Sir Michael Edward Palin is an English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. He received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2013 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.
The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) was founded on 22 June 1977, when most congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and almost all the churches of the Congregational Union of Australia united under the Basis of Union. According to the church, it had 243,000 members in 2018. In the 2016 census, 870,183 Australians identified with the church, but that figure fell to 673,260 in the 2021 census. In the 2011 census, that figure was 1,065,796. The UCA is Australia's third-largest Christian denomination, behind the Catholic and the Anglican Churches. There are around 2,000 UCA congregations, and 2001 National Church Life Survey (NCLS) research indicated that average weekly attendance was about 10 per cent of census figures. The UCA is one of Australia's largest non-government providers of community and health services. Its service network consists of over 400 agencies, institutions, and parish missions, with its areas of service including aged care, hospitals, children, youth and family, disability, employment, emergency relief, drug and alcohol abuse, youth homelessness and suicide. Affiliated agencies include UCA's community and health-service provider network, affiliated schools, the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, Frontier Services and UnitingWorld.
George Leonard Carey, Baron Carey of Clifton is a retired Anglican bishop who was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, having previously been the Bishop of Bath and Wells.
The ordination of women to ministerial or priestly office is an increasingly common practice among some contemporary major religious groups. It remains a controversial issue in certain religious groups in which ordination was traditionally reserved for men.
Warren Steed Jeffs is an American cult leader who is serving a life sentence in Texas for child sexual assault following two convictions in 2011. He is the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous cult based in Arizona. The FLDS Church was founded in the early-20th century when its founders deemed the renunciation of polygamy by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be apostate. The LDS Church disavows any relation between it and the FLDS Church, although there are significant historical ties.
Dame Joan Dawson Bakewell, Baroness Bakewell, is an English journalist, television presenter and Labour Party peer. Baroness Bakewell is president of Birkbeck, University of London; she is also an author and playwright, and has received a Humanist of the Year award for services to humanism.
Gilbert Juma Deya is a stonemason turned evangelist who lived in Britain from the mid-1990s until 2017, when he was extradited to Kenya to face charges of stealing five children between 1999 and 2004. He was acquitted of the charges in 2023.
Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner is an American former evangelist preacher and actor. He first gained public attention during the late 1940s when his parents arranged for him to be ordained as a preacher at age four due to his extraordinary speaking ability, making him the youngest known in that position to this day. As a young man, he preached on the revival circuit and brought celebrity to the revival movement.
Lemn Sissay FRSL is a British author and broadcaster. He was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, was chancellor of the University of Manchester from 2015 until 2022, and joined the Foundling Museum's board of trustees two years later, having previously been appointed one of the museum's fellows. He was awarded the 2019 PEN Pinter Prize. He has written a number of books and plays.
Danial John Dyer is an English actor and presenter. Dyer's breakthrough role was as Moff in Human Traffic (1999), with other notable roles Billy the Limpet in Mean Machine (2001) and as Tommy Johnson in The Football Factory (2004). Following the success of The Football Factory, Dyer was often typecast in "hard man" roles, although it was this image that allowed him to present The Real Football Factories, its spin-off, The Real Football Factories International and Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men. Dyer has also worked in theatre, having appeared in three plays written by Harold Pinter, with whom he had a close friendship.
Marjoe is a 1972 American documentary film produced and directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan about the life of Pentecostal preacher Marjoe Gortner. It won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Tent revivals, also known as tent meetings, are a gathering of Christian worshipers in a tent erected specifically for revival meetings, evangelism, and healing crusades. Tent revivals have had both local and national ministries.
The ordination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) clergy who are open about their sexuality or gender identity; are sexually active if lesbian, gay, or bisexual; or are in committed same-sex relationships is a debated practice within some contemporary Christian denominations.
The ordination of women in the Anglican Communion has been increasingly common in certain provinces since the 1970s. Several provinces, however, and certain dioceses within otherwise ordaining provinces, continue to ordain only men. Disputes over the ordination of women have contributed to the establishment and growth of progressive tendencies, such as the Anglican realignment and Continuing Anglican movements.
The ordination of women has been commonly practiced in Methodist denominations since the 20th century, and some denominations earlier allowed women to preach.
Jeremy John Irons is an English actor. He is known for his roles on stage and screen having won numerous accolades including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award. He is one of the few actors who has achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, having won Oscar, Emmy, and Tony awards for film, television and theatre.
Christopher Lowson is a British retired Anglican bishop. He was Bishop of Lincoln from 2011 to 2021.
Sarah Deborah Champion is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Rotherham since 2012.
Steven Lee Anderson is an American preacher and founder of the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist movement. He is pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. He has advocated for the death penalty for homosexuals, and prayed for the deaths of former U.S. president Barack Obama and Caitlyn Jenner. He produced a documentary titled Marching to Zion in which he "championed a wide range of antisemitic stereotypes", according to Matthew H. Brittingham of Emory University.
Within Christianity, there are a variety of views on the issues of gender identity and transgender people. Christian denominations vary in their official position: some explicitly support gender transition, some oppose it, and others are divided or have not taken an official stance. Within any given denomination, individual members may or may not endorse the official views of their church on the topic.
