CANADIAN PASTOR FREED
Several religious news agencies have reported that, earlier this month, North Korea released a Canadian pastor who was convicted of attempting to undermine the regime of Kim Jong Un. North Korea’s state media said that the pastor was freed on humanitarian grounds. The Rev. Rim Hyon Su, also known as Hyeon Soo Lim, was accused by the state of using religion as a ruse to overthrow the government. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2015. The South Korean-born pastor of Toronto’s Light Korean Presbyterian Church had pleaded guilty to trying to undermine the worship of Kim, which is required of all North Koreans.
CHURCH ABANDONING THE POOR?
According to Church Times, a warning from the Bishop of Burnley, the Rt Revd Philip North, that the Church of England is “complicit in the abandonment of the poor”, and will continue to decline unless this is redressed, has been welcomed by church leaders and parish priests in the UK.
Bishop North warned: “The simple and hard truth is that, in the poorest parts of the country, we are withdrawing preachers. We are seeing the slow and steady withdrawal of church life from those communities where the poorest people in our nation live.”
STORY OF A RESTORED MARRIAGE
Christian Headlines reports that actress Renee Zellweger will star in the upcoming film "Same Kind of Different As Me," a film that deals with a husband and wife's marriage and redemption. The film is not being marketed as a faith-based movie, but Paramount Pictures and Christian entertainment company, Pure Flix, produced it.
