Encouraging people to commit to social justice, human dignity, equality, civic participation and peace-building is the way to create good citizens, says the religion and society think-tank Ekklesia, not attempts to impose symbols of state allegiance and inflated rhetoric about ‘national pride’.

It is time that the Church of England faced up to the widespread public concern surrounding church schools and stopped trying to pretend that fear about Church schools comes only from a vociferous anti-religious minority.

In June 2007 the Christian think-tank Ekklesia and the British Humanist Association wrote to the new Schools, Children and Families minister, Ed Balls MP, urging him to make progress on combating creationism in British schools. The government has subsequently issued its promised guidelines.

A report published by the think tank Ekklesia suggests that the high-profile conflict between a number of Christian Unions and Students' Unions need not end in legal action ‚Ä' which would be damaging to all concerned.

The scrapping of plans to require new faith schools in England to raise intakes from other religions is a sign of an emerging, but undesirable and problematic 'New Deal' between faith groups and government, the think tank Ekklesia has today warned.

Responding to the latest statement from the Church of England on admissions policy for faith schools, the UK Christian think tank Ekklesia has said that the Church's stance is “wholly inadequate” and that “using church-going as a way of assigning publicly-funded school places is wrong and un- Christian in principle.”

The UK Christian think tank Ekklesia and the British Humanist Association have today written to Education Minister Alan Johnson asking him to ensure that their guidelines are explicit in requiring teachers to maintain a wholly scientific perspective on the matter of the origin of species by evolution.

The religious thinktank Ekklesia has become the very first 'friend' of Jesus, on the Internet phenomenon Myspace.

The UK Christian-think tank Ekklesia has said that the latest call from the Church of England and other denominations for more emphasis on legally- enforced ‘collective worship' in English schools is misplaced.