{"id":60729,"date":"2023-12-24T20:00:52","date_gmt":"2023-12-24T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/dec\/24\/indian-christians-find-comfort-and-joy-in-church-communities-across-britain"},"modified":"2023-12-24T20:00:52","modified_gmt":"2023-12-24T11:00:52","slug":"indian-christians-find-comfort-and-joy-in-church-communities-across-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=60729","title":{"rendered":"Indian Christians find comfort and joy in church communities across Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And churches used to dwindling congregations are delighted to see numbers boosted by worshippers of all ages<\/p>\n<p>Father Happy Jacob has a reason to be cheerful. When he started St Thomas\u2019s Indian Orthodox Church in Liverpool in 2002, his congregation numbered about 60 families, and stayed at that level for almost two decades.<\/p>\n<p>Then, a few years ago, things began to change. \u201cWe have seen a massive increase in families coming to the church,\u201d says Jacob, 48. At his last count, there were 110 families, with worshippers including NHS workers, international students and about 100 school-age children.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/dec\/24\/indian-christians-find-comfort-and-joy-in-church-communities-across-britain\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And churches used to dwindling congregations are delighted to see numbers boosted by worshippers of all agesFather Happy Jacob has a reason to be cheerful. When he started St Thomas\u2019s Indian Orthodox Church in Liverpool in 2002, his congregation number&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4072,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[751,368,370,62,371,79,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglicanism","category-catholicism","category-christianity","category-india","category-religion","category-society","category-uk-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4072"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60730,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60729\/revisions\/60730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}