[size=14pt]Church Christmas campaign featuring 'Jesus in the womb' threatens to ignite abortion row[/size]

Protestant churches are to use an ultrasound picture of 'Jesus in the womb' - complete with a halo - for a new advertising campaign that could plunge the church into an anti-abortion debate.

The image, featuring the words 'He's on his way', will be displayed on billboards across the country to promote Christmas.

Frances Goodwin, chairman of ChurchAds.net, which created the poster, said: 'This is the kind of thing proud 'parents-to-be' show their friends and family - passing round the scan of the baby, or even pinning it up in the office.


^{Christmas message:
Churches will use this image in a new advertising campaign celebrating the birth of Jesus}

'Our poster reflects this new way of announcing the news of a new arrival and places the birth of Christ in an ultra-contemporary context.'

But the picture is already causing controversy with some groups fearing the church is using it to promote an anti-abortion message.

Terry Sanderson, of the National Secular Society, told The Times:  'It is the kind of image widely used by anti-abortion campaigners and I hope that the Church of England isn’t trying to use its Christmas poster campaign to make a political point.

'If that’s the intention, we may have questions to ask at the Charity Commission.

'If, on the other hand, it’s supposed to make a Christian Christmas more appealing to our secular nation, I think it is likely to have the opposite effect.'

'At first glance it looks like a poster for a horror film — perhaps The Omen VI: He’s Coming to Get You,' he said.

But John Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, hoped the advertisement would send out an anti-abortion message.

'This advertisement sends a powerful message to everyone in Britain where 570 babies are killed every day in the womb, 365 days a year, under the Abortion Act. Whenever we kill an unborn child in an abortion, we are killing Jesus,' he said.

'It may seem very early to be talking about Christmas, but we’d like to make this one of the largest church Christmas campaigns ever.'

The Bishop of Reading, the Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell, said: 'For many parents pregnancy gets real when you see the image from the ultrasound scan. It tells you something is actually kicking off.

'We've got so used to the tinsel wrapped cosiness of the carefully packaged 21st century consumer-fest Christmas, that its astonishing reality - an actual pregnancy, a God come down to earth - is easily missed.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285237/Church-Christmas-campaign-featuring-Jesus-womb-threatens-to.html#ixzz0qNxVpRC1

Waooo this is a great read.
At last something of the 21st century origin is coming to make the Church rise up and be counted.

People will always have different opinion when it comes to Christianity, and this ad wont be the 1st neither the last.

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