News and Views – 7th April 2026 

Easter

• Easter baptism surge in England. Christians gathered on beaches across Devon on Easter Sunday for a series of sea baptisms. The Church of England Diocese of Exeter said about 20 people were baptised in Paignton and another 25 at Torre Abbey Sands. Meanwhile, Catholic Church Dioceses across England recently reported the highest numbers of adults preparing to be received into the Catholic Church at the Easter vigil on Holy Saturday for at least 15 years.
• Mass baptism in Western Australia. New figures show that the trend is also being borne out in France, with over 21,000 people set to be baptised this year, an increase of 20% on 2025 when 17,000 people gave their life to Christ, itself a record-breaking year. More than 700 adults were baptised in Paris alone. Read also here and here. The surge in Catholic baptisms is a global trend - 400 got baptised during Easter vigil masses in a single diocese in Long Island, USA. Meanwhile, down under, over 1,000 believers participated in a large-scale baptism along the Swan River in Perth, Australia on Good Friday, marking their acceptance of faith in Jesus Christ. 

Persecution of Christians

• Easter slaughter of Nigerian Christians. Islamist attacks on Christian believers in northern Nigeria in the lead-up to and during Easter has, tragically, become commonplace. This year, at least 53 were killed in three Palm Sunday attacks in predominantly Christian communities in Jos, North Central Nigeria. While not all of the victims were Christians, the community in which most of the killings occurred was described as “100 percent Christian.” Elsewhere, Fulani herdsmen attacked a Christian wedding reception in Kaduna state, on Sunday March 29, killing 13 Christians and kidnapping dozens of others.
• The evidence cannot be disputed. Elsewhere in Kaduna State, on Easter Sunday, terrorists carried out coordinated attacks on two Christian worship centres, killing at least seven people and abducting several others. Further north, Boko Haram extremists killed at least 10 Christians in an attack on a village in Borno state. And in Kwara state, armed militants stormed a church during a service and abducted 8 worshippers, injuring several others and stealing phones and other valuables. Yet still, media outlets such as the BBC, and more recently, the New York Times, continue to dispute claims that Christians are being specifically targeted in Nigeria.
• Islamist slaughter in Congo. Christians are being attacked, murdered, and abducted on a weekly basis by Islamists in other parts of the African continent, too.  In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, terrorists murdered at least 43 people in jihad raid on a village last week, setting fire to homes.

Church Matters

• Claims that non-religious identity among young marks a ‘permanent’ shift. There continues to be fallout from revelations that the ‘Quiet Revival’ report was flawed, with Professor David Voas of University College London and a specialist in research on religion, claiming that the Bible Society must take some of the blame, not least for declining to make the report’s underlying data available to other researchers, something that has become standard practice in social science. Meanwhile, Humanists UK have just published analysis conducted by the National Centre for Social Research, which found that found that 61% of 16 to 34-year-olds identify with no religion, and that 94% of this age group raised as non-religious still identified with no religion as adults, while only 4% of those raised as non-religious went on to adopt any form of Christianity.
• The UK’s quiet awakening to supernatural Christianity. Yet while the so-called ‘Quiet Revival’ may not have lived up to expectations, even the secular media is asserting that “something is definitely happening.” An article in The Telegraph leads on the story that “Britain is quietly awakening to full-fat supernatural Christianity”, with, for example, footballers being open about their faith in a way that didn’t happen a decade back, sales of printed Bibles having doubled, and “a mini boom occurring in the Greek Orthodox Church.” The Times, similarly, reports on the upsurge of ‘New Christians’ of all ages – but particularly Gen Z, who say they are delighted to find ‘belonging’ in an age of identity crisis. The Times’ report claims that many young men are being drawn to the Orthodox Church for “a more demanding, even difficult, practice of Christianity”. In the past five years, an Orthodox congregation in Durham has gone from about 15 to up to 150. 

Shoplifting Epidemic

• Two days of widespread social disorder in Clapham. A long-serving Waitrose employee has been sacked after stopping a suspected shoplifter stealing a bag of luxury Easter eggs – staff having been warned not to challenge thieves. The sacked worker later said he saw “shoplifting happen every hour of every day.” Read also. Elsewhere last week, in two days of little-reported London disorder, large groups of nearly 100 teenagers ran riot in streets and shops, forcing retailers to barricade their doors, and leading M&S bosses to hit out at Sir Sadiq Khan for failing to get a grip on crime.
• The true horrors of Britain’s shoplifting epidemic. Recent figures suggest there were 1,600 incidents of violence and abuse against retail workers every day last year, the true figure being much higher as many incidents go undetected. There were over 530,000 recorded offences in the year to March 2025, the highest since records began in 2003, costing retailers £2.2 billion annually, and adding £133 to the average household’s yearly shopping bill. Things are set to get considerably worse as up to 12,000 of Britain’s most prolific shoplifters will avoid jail under Labour laws scrapping most prison sentences of under one year. To make matters worse, ‘Tax the rich’ activists are planning to steal from high-end supermarkets and ‘occupy’ shop floors as part of a fresh organised crime wave between April 20 and May 10.

Sexual Abuse

Dramatic increase in Christian leaders accused of child sex abuse. Former US televangelist, megachurch pastor and Trump spiritual advisor Robert Morris is to be released after just 6 months in jail after having pled guilty to five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child in the 1980s. Shockingly, this high-profile case is merely the tip of the iceberg regarding recent convictions of church leaders in America regarding child sex abuse. As many as 200 Christian leaders in the US were accused of abusing children in 2025 alone. In the past few weeks alone, the following convictions have taken place in US courts:

• A Church of God pastor from Minnesota has left the state facing seven felony charges for abusing a child over a five-year period.
• A former Texas youth pastor pleaded guilty to sexually abusing children and was sentenced to 40 years.
• The former pastor of a now-closed megachurch in Lexington, Kentucky, pleaded guilty to the rape, sodomy and sexual abuse of a child.
• The events director at an Alabama-based, multi-campus church that also runs a ministry school has been fired after admitting he sexually abused two minors.
• A former Mississippi Presbyterian Church in America pastor pleaded guilty to raping his teenage daughter and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
• A Covington, Kentucky, pastor was sentenced to two years in prison for sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl who attended his congregation.

Other convictions of former US church leaders in the last few weeks alone include various other forms of gross sexual misconduct, murder, theft and felony.