event, Trump presented to the museum the Trump family Bible, which his mother gave him and which he used at his two inaugurations.

Israel

• Over 500 scholars insist that Hamas, not Israel, committed genocide. A group of over 500 genocide scholars, survivors and experts  – Scholars for Truth About Genocide (STAG) – have condemned the inaccurate accusations of the maverick International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) against Israel. They have signed a statement affirming that Hamas, not Israel, is guilty of the crime of genocide. The statement reads that “On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel and acted with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Jews and Israelis, as a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such. Thus, Hamas committed the crime of genocide and remains the only party to legally meet the requirements of the elements of the crime of genocide.” The names and professional qualifications of all 500+ signatories are listed beneath the statement, which can be viewed here. Read also here and here.
• Immigration by Jews to Israel is growing as fear of hostility heightens. Israel saw an unprecedented wave of Jewish immigration this summer, with August alone seeing more than 1,000 new immigrants, the highest total in more than 20 years. Nefesh B'Nefesh (‘Soul to Soul’), the organisation that partners with Israel's Ministry of Aliyah and Immigration, has helped move 90,000 people to Israel from around the world in the two years since 7^th October 2023, mostly from the United States. While many British Jews have also said they intend to leave for Israel owing to increased antisemitism in the UK, one report has it that only about 1% of all British Jews have actually made aliyah over the past seven years. Meanwhile, it has been reported that tens of thousands of mainly young Jews have also emigrated out of Israel in the past 24 months.

Christian Persecution

• Relentless attacks against Christians in Nigeria. More than 100 people across Nigeria were killed last weekend in attacks by Islamists, with many victims identified as Christians. In one attack, in Abuja, Boku Haram attackers murdered five Christians who were working on their farms, and three more while they were sleeping.
• Radical Fulani tribe is "hell-bent on turning Nigeria into a caliphate". Meanwhile, journalists have reported that a radical Fulani tribe "hell-bent on turning Nigeria into a caliphate" is abducting and holding Christians in chains, while the Nigerian government and media turn a blind eye. There are said to be at least 11 major camps in the vast forest south of Kaduna, and each one reportedly holds more than 50 captives. Survivors of the terror camps have said that their captors barely fed them and beat them regularly. Hostages in the camp are often killed if their families cannot afford to pay a ransom. Despite masses of evidence to the contrary, the Nigerian government claims that the violence is not religious in nature and is simply farmer-herder clashes exacerbated by other factors. Western media, if it bothers to report on the slaughter of Nigerian Christians at all, reiterates this false narrative.

Quiet Revival

• Royal Marines turning to God. Royal Marine recruits are increasingly turning to Christianity – and are even using their assault course's water tank to perform baptisms. At least 26 recruits underwent a full immersion earlier this year in the training centre's Regain Tank. They are also regularly attending Sunday services at the training centre in Lympstone, Devon, which has seen attendance rise rapidly in the last 18 months and now often exceeds the chapel's 150 capacity. Royal Naval chaplain Reverend A Gascoyne wrote: "Many recruits drop into the bible session on Thursday nights bringing their questions and sharing their experiences … They are looking for a lived experience and a moral code that is both coherent and can stand up under pressure.” Elsewhere in the Armed Forces, the number of troops attending church services is also increasing.

World Events

• Africa seeks slavery ‘reparations’ from European nations. The African Union has called for “meaningful reparations” from “former colonial powers”, including Great Britain, for exploiting the people, land and resources of the continent, much of it through slavery. Yet such appeal is hypocritical according to historian Lord Nigel Biggar; Africans had been enslaving other Africans for centuries. A few years before the first British slave-ship arrived on the West African coast in 1563, the African kingdom of Kongo was exporting between four and eight thousand slaves annually. 3 centuries later, the Sokoto Caliphate in what is now northern Nigeria became “one of the largest slave societies in modern history.” By this time, the British had repented of their involvement in slave-trading and slavery, and in the early 1800s were among the first peoples in the world’s history to abolish them. Read more here.
• Mystery as 16 German politicians die before regional elections. A total of 16 candidates for local elections in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the biggest in the country, have died ahead of elections on 14^th September. Of the 16 who died, seven were involved with the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party that has surged in popularity since its inception in 2013 and are odds on for winning the election. The news has sparked a flurry of conspiracy theories online, with some claiming the AfD candidates had been murdered - while the AfD's co-leader also claimed the number of deaths was 'statistically almost impossible'.
• 'No indication of unnatural deaths.' The police, who are investigating the matter, have already ruled out unnatural causes in four of the cases, and various others who died were said to have existing health issues. The deceased candidates’ ages ranged from 42 to 80 and one died from suicide. A spokesperson for the regional branch of the AfD has said that, according to the information they had received, there was “currently no indication of unnatural deaths". While the other deaths involved just one member from each of 8 or 9 political parties, some context comes in the fact that over 20,000 seats are up for grabs in the election in a region with a population of more than 18 million. Read more here.

Antisemitism

• 1 in 5 Brits are antisemitic, study finds, as support for Oct 7 rises. The percentage of people in the UK holding antisemitic views has doubled in just four years, a new study has found, with just 31% of young Brits accepting Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Just under half of Brits (45%) said they believe that Israel treats the Palestinians similarly to how Nazi Germany treated Jews in World War II. Roughly half of respondents (49%) said they were uncomfortable spending time with people who support Israel, compared with just 18% who said they were comfortable doing so. One in 10 respondents aged 18 to 24 said that they had a favourable view of Hamas, with 14% saying they do not believe Hamas should be categorised as a terrorist group. Nearly one-fifth (19%) said Hamas’ invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, was justified.
• Media accused of stirring up ancient hatred. Julia Hartley-Brewer from TalkRadio responded appropriately to the poll by blaming “the BBC, Sky, Channel 4 and other media who’ve helped stirred up this ancient hatred by deliberately perpetrating the lie that Israel is committing a genocide on Gaza.” Meanwhile, Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, provided poignant evidence of UK antisemitism by noting that in the past fortnight, “we have seen a Jewish mother and her daughter rammed by a man on a scooter shouting abuse, a Jewish man shot with an air rifle, a nanny confronted by a man demanding that she hand him the Jewish child in her care, faeces daubed on synagogues (yes, multiple synagogues), a Rabbi’s home defaced with a swastika, a local council cancelling a museum’s display of Jewish heritage over “safety concerns”, and so much more.”

• The outer wall of the synagogue in Girona, in Spain’s north-eastern Catalonia region, has been defaced with an antisemitic slogan.
• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has sparked controversy after announcing that he wants to stop Israel’s military campaign, but can’t, as Spain doesn’t have nuclear weapons. Israeli PM Netanyahu called it "a blatant genocidal threat on the world’s only Jewish State."
• 3 anti-Israel supporters were arrested after trying to force their way into a synagogue in Nice, France, during an informational meeting on aliyah, sparking violent clashes and insults that left a pregnant woman injured.
• Between 1,200 and 3,000 celebrities from across the globe, including actors, directors, and other film workers, have signed a pledge to boycott Israeli film institutions.
• The BBC has censured its own staff for calling Hamas a “terror group”.
• A journalist who called for Jews to be burned “as Hitler did” and who has appeared on the BBC’s Arabic channel more than a dozen times since Oct 7^th, has been used yet again by the BBC as an expert commentator on the Gaza conflict.
• The organisers of a Spanish tournament in the Basque country tried to bar Israeli players from using the Israeli flag.
• Italy fans turned their backs in protest during the Israel national anthem ahead of their 2026 World Cup qualifier in Debrecen, Hungary.
• Chris Martin, the lead singer of UK supergroup Coldplay, was accused of “dehumanising” Israeli fans at a Wembley Stadium concert in London last weekend.

Covid and the Vaccines

• Covid face masks have left chemical timebomb, research suggests. Millions of tonnes of plastic face masks created to protect people from the spread of the Covid virus are now breaking down, releasing microplastics and chemical additives. As a result, the very equipment whose use was intended to protect people during the pandemic now poses a risk to the health of people and planet, potentially for generations. During the height of the ‘pandemic’, 129 billion disposable face masks, mostly made from polypropylene and other plastics, were being used every month around the world. With no recycling stream, most ended up either in landfill or littered in streets, parks, beaches, waterways and rural areas, where they have now begun to degrade, leaving a chemical timebomb that could harm humans, animals and the environment.