Voice for Justice UK newsletter and overview, January 2015

Voice for Justice UK was incorporated as a charitable company on 23^rd December, 2012. We are now just over two years old! During that time we have been busy, organizing conferences and Parliamentary Briefings, producing reports and much, much more.

 What we’ve done!

Conferences:

Fighting Sexual Exploitation, 13^th April, 2013      Our first conference, held in Oxford, tackled the problem of sex trafficking and exploitation in the UK. The grooming scandal in Rochdale was still big in peoples’ minds, but when we first began discussing the event we had no idea that within months the city of spires would itself become a major focus for criminal investigation, with the unmasking of two major sex grooming rings – one an Asian ring targeting and abusing young vulnerable white girls, and the other an Eastern European prostitution ring trafficking girls into the city to service a brothel masquerading as a nail bar.

Stolen Childhood, 30^th April, 2014     This year, at the Emmanuel Centre in London and under the auspices of the Lords and Commons Family and Child Protection Group, VfJUK organized Stolen Childhood, a conference examining the damage done to children as result of institutionalized sexualisation, the growth of pornography, and family breakdown.

The Case for Christian Freedoms – 800 years since Magna Carta,12^th March, 2014       Now, to coincide with the 800^th anniversary of Magna Carta, we are planning a major conference to examine human rights in 21^st century Britain. Speakers include, amongst others, Malcolm Evans OBE, Professor of Public International Law at Bristol University, and Chair of the UN Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture; Professor Roger Trigg, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, and Senior Research Fellow at the Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford; Bishop Michael Nazir Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, and now President of the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue (OXTRAD).

For full details and to register go to: https://vfjuk.org/events/the-case-for-christian-freedoms-800-years-since-magna-carta/

 Publications

In the last eighteen months VfJUK has produced two publications:

Is there a case for same sex marriage? Questions of eligibility and consequences by Robert Harris, in association with Anglican Mainstream.

Stolen Childhood A report from the conference mentioned above, edited by Lynda Rose and Robert Harris, and with contributions from Christopher Muwanguzi, CEO of the Family Matters Institute; writer and researcher, Patricia Morgan; and Dr Josephine-Joy Wright, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, specializing in children and family work.

Both are available for purchase on our website.

Operation Sovereign

VfJUK believes that prayer changes things, so in 2013 we ran a yearlong prayer initiative, asking those who took part to commit to a regular 15 minute slot at the same time every Wednesday. Participants were asked to pray for particular topics highlighted each week in a Bulletin, covering the issues to which we felt the Lord was directing us for prayer.

Altogether, about 400 people signed up – from all parts of the world – with the result that the whole 24 hours was pretty well covered, without anyone having been asked to pray at night!

It was an amazing year. With very few exceptions, people remained faithful throughout the entire twelve months, and we saw what we felt were some extraordinary answers to prayer.

Now we feel that the time is right to launch a new initiative – we believe the Lord has plans both for our nation and the world, and that He is once again calling for our partnership in prayer. To do this, however, we urgently need an administrator to take on the role of coordination and to send out the vital weekly Bulletin. In fact, without assistance, we simply can’t do it! So this comes by way of a plea – could the Lord be calling you to take on this role? Please pray about this, and if you would like further information, please email us without obligation at info@vfjuk.org

Tribute to the Lost Unborn

Following a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Lynda was much struck by the moving tribute to Jewish children who died as result of the Holocaust. Even today, more than sixty years later, grief remains, with recognition that loss of the unique gifts of those children have impoverished the world in ways we shall never now know.

At the time, it struck her that as result of miscarriage and abortion, countless millions of other children all over the world have been similarly lost, and are also mourned. Yet society glosses over or ignores this loss – indeed, many today even refuse to acknowledge it is a loss. It’s a woman’s right, runs the mantra, to choose whether or not the time is right to have a child. And in any case, it’s not a person before birth, so what does it matter!

VfJUK believes it does matter. A child is a person worthy of respect and of infinite value from the moment of conception, and the deprivation of life before birth, for whatever reason, is something to be mourned.

To pay tribute to the lost lives, therefore, VfJUK launched on the website a Tribute to the Lost Unborn, inviting anyone and everyone to sign, whether personally affected, as result of miscarriage or abortion, or simply wishing to mark and honour the unfulfilled destinies and gifts lost to humanity.

If you haven’t already done so, please do sign the Tribute and tell others about it. We’re quite happy for people to sign anonymously, if they wish. If we can get enough support, our aim is to erect a permanent memorial, along the lines of Yad Vashem. Click here to sign: https://vfjuk.org/tribute-to-the-lost-unborn/

Declaration of Faith

In March last year, at one of our regular VfJUK Prayer Days where we get together without any agenda simply to wait on the Lord, we felt Him telling us to speak out and declare our faith. This we did, but it appeared the Lord hadn’t finished, because then we felt Him telling us to set it down, and issue it as a call to repentance and recommitment to the nation.   So was born the Declaration of Faith. There’s nothing ‘new’ in it. It’s simply a restatement affirming Christian faith as set down in the Bible. But we believe it’s important because so many in the Church today, in an effort to be contemporary, appear to have abandoned the ancient tenets of our faith. Again, we invite you to sign and pass it on to others at: https://vfjuk.org/declaration-of-faith/

Parliamentary submissions

Much of our work is done in Parliament, with Briefings for MPs and Members of the House of the Lords (see below). As well as that, we made a formal submission to the Public Bills Committee with respect to The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill (Bill 126). We were subsequently invited by the Home Office to submit to their consultation on new measures to combat modern day slavery, which should become law in 2015.

Parliamentary Briefings

We have so far organised two Parliamentary Briefings. The first was to members of the House of Lords on 5^th March, 2013, ahead of the vote on Same Sex Marriage. Speakers at this highly successful event included Dr Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter; Professor John Finnis FBA, Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy Emeritus, University of Oxford; R.S.Harris, author of the book, Is there a case for same-sex marriage? Questions of eligibility and consequences; and Revd Lynda Rose, CEO of VfJUK.

On 4^th November 2014, in conjunction with the Lords and Commons Family and Child Protection Group, we held a Briefing on Issues Surrounding Assisted Dying. Speakers at this similarly successful event included Dr Andrew Ferguson, former GP, now Chair of the Advisory Group of the Care Not Killing Alliance, and Dr Peter Saunders, CEO of Care not Killing Alliance; Teresa Lynch, Nurses Opposed to Euthanasia; Revd Michael Wenham, author of My Donkey Body, chronicling his experience of Motor Neurone Disease; and Nikki Kenward, pro-life campaigner, left disabled after partial recovery from paralysis caused by Gullain Barre syndrome.

Muslim engagement

Following an appearance on the BBC programme The Big Questions, Lynda was approached by Tower Hamlets College and asked to talk to students in their A level Religious Studies department about Christianity. This was a tremendous opportunity as the college is predominantly Muslim, and the students would otherwise have had no teaching on Christianity at all.

About twenty students gathered – a mix of boys and girls, and all alike fascinated to be meeting a female priest! Questions ranged from theological issues about heaven and hell, to whether women in the Church of England were allowed to marry … and everything in between. Please pray now that she will be invited back, because in these days of growing Islamic extremism, it really was a wonderful chance to meet and engage with young Muslims.

Visit to the UN

Finally, to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the International Year of the Family declared, Lynda Rose and Robert Harris attended a Transatlantic Summit of policy makers at the UN in New York, on “Strengthening the family for Sustainable Development”. This attracted delegates from all over the world, and Lynda made a presentation on The dangers posed to Family in the UK through stealth progression of the liberal sexual agenda. This was well received, and important international contacts were made.

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VfJUK is entirely dependent on donations, and a big thank you to all our supporters who have faithfully helped finance our work.  But as always, to do more, we need increased funding, so please, if you haven’t yet done so, could you consider making a regular gift?  Even £5 a month would make the most tremendous difference to us!  For details how to donate, please go to the website at: https://vfjuk.org/donate/