ACQUITTAL!

Street preacher acquitted in Soho ‘safe space’ case.

Richard Johnson outside City of London Magistrates' Court. (Photo: Christian Legal Centre)

The Christian Legal Centre has welcomed the acquittal of a Christian preacher who was accused of violating an LGBT “safe space” by distributing tracts about Sodom and Gomorrah.

Richard Johnson, 72, recounted how he handed out biblical tracts covering various subjects in Soho, most of which were irrelevant to homosexuality. In the incident last year, Johnson was eventually accosted by two men who told him to “get out of Soho”. He left the area, fearing for his safety.

Johnson was later prosecuted under the Public Order Act 1986 after two men complained about a tract referring to Sodom and Gomorrah. It is unclear if the two complainants were the same men who accosted him.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Book of Genesis, tells of how God destroyed the two towns for their sin. As a demonstration of the sinful character of the town, the narrative tells of how all the men in Sodom gathered to try and commit homosexual rape against God’s angels.

One of the complainants argued that Soho was a “safe space” for LGBT people and that as such Johnson was not entitled to share such views as could be elsewhere.

A trial on 4 September saw Johnson acquitted. The court concluded that while the tract was offensive and upsetting, no criminal offence could be proved, and in particular no threats of violence were made against anyone. Soho was determined not to be a separate jurisdiction in which different laws apply. The court also granted a defence costs order.

Following his acquittal, Mr Johnson said: "After nearly two years of having this hanging over me, I am glad to be free. I do this because I really love LGBT people and I want them to go to heaven and not hell. Love is telling people the truth, even if people are offended by the message."

I Can Endure ...

 

Birdie.

Nigeria.

 Extremist abductions in Nigeria surge by 153% as violence rises again, report finds.

 (Photo: Getty/iStock)

Abductions linked to extremist violence in Nigeria more than doubled in the final three months of 2025, according to a new report warning that insecurity in the country is worsening again after several years of comparatively lower violence.

The report, titled ‘Nigeria at the Crossroads,’ published by Christian persecution charity Open Doors, found that 3,415 people were abducted between October and December 2025.

That compares with 1,352 people during the same period in 2024, representing an increase of 153%.

Civilian deaths also rose sharply. Open Doors recorded 1,735 killings in the final quarter of 2025 – up 51% from the 1,148 killings documented during the same three-month period the previous year. 

The report says violence attributed to militant Fulani groups now accounts for substantially more killings and abductions than attacks by Boko Haram, despite the latter having a far higher international profile

The findings come amid renewed concern over security in northern Nigeria, where communities continue to face extremist attacks, mass kidnappings and displacement.

According to Open Doors, killings and abductions by extremist groups had previously reached a high point in 2021 before declining or stabilising for several years. 

The charity says the sharp rise recorded towards the end of 2025 suggests that this period of relative stabilisation may be coming to an end.

Jane Boswell, Senior Advocacy Officer at Open Doors International, said: “Our research shows that violence in Nigeria appears to be on the increase again. However, with decisive intervention from the Nigerian government, it is possible to alter the trajectory.”

She called on the authorities to strengthen security measures, prosecute those responsible for attacks and create conditions in which displaced communities can safely return home.

“Sustained international attention and pressure on Nigeria is also vital to ensure that justice is upheld and impunity is brought to an end,” she said.

“The future of so many citizens - particularly in the north of Nigeria - hangs in the balance. It is imperative that the Nigerian government seizes this moment and sets a clear path towards protection, justice and restoration.”

The report also examines how the impact of extremist violence is being felt across religious communities.

Between October 2023 and December 2025, Christians remained among those who suffered substantial loss of life, while Open Doors also recorded an increase in Muslim victims.

The pattern of abductions has also shifted. While Christians had previously accounted for more recorded kidnapping victims, the report says that from the 2024 reporting period onwards, the number of Muslims abducted exceeded the number of Christians.

The report also raises concern about the growing humanitarian consequences of prolonged insecurity.

Almost 4 million Nigerians are currently displaced within the country and the report cautions that continued violence and impunity could make it increasingly difficult for displaced communities to return to their homes.

Open Doors acknowledges that the Nigerian government has made some efforts to confront the violence but warns that these measures will have limited effect without sustained political commitment and accountability.

“If current trends of violence and impunity continue, displacement will deepen and the prospects for return will recede further,” the report states.

However, it argues: “If Nigerian government efforts to address insecurity are strengthened, supported by consistent international pressure and partnership, there remains a pathway towards greater security, justice, and a genuine ‘road home’ for displaced communities.”

Nigeria’s security crisis drew increased political attention towards the end of last year when Donald Trump, president of the US, re-categorised Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern over infringements on religious freedom in October 2025.

The following month, a national security emergency was announced by Nigerian President Bola Tinubu after a series of mass abductions involving students and teachers. 

Nigeria currently ranks 7th on Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List of the countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. CT.

God at work .

 Seeing God at work in everyday life.

 (Photo: Getty/iStock)

In her new book, 605 Everyday Miracles, Alpha UK director Chloe Swart challenges the perception that miraculous healing is reserved for extraordinary people or church events.

Drawing on her doctoral research, which collected 605 accounts of healing from ordinary Christians across a wide range of everyday situations, Swart explores how faith, prayer and unexpected encounters continue to shape people's lives today.

Christian Today spoke with Chloe to hear common misconceptions about healing, the stories that stayed with her, and the conversations she hopes the book will generate in churches. 

How do you define an “everyday miracle”? 

During my theology PhD research, I collected 605 healing stories, and four major themes emerged throughout them: everyday locations, everyday people, everyday ailments, and everyday language.

An “everyday miracle” is essentially ordinary Christians, people like you and me, praying for healing in ordinary, everyday settings. A lot of the time, these moments happened outside church buildings, in normal daily life, and in very natural ways.

Have you ever wrestled with doubt while praying for healing?

I think every time I offer to pray for healing, even though I’ve seen God heal many times, there’s always a faith moment of asking, “Lord, please heal this person”, before then administering healing to that person in Jesus’ name.

I do not doubt that God can heal, though. I believe He wants to heal and that He is able to heal. But obviously, we don’t always see everyone we pray for healed immediately, so there can still be moments of uncertainty about what will happen.

What misconceptions about miracles would you most like to challenge?

One major misconception is that only certain Christians can pray for healing. People often say, “I can’t pray for healing, I’m not good enough,” or, “I don’t have the gift of healing.”

But I believe all Christians are called to pray for the sick. When someone becomes a Christian and is filled with the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit lives within them. It’s the power of Jesus that heals.

I do believe some people have a specific gift of healing, but I think that gift is meant not only to heal the sick but also to encourage the wider Church to step out and pray for healing too.

I often compare it to evangelism. Some people are especially gifted evangelists, but that doesn’t mean they are the only ones called to share the gospel. We are all called to witness and share our faith. In the same way, we are all called to pray for the sick.

In the book, you share many stories of miraculous healing. Are there any that stand out most to you?

There are two stories I especially love.

One is about a man in his early twenties who was serving in the army. He broke his femur, but the bone never properly realigned. In the gap where the bone should have healed, a tumour grew. He underwent numerous operations to remove it, but it kept returning, and he lived with constant pain.

One day at church, shortly before a pre-operation scan, someone felt prompted to pray generally for healing. He simply stood at the back of the church and prayed quietly with his wife. Nobody specifically prayed for him.

When he later went for his scan, not only had the tumour completely disappeared, but the bone had also fully realigned. I think it’s an incredible story because both the tumour vanished and the bone was restored.

The second story is about a man helping friends landscape a garden. The machinery fell and crushed his foot. He was in agony, his bones were broken and they called an ambulance.

Then the children of the family he was helping came over and prayed for him. Immediately, the pain and swelling disappeared, and his foot was completely healed. They cancelled the ambulance.

I love that story because it wasn’t in a church setting, and it wasn’t a pastor with a healing ministry praying for him. It was children simply praying in faith.

While conducting research on healing, you write in the book that modern-day Christian physical healing is a seriously understudied phenomenon. Why do you think that is?

I think healing is difficult to study scientifically. My research focused on collecting healing stories rather than conducting a medical study. I didn’t require people to provide medical evidence, although some did voluntarily send scans and documentation, which was wonderful.

The challenge is that many healings happen outside formal medical settings. For example, I recently read a story about a woman who had twenty verrucas on her foot. Someone prayed for her, and they all disappeared. She probably didn’t have medical documentation proving they had been there, but she knew they were causing discomfort and that they vanished after prayer.

Academic research often focuses heavily on measurable evidence and established literature, so studying something supernatural can be difficult within those frameworks.

What surprised me during my own research was the sheer volume of stories. I initially thought I might collect eight to 10 accounts, but I ended up gathering 605 stories from people describing remarkably similar experiences. In itself, that consistency became significant evidence from a sociological perspective.

What advice would you give individuals who feel nervous about praying for others?

First, remember that Jesus calls us to heal the sick. It’s something He explicitly instructed His followers to do.

Second, remember that He has equipped us through the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit who empowered Jesus lives in us. Jesus even says in the New Testament that we will do the works He did, and even greater things.

Sometimes we feel nervous because we fear rejection or worry about what will happen if someone isn’t healed. But in my experience, very few people refuse prayer. Non-Christians are often surprisingly open to it.

I remember praying for someone at work who wasn’t healed in that moment, but later they came back and told me how deeply moved and emotional they felt afterwards. Even when physical healing doesn’t happen immediately, God can still touch people’s hearts.

It’s important to remember that it’s not our job to make something happen, that’s God’s responsibility. Our role is simply to offer prayer and trust Him with the outcome.

So take the pressure off yourself. Jesus has called you, equipped you, and empowered you. Our job is simply to step out in faith and see what God might do.

Has writing the book changed your own prayer life?

It has definitely encouraged me to keep praying for healing regularly.

When you write a book and begin speaking publicly about healing, it challenges you not just to tell stories from years ago, but to continue living it out yourself.

Even two weeks ago, I was at the gym when a man my dad knows mentioned he was struggling with arthritic pain in his wrist. I was in a rush and wanted to continue my workout, but I felt prompted to pray for him.

So I asked, “I’m a Christian, would you mind if I prayed for you?” He said yes, so I prayed briefly.

About 10 minutes later, he came back over, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Almost all the pain has gone apart from this one small spot, would you pray again?”

He isn’t a Christian, but he recognised that something had changed. Experiences like that continue to encourage me to keep stepping out in prayer.

What conversations do you hope this book sparks within the Church?

I hope it encourages ordinary Christians to have confidence to pray for friends, family, colleagues, and even strangers.

For me, healing is deeply missional. Of course it’s wonderful to pray for people within the Church, but healing can also powerfully demonstrate the reality of Jesus to people outside the Church.

You can pray for someone at a supermarket checkout or at a bus stop, and through that moment they may encounter the love and reality of God in a personal way.

My hope is that the book helps Christians realise they are empowered and equipped to pray for healing themselves, and that through these moments, more people come to know Jesus. CT

An Entire Household Saved. Acts 16.

 31) They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” 32) Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. 33) At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. 34) The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household.

Earl Spencer And Church Buildings.

 https://www.christiantoday.com/news/earl-spencer-is-right-to-raise-concerns-about-the-church-of-englands-historic-buildings

170 baptised at Bigbury-on-Sea.

                  170 baptised at Bigbury-on-Sea.

 Mass baptisms in the sea are becoming more popular.

                         

Birdie.

 

Stephanie Cole: A Superb Actress. RIP.

 

The Deluded Church of England.

 Charles Moore..

The deluded Church of England prefers empty gestures to unpalatable truths.

The absurd Ashrafi case and the misguided Project Spire illustrate fundamental problems with the institution’s mindset

Charles MooreShow biography

Published 18 September 2026 6:53pm.

Hafiz Ashrafi and his wife presented with the Hubert Walter Award by Sarah Mullally, which was later withdrawn Credit: Neil Turner

Paul Stott is the head of security and extremism at the think-tank, Policy Exchange. On Tuesday morning, the online alerts he receives about British relations with Pakistan flashed some photographs put out by the Pakistan government. They showed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, with Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council. Her people posted a picture too.

The scene was the Archbishop’s home, Lambeth Palace. In one picture, she and Maulana (“Master”) Ashrafi were shown holding up the citation with which she had just conferred on him the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith. (Hubert Walter was a mighty Archbishop of Canterbury who agreed with Saladin, Richard I’s great opponent in the Third Crusade, a deal permitting Christians, under Muslim restrictions, to continue to worship in Jerusalem.)

On the Archbishop’s right was a woman so swathed in black that even her eyes could barely be seen. She was Dr Ashrafi’s wife, apparently. In another picture (below) Mrs Ashrafi was standing between her husband and the Archbishop, wearing what looked like the medal of the award. On the Archbishop’s left was another woman, also masked. 

The day chosen for the award ceremony had been the previous Friday, Sept 11, the 25th anniversary of the terrorist murder of 3,000 people in the United States.

Dr Stott considered this picture remarkable – it is, if you factor in everything, including its date, tragi-comic – and he tweeted it out. Responders did not take long. By the time I spoke to him on Friday morning, his tweet had been viewed 280,000 times. Almost immediately after it appeared, experts started to produce grim information about Ashrafi. In 2007, he had complained bitterly when Salman Rushdie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He declared that, in retaliation, Osama bin Laden, mastermind of that terrible day, “must be given the lofty title of Islam, Saifullah” (which means “Sword of God”).

Other past remarks of Ashrafi include praise of the October 7 massacre of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians in 2023 (“Allah crushed the pride of Israel through the Palestinian freedom fighters”) and for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former leader of Iran, now “a martyr”. Ashrafi is an enthusiastic supporter of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws which include the death penalty. The evidence produced of his interfaith work was that he had defended a Christian girl in Pakistan who, he believed, had been unjustly accused of blasphemy. Good: but if the accusation had been accurate, would he have let her swing?

On Thursday this week, Lambeth Palace withdrew the Hubert Walter Award because Ashrafi’s previous comments had, said the press release, “come to light”, a phrase implying that you needed to work for MI5 or penetrate the dark web to find out what the Maulana had said. All you needed was 10 minutes on the internet.

Why did the Archbishop’s team not do due diligence? Dame Sarah herself has little background in Muslim matters to bring to bear. Although appointed last October, she has still not sorted out personnel at Lambeth. Her first chief of staff, Becky Clark, replaced the interim people only last week. The press release about Ms Clark’s arrival praised her work “to help church buildings play their part in reaching net zero goals”; she seems to have no interfaith background. Perhaps the interregnum staff were simply ignorant of the often aggressive, anti-British, militant tradition of the Deobandi Sunni version of Islam which is prominent in Pakistan and stirs up trouble among Muslims of Pakistani descent here in Britain.

It seems odd, though. Annual awards do not have a rushed timetable and the Ashrafi one was first recommended in 2024 by the Church’s resident expert on these subjects, Richard Sudworth. He died, sadly young, last year. Ashrafi, allegedly, had been his recommendation. Without Sudworth, perhaps the process just ground on, unthinking. You would have thought, however, given the turmoil in the Islamic world, care would have been taken to pick the right interfaith person to decorate.

Lambeth Palace did not consult the greater expertise across the river in Church House, from which the national Church is administered. If it had asked William Nye, the top Church bureaucrat, who was an expert in counter-extremism when he worked in the Civil Service, it would surely have learnt something to its advantage.

But such points do not fully comprehend the mindset at the top of the Church of England. The problem is not only staff shortages and shallow public affairs teams. There is also a weird reluctance – present, too, within secular British government and most leading British institutions – to scrutinise anything involving Muslims. Asking the necessarily tough questions leaves people open to accusations of “Islamophobia” and racism, which means career death.

In 2009, when I was chairman of Policy Exchange, we published a paper, Choosing Our Friends Wisely, which urged British public authorities to work much harder to understand the strands of Islam in this country and engage only with those who do not invoke Allah to transact extremist politics here and in the Middle East, threaten Jews, and condone terrorist atrocities. More than 15 years later, British institutions still flounder, governed more by fear of Muslim reaction than by the facts on the ground.

The Church of England, of course, should have different priorities from secular institutions. Its eternal concern for peace and unity rightly makes it wish to understand members of other faiths. But wishful thinking does not help understanding. The Ashrafi absurdity illustrates that problem.

There is a wider point too. Archbishop Sarah, critics say, does not set the Thames on fire. True, but that can help. Her conscientious decency is respected. In the end, Justin Welby’s pyrotechnics were rejected by too large a proportion of Anglicans to achieve their intended effects. The new, gentler Archbishop has it in her power to show her care for the parish life which, with its liturgy and Bible, is how the Church serves all of England. She could make that her priority, acknowledging the case made by critics like Save the Parish, recruiting more paid clergy, rather than racial justice advocates and diocesan officials. She could stop jacking up churches’ already massive energy bills by demanding net zero installations. She could celebrate the Church’s many saints rather than disturbing the graves of its sinners (of whom, of course, in our generation, as much as in all past ones, there are many).

The Ashrafi case shows a preference for gesture over facts. The same is true, on a colossal scale, of the Church Commissioners’ Project Spire, their £100m fund to atone for past wrongs related to slavery. Much learned historical work now shows that the Church’s central charge against itself – that, in the 18th century, it funded lots of clergy from the profits of slavery – is untrue. Yet the Church Commissioners refuse to engage with this evidence. As a result, they will soon face a lawsuit claiming they are exceeding their powers by diverting to a specially invented charity sums which have nothing to do with their legal purposes.

The Anglican prayer of “general confession” says: “We have erred, and strayed from your ways like lost sheep.” The additional problem now is a lot of lost shepherds. DT