Christian Debt Counselling Charity Excluded from Support Network for Offering Prayer to Clients

Country: United Kingdom

Date of incident: September 5, 2011


‚Advice UK’, the largest support network for free advice centres in the UK, has pushed out a Christian debt counselling charity from its membership for offering to pray with clients suffering from debt problems.

Despite being an active member of Advice UK for six years, Christians Against Poverty (“CAP”) was forced to leave Advice UK as they were told that its prayer offer was “incompatible” with the organisation’s membership criteria.  Steve Johnson, chief executive of Advice UK, accused CAP of offering prayer as an “emotional fee” for their services (which are provided free-off charge), and stated that “advisers must not offer or impose their values” on their clients.  CAP has denied using prayer as a pre-condition for their services and said it was “fully committed to providing impartial help and advice to all members of society”, but offered prayer simply “as an expression of care for [their] clients”. We thank Christian Concern for reporting. Read the full story here: http://www.christianconcern.com/our-concerns/social/advice-uk-cuts-ties-with-christian-charity-for-offering-prayer-to-clients