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Houses of Worship are not just for worship anymore

When First Congregational Church of Bellingham built a new sanctuary in the mid-2000s, it wanted to be sure the facility would be used all week long and not just on Sunday.

So along with worship space, the Washington state congregation’s plans included a ground-level space with a separate entrance that could be used by an outside ministry or nonprofit.

Finding the right partner took some time. The building was finished in 2004, and, for more than a decade, the extra space was used as storage. Then last month, the church dedicated The Ground Floor, a custom-built drop-in center for homeless youth, run in partnership with Northwest Youth Services, a local nonprofit. More

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in France

Anti-Semitic attacks increased in France last year by more than 70 percent, according to figures released last week by the French government.

Reuters reported Tuesday that the country saw 500 reported instances of anti-Semitic incidents in 2018, a 74 percent increase from the year before.

In one incident, a crowd of protesters reportedly gathered around well-known Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Alain Finkielkraut, demanding that he return to Tel Aviv over his support for Israel, according to the outlet. More

Abuse of Faith among the Southern Baptists

Thirty-five years later, Debbie Vasquez's voice trembled as she described her trauma to a group of Southern Baptist leaders.

She was 14, she said, when she was first molested by her pastor in Sanger, a tiny prairie town an hour north of Dallas. It was the first of many assaults that Vasquez said destroyed her teenage years and, at 18, left her pregnant by the Southern Baptist pastor, a married man more than a dozen years older.

In June 2008, she paid her way to Indianapolis, where she and others asked leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and its 47,000 churches to track sexual predators and take action against congregations that harbored or concealed abusers. Vasquez, by then in her 40s, implored them to consider prevention policies like those adopted by faiths that include the Catholic Church. More

‘Removing your hijab can get you killed – even in the West’

Today is World Hijab Day, a campaign supported by 145 countries around the globe, including Britain, the United States and Canada. Booths are set up in universities and government buildings to hand out hijabs for non-Muslims to wear for the day. Human-rights campaigner Yasmine Mohammed – who grew up in a fundamentalist Islamic family in Canada – started her own campaign in response, No Hijab Day, to celebrate the brave women who have defied scripture, censure and the state to remove the hijab. spiked caught up with her to discuss the hijab and the soft bigotry of multiculturalism. More

Grand Rapids diocese warns of prayer for money scam

The Catholic Diocese of Grand Rapids is warning the community about a prayer scam surfacing in West Michigan.

Diocese spokesperson Annalise Laumeyer says the caller identifies as someone from “St. Mary’s Prayer Center Ministry” and offers prayer for payment.

Laumeyer says some victims are mistakenly associating the scheme with the Catholic Diocese of Grand Rapids. Laumeyer emphasized in a Thursday news release that the “prayer ministry” is a scam and it’s not associated with the diocese, its parishes or schools named St. Mary. More

Oldest Institution of Southern Baptist Convention Reveals Past Ties to Slavery

The first and oldest educational institution of the Southern Baptist Convention disclosed in a report Wednesday that its four founders together owned more than 50 slaves, part of a reckoning over racism in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The 71-page report released by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is a recitation of decades of bigotry, directed first at African slaves and later at African-Americans. Beginning with the founding of the seminary in Greenville, S.C., in 1859, the report found that the school, with few exceptions, backed a white supremacist ideology. More

Religion has no role in government: Smriti Irani

MUMBAI: Religion has no role in government, says Smriti Irani Mumbai, Dec 28. Union minister and BJP leader Smriti Irani Friday asserted that there is no role of religion in government.

She said the Sabarimala temple issue, where became a matter of national debate after the Supreme Court allowed entry of women of menstrual age into the famous hill shrine into Kerala, is being used as a "political tool".

The Union Textiles Minister was speaking at the 48th edition of IIT Bombays annual cultural festival 'Mood Indigo' here. More

Pastor John Gray returns to Lakewood Church after Lamborghini lambasting

While the holidays are usually filled with family and warmth, John Gray's season has been filled with family... and blazing criticism. The head pastor at Redemption Church in Greenville, South Carolina has been lambasted for giving his wife a $200,000 Lamborghini as an eighth-year wedding anniversary gift earlier this month, a grand gesture that is not typical of a preacher.

Broadcasting it for the world to see, Gray shared a now-deleted video of occasion on social media in a post that went viral. Gray has since apologized via social media and addressed the matter with his Redemption church members. More

Indonesian Christian Flogged Over Selling Alcohol, Violating Sharia Law

Indonesian Christian Jono Simbolon has been publicly caned for selling alcohol in the Muslim-dominated Aceh province, in violation of Sharia law, AFP news agency reported Friday.

Simbolon was arrested in October for selling illegal alcohol and sentenced to 36 lashes with a rattan stick. A doctor checked the convicts' health after 10 stokes, before allowing the punishment to continue.

Simbolon was one of 10 people, including eight men and two women, convicted after Friday prayers for crimes that included pimping, prostitution and gambling.

An unmarried couple received 10 strokes for having physical contact deemed too close and seen as a prelude to sex. More

China forbids Christmas decorations as Xi Jinping ramps up war against religion and foreign culture

Local authorities in China have reportedly forbidden businesses and citizens from celebrating Christmas this year, likely as part of President Xi Jinping's war against religion and foreign culture.

Officials in at least four cities and one county have ordered restrictions on Christmas decorations, with at least ten schools asked to curtail their Christmas celebrations, The Associated Press (AP) reported on Monday.

Like many other Asian countries, China does not officially mark Christmas a public holiday, with workers given days off on to celebrate events like Chinese New Year instead. Many Chinese businesses tend to use Christmas to encourage people to go shopping instead. More

Google Hosts 'Sharia' App Helping Indonesian Muslims Report Blasphemy, Heresy

Over the weekend, the Google Play Store approved the latest version of Smart Pakem, an app that allows Muslims in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to report violations of Islamic law – Sharia, including blasphemy and heresy.

The free-of-charge app, which has been downloaded over 1,000 times, was developed by the Jakarta prosecutor’s office and claims to provide users with an opportunity to report religious beliefs they consider misguided.

“The objective… is to provide easier access to information about the spread of beliefs in Indonesia to educate the public and to prevent them from following doctrines from an individual or a group that are not in line with the regulations”, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office told AFP. More

Ibrahim’s Historical Reconquista: New Book Reveals Christendom’s 1400-Year Struggle Against Jihad

Diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis’ 1949 John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy extolled Adams’ seminal contribution as “a mighty achievement.” Bemis’ landmark 1949 review included a reference to Adams’ writings -- “Unsigned essays dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece, written while JQA was in retirement, before his election to Congress in 1830” (Chapters 10-14, pp. 267-402 in The American Annual Register for 1827-28-29) -- as being consistent with his “defense of the interests, dignity, and equality of his country.”

Published in full during 1830, John Quincy Adams’ frank, timeless ruminations on the theologically based conflict between Muhammad’s Islam and the Christianity of Jesus should be mandatory reading for all contemporary U.S. diplomats and politicians: More

Former Pastor Sues Ohio Televangelist Ernest Angley Over Sexual Abuse

Brock Miller, a former pastor at the Grace Cathedral megachurch in Cuyahoga Falls, has accused televangelist Rev. Ernest Angley of sexually abusing and harassing him. The allegations were detailed in a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in Summit County Common Pleas Court.

Last January, Miller recounted the events of the assault and abuse to the Akron Beacon Journal, which he says took place on and off for nine years from when he was 18 until he turned 27.

Miller resigned in July 2014 after telling his family that, despite his deep love for the Cuyahoga Falls church, he simply could no longer deal with Angley’s continued abuse. Upon resignation, Miller moved to South Carolina to try and start anew, but he said Angley's actions have followed him no matter where he goes. More

The Emerging Crazy Christian Trend Of Grave Sucking

If you see someone lying on a grave, they may be engaged in a controversial form of Christian worship. It is called “grave sucking,” “grave soaking,” or “mantle grabbing.” The practice is angering Christians, confusing others, and probably making Atheists smirk.

Grave sucking involves laying across a grave of a holy figure. That could mean a preacher, evangelist, or saint. By laying across the grave you “suck” up the power of the Holy Spirit that the person had. You know, like the stealing the power of the dead from the Highlander movie/television franchise.

The theological explanation is that God gives away the power of the Holy Spirit to unique individuals to help carry on His work. When that person dies, the power remains in the corpse, which wastes the ability to carry out the power of God. No explanation on what happens to the cremated. People who participate in grave sucking believe that once they suck up the mantle they can pass it on, even through YouTube videos to help cure individuals of maladies. More

Omotoso rape trial: 'We continue to support the man of God', says church

Rape accused Timothy Omotoso's church, Jesus Dominion International, will "continue to stand with and support the man of God", it said in a statement on Thursday.

The trial against Omotoso is set to continue in the Eastern Cape High Court in Port Elizabeth on Thursday.

Omotoso was nabbed in April last year in a dramatic arrest operation at the Port Elizabeth International Airport.

His two co-accused, Lusanda Sulani and Zukiswa Sitho, were arrested months later.

Omotoso and his two co-accused are currently facing 63 charges and 34 alternative charges which include rape, sexual assault and racketeering. More

Pastor Who Thought God Would Save Him From a Rattlesnake Bite Gets a Painful Surprise

Churches where members handle poisonous snakes during the service to prove they are protected by God are pretty rare now. At one point you could probably find one or two in just about every state in the South.

A lot of people learned some hard lessons about the fact rattlesnakes hate being bothered on Sunday mornings and heeded them.

The preacher is Cody Coots, from Middlesboro, Kentucky. He's the head pastor at Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus’ Name, a Pentecostal house of worship tucked away in the woods. The doc follows Coots and spotlights those nail-biting moments when he's jamming out with local rattlers. More

How Islamophobia Is Entering The Law And Becoming Increasingly Acceptable In America

Imagine that a nominee for secretary of state had shared platforms with white nationalist Richard B. Spencer and been given a major award by his National Policy Institute, which describes itself as “an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States and around the world.” With that on his record, is it likely the nominee would have been confirmed, or nominated in the first place, to head the State Department?

Or what if someone under consideration for a top White House job had written an admiring foreword for a book by Holocaust denier David Irving or perhaps one by the psychologist and alt-right sympathizer Kevin MacDonald, who describes Jews as “a hostile, adversary elite” conducting “ethnic war” against Christianity and “traditional institutions of European-American culture”? Would such an endorsement keep him from being named as the president’s national security advisor? More

Archaeologists uncover 1,600-year-old ‘revolutionary’ clues to life in ancient Jewish village

A University of North Carolina archaeologist and her team have uncovered 1,600-year-old art in a monumental synagogue in Israel that could rewrite history about an ancient Jewish village.

The team, led by professor Jodi Magness, discovered mosaics in an ancient village in Israel that contradict widespread views about Jewish settlement in the region during the early fifth century.

“The size and rich decoration of the synagogue indicate that this Jewish village continued to flourish in the centuries after the Roman Empire became a Christian empire, and these Jews came under Christian rule, which many scholars today view as having been oppressive to the Jews,” said Magness, a Kenan distinguished professor of early Judaism in the department of religious studies at the UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences. More

Crocodile kills vicar during mass baptism in Ethiopia

A lakeside baptism service in Ethiopia was struck by tragedy after a crocodile attacked and killed the vicar.

An 80-strong congregation looked on in horror as the reptile struck at Docho Eshete, a protestant clergyman in the town of Arba Minch, while he conducted a mass baptism in the shallows of Lake Abaya on Sunday.

“He baptised the first person and he passed on to another one,” a local resident at the service, Ketema Kairo, told the BBC’s Amharic language service. “All of a sudden, a crocodile jumped out of the lake and grabbed the pastor, pushing aside the person he was baptising.” More

Sex abuse survivors allege coverup by Jehovah's Witnesses for failing to report assaults

Christian and Katja Gutierrez’s apartment is decked out for Christmas: the tree, the lights, the figurines on the mantle, all set up in full-blown holiday mode.

Christmas ended months ago, but the young Calgary couple can’t bring themselves to take the decorations down just yet. And it’s because they’ve only celebrated four Christmases in their entire lives.

The same goes for birthdays, Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving. In fact, pretty much every holiday is a new experience.

Until four years ago, Christian and Katja were Jehovah’s Witnesses — a Christian sect with a very strict set of rules to live by — including not celebrating holidays. More

Shadowy Cell in France Plotted to Kill Muslim Civilians, Authorities Say

PARIS — They called themselves Operational Forces Action, a small, right-wing vigilante group from all over France that had planned to kill Muslim civilians, prosecutors say.

Police cracked the cell over the weekend, with prosecutors saying it had already begun testing explosives. The group was planning to kill veiled women, imams and recently released Islamist prisoners, and wanted to attack mosques and halal grocery stores, according to French news media.

Authorities charged the group — nine men and a woman — with terrorist conspiracy and pointed to its literature, which claimed that it was “fighting the Islamic peril.” The group was led by a former police officer. More

Kirk Cameron Launches Website The Courage to Help Families Build Traditional Faith Values

Actor Kirk Cameron has announced the launch of his latest venture that aims to help families combat new social norms he believes are plaguing the nation.

"The Growing Pains" star has created TheCourage, a website that he says will provide encouragement and enlightenment for families amid today's culture war.

"TheCourage is a digital destination meant to inspire, give hope, and call people to something better, especially in the areas of faith, family, and culture," the website's description reads. More

Lightning strikes 186-year-old New Hampshire church, sparking fire

BOW, N.H. Firefighters say lightning struck a 186-year-old New Hampshire church and flames shot out of the steeple as strong storms made their way through the region.

WMUR-TV reports a staffer at a day care center next door called 911 on Tuesday after hearing a loud crack, then seeing a flash and flames.

No one was inside the Crosswords Community Church in Bow at the time. Sixty firefighters from 12 towns responded. Crews had the fire under control within 40 minutes and saved the church. More

Judge rules First Church of Cannabis cannot use weed as religious sacrament

INDIANAPOLIS, IN - The mission of Indiana’s First Church of Cannabis to get the state to recognize a religious exemption to the state’s marijuana laws appears to have gone up in smoke, at least for now.

On Friday, Marion County Superior Court Jude Sheryl Lynch ruled that the church could not smoke marijuana as a religious sacrament. The church’s officials filed a lawsuit against the state in 2015, just days after becoming a recognized church in the state, saying that Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) should allow for a religious exemption from state and federal laws related to marijuana.

The RFRA is intended to protect individuals from government infringement on the practice of religion unless the government can demonstrate a compelling reason for doing so. More

Obon Festival honors memory of Japanese ancestors

SAN JOSE — The familiar sights and sounds drifted through Japantown on Saturday as they do every summer: fresh sushi and teriyaki. Japanese folk music. The rumble of drums and the chatter of curious children.

But the centuries-old celebration on North 5th Street was just as much for the dead as it was for the living.

The Obon festival — one of Japan’s largest and most significant religious events — is a Buddhist custom honoring the spirits of one’s ancestors. The joyous event is marked by family gatherings, Japanese dishes and a traditional dance known as bon odori. More

Mpumalanga pastor and teacher to appear in court on separate charges of rape

on Monday on separate charges of rape.

The 66-year-old pastor’s appearance stems from an alleged rape of a 45-year-old woman that took place in April.

“According to information at police disposal‚ the victim arrived [in] Volksrust at the time and had no place to stay. She then reportedly approached the pastor for a place to stay. He accommodated her in one of the rooms in his place and after three days he reportedly called her to his bedroom where he allegedly raped her‚” the police said. “The victim only reported the matter now‚ reportedly due to interventions by fellow church members.” More

Church Is Taking Appearance Of Gigantic Marilyn Monroe Statue In Stride

Members of a Connecticut Christian congregation were taken aback last week when an enormous statue of Marilyn Monroe appeared steps from their doors, giving the historic church an unobstructed view of the leading lady’s backside.

The 26-foot “Forever Marilyn” statue by artist Seward Johnson captures the Hollywood actress in an iconic scene from the movie “The Seven Year Itch” in which a gust from a subway grate sends her white skirt billowing up. The statue’s back faces the First Congregational Church of Stamford.

The 30,000-pound sculpture is part of a summer arts series in downtown Stamford that showcases Johnson’s work in public places. It was installed in a Latham Park, a city-owned green space, which is when the church’s senior minister, the Rev. Todd Yonkman, first heard of it. More

Chile's bishops resign en masse over church sex abuse cover-up

VATICAN CITY -- Every Chilean bishop offered to resign Friday (May 18) over a sex abuse and cover-up scandal, in the biggest shakeup ever in the Catholic Church's long-running abuse saga.

The bishops announced at the end of an emergency summit with Pope Francis that all 31 active bishops and three retired ones in Rome had signed a document offering to resign and putting their fate in the hands of the pope. Francis can accept the resignations one by one, reject them or delay a decision.

It marked the first known time in history that an entire national bishops conference had offered to resign en masse over scandal, and laid bare the devastation that the abuse crisis has caused the Catholic Church in Chile and beyond.

Konchinsky's suit alleges that the officers' actions violated her First Amendment right to freedom of speech. More

Mitt Romney Calls Robert Jeffress a 'Bigot' for Comments on Jews, Mormons, Muslims and Hell

Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney has condemned First Baptist Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress for his past comments on Jews, Mormons, Muslims, and Hell, arguing that he is a "religious bigot" who should not be delivering a prayer at the new American embassy in Jerusalem.

Jeffress and a number of major evangelical pastors have hit back against Romney, however, positioning that Jesus Christ being the only way for salvation is a view in line with Christian belief.

"Robert Jeffress says 'you can't be saved by being a Jew,' and 'Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell.' He's said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem," Romney, who is also a Utah Senate candidate and a Mormon, tweeted on Sunday. More

Genesis Prize Cancels Ceremony After 2018 Winner Natalie Portman Says Won’t Visit Israel

The Genesis Prize announced it was canceling its prize ceremony in Israel in June after 2018 recipient Natalie Portman said she would not take part in light of “recent events.”

On Thursday, the Genesis Prize Foundation, which awards what it calls the “Jewish Nobel,” said it was “very saddened” that the Israeli-American actress would not take part in the ceremony.

The foundation said that Portman’s representative notified it that “[r]ecent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her and she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel” and that “she cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony.” More

Iceland law to outlaw male circumcision sparks row over religious freedom

Iceland is poised to become the first European country to outlaw male circumcision amid signs that the ritual common to both Judaism and Islam may be a new battleground over religious freedom.

A bill currently before the Icelandic parliament proposes a penalty of up to six years in prison for anyone carrying out a circumcision other than for medical reasons.

Critics say the move, which has sparked alarm among religious leaders across Europe, would make life for Jews and Muslims in Iceland unsustainable. One in three men globally is thought to be circumcised, the vast majority for religious or cultural reasons. Many Jews and Muslims fear the issue of circumcision could become a proxy for antisemitism and Islamophobia, pointing to similar tensions over religious dress and the ritual slaughter of animals for meat. More

Ex-Jehovah's Witnesses break silence on shunning: 'My mother treats me like I'm dead'

Amber Sawyer was just 8 years old when it happened.

She was watching cartoons on the living room floor of her Mississippi home when she heard the bang.

She went to investigate and found her 21-year-old sister, Donna, dead in her bed. She had shot herself in the heart with their father’s hunting rifle weeks after being excommunicated by their church for getting engaged to a non-Jehovah’s Witness.

For Sawyer — who sat on the bedroom floor near her sister's body for hours that day, waiting for her mother to come home from her door-to-door missionary work — it was the beginning of a long, painful journey that would one day tear her family apart. More

People who think about leaving religion but don’t are more likely to feel depressed and hopeless

New research suggests that sticking with a religion you have doubts about is associated with depressive symptoms. The findings were recently published in the journal Society and Mental Health.

“Social scientists give a lot of attention to the nonreligious because of this group’s recent and rapid growth, but even more people consider dropping out of religion and do not actually leave,” said study author Matthew May, an assistant professor of sociology at Oakland University.

“My goal was to understand how these people (stayers) differ from the people who leave (leavers) and the people who do not consider dropping out of religion (stable affiliates).” More

Can Watching Military Videos Stop A Christian’s Porn Addiction?

Do you use internet porn too much? Are you a Christian man? Big fan of war movies? Then you are the target demographic for the Conquer Series.

The Conquer Series is a series of DVDs created by Dr. Ted Roberts, a pastor and former marine fighter pilot. The videos are an odd hybrid of low-budget action movie, recruitment advertisement, and small group therapy session.

Each video uses military language and imagery to stop sex and internet porn addiction. With sections titled “the mission” and “strongholds of the enemy” the videos seem to be designed for men to talk about something embarrassing with the most masculine images that Dr. Roberts could create. With 68% of Christian men using internet porn on a regular basis, there seems to be some need. More

Leaked anti-gay Jehovah’s Witnesses video to be shown to 7 million people

A leaked Jehovah’s Witnesses video that peddles anti-gay views is set to be shown to seven million people.

The video starts in a board room meeting where a group of men are brainstorming experiences which they can share – and one of the pinpoints “Sally”. ?

The clip then cuts to a young woman walking around what appears to be a market.

She see’s women wearing rainbow bracelets, with rainbow posters showing two stick-figure women holding hands. More

Pope says ‘fake news’ dates to Adam and Eve

'Fake news' led to Adam and Eve’s original sin, Pope Francis said Wednesday.

Disinformation and “manipulative use of social networks” can have “dire consequences” and the world must embark on a “profound and careful process of discernment,” he said in a speech marking World Communications Day.

His speech was themed around the biblical verse: “The truth will set you free.” The pontiff also described journalism as "not just a job; it is a mission." More

Tech Bro Guru: Inside the Sedona Cult of Bentinho Massaro

Bentinho Massaro is crushing the startup game. He’s the visionary behind an innovative company that has captured the hearts and minds of its users like no other.

He’s truly one of a kind. What makes him stand out? It’s not his identity or looks. He’s a typical twenty something founder; white, handsome, charismatic and tech savvy. It’s also not because he built a successful company from nothing. That’s common these days. What makes him particularly unique is that he brilliantly used startup principles to create a legitimately dangerous, real life, 21st century cult. In Sedona. In 2017. Tech bro Guru has arrived. The OS has been upgraded. Cult 2.0 is upon us. More

Hindus upset at Toyota Super Bowl ad for belittling Hinduism

Hindus are upset at Toyota Tundra Super Bowl halftime commercial “We’re All One Team”, apparently attempting to show the unity of world religions, for failure to include representation of Hinduism, world’s third largest religion.

This commercial; in Super Bowl LII football championship played in Minneapolis on February four; depicts Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish religious figures.

How could you possibly showcase “We’re All One Team” by turning your back to 1.1 billion Hindus and thus slighting world’s oldest religion? Hindu statesman Rajan Zed asked in a statement in Reno (Nevada) today. More

Victim Cries as Pastor Accused of Sex Assault Is Applauded

On Dec. 1, as headlines across the country blared with news about Matt Lauer’s surprise firing from the “Today” show for sexual misconduct, a woman named Jules Woodson tapped out a short email. It ran only about 80 words but was nearly 20 years in the making.

“Do you remember?” the subject line read. “Do you remember that night that you were supposed to drive me home from church and instead drove me to a deserted back road and sexually assaulted me?” Woodson wrote. “Do you remember how you acted like you loved me and cared about me in order for me to cooperate in such acts, only to run out of the vehicle later and fall to your knees begging for forgiveness and for me not to tell anyone what had just happened?”

The message landed in the inbox of Andy Savage, a pastor at Highpoint Church, an evangelical Memphis mega-congregation that draws more than 2,000 Sunday worshipers. More

Scamming Trump Pastor Demands One Month's Salary From Followers

Paula White, a prosperity gospel minister who has often served as a spiritual adviser for President Donald Trump, has regularly drawn criticism from conservative Evangelicals for preaching what they consider to be “heretical” teachings that warp the divine message of the Gospel.

Now White is raising eyebrows with a new scheme that involves asking her followers to send her up to a full month’s salary — or else face “consequences.”

Via The Christian Post, White has launched a “First Fruits” campaign on her website that asks her followers to ring in the new year by sending her a significant chunk of money this month. More

San Jose moves to shut down two churches selling marijuana

San Jose is about to crack down on two churches that apparently are selling marijuana despite not having permits to do so, Councilwoman Devora “Dev” Davis said last week.

In an email, Davis said that the city attorney’s office “is preparing to take court action to shut down both illegal dispensaries.” She was referring to Coachella Valley Church at 2142 The Alameda and Oklevueha Native American Church of South Bay at 265 Meridian Ave.

“It’s a priority for me, so I will be doing everything I can to shut down illegal pot clubs, regardless of whether they call themselves churches or not,” Davis said.

For the past few years, the city has allowed only 16 cannabis clubs to operate as long as they have permits and pay sales and business taxes. More

Mom Beats, Chokes Daughter For Being Unable to Recite Bible Verses

A Middletown woman was arrested after police said she severely assaulted her daughter and kicked her out of her house because the girl incorrectly recited Bible verses to her last week.

Police filed child endangerment charges against Rhonda Kemp Shoffner, 41, of the first block of Genesis Court, following the incident on March 14.

The victim, who is under the age of 13, told police the assault occurred just after she awoke from a nap in her mother's home about 3 p.m.

Shoffner, who the victim said had been drunk for three days straight, told her daughter to call multiple family members, police said. When they didn't answer the calls, police said, Shoffner ordered her daughter to get on her knees in the bathroom. More

Indian film Padmavati sparks protests over 'Hindu-Muslim romance'

Riot police may be deployed at Indian cinemas over the release of a film about a mythological Indian queen that has sparked protests, attacks on the set and director, and threats to mutilate the lead actor.

The Indian government is being asked to intervene to delay the release of Padmavati, a film based on an epic 16th-century poem, starring Deepika Padukone as the titular character. Uttar Pradesh officials said on Thursday that due to elections and a Muslim holiday they would not be able to provide enough police to secure cinemas for the film’s scheduled release on 1 December. More

Evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress thinks the Catholic Church is a 'cult-like pagan religion'

An evangelical pastor and President Donald Trump supporter says Catholicism is a “cult-like pagan religion” and the success of the religion is due to “the genius of Satan.”

Dr. Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist pastor, says that the Roman Catholic Church is the result of the Babylonian cult system founded by the Book of Revelation in a video posted on YouTube by RWW Blog.

Twitter slammed and mocked the southern baptist pastor for making the comments on the religion.

"This idea is widespread in RW Born-Againism. They only tolerate Catholics because of anti-abortion stance. Their bigotry just under surface," tweeted one user. More

Only a flaky Christian would get annoyed by Greggs’ sausage roll Jesus

It’s an outrage, I tell you. How could something so sacred be corrupted into something so profane? How could God be so traduced that He is presented in so pitiful a form? It’s appallingly disrespectful. It makes a mockery of so much we hold dear. It’s heretical. Blasphemous. Offensive.

Yes, the story of the nativity is quite a scandal – the almighty creator of the universe appearing on Earth mewling and wailing in a trough in a shed shared with some farm animals. Glory, splendour, majesty? Yeah, right.

Yet despite being reminded of this palpable absurdity every year, some of us Christians still find something supposedly irreverent to get irate about each time Christmas comes around. If it’s not spurious stories about wintervals and prayers, it’s tales of the desecration of the festival by commercial interests. And this ignoble tradition shows no sign of dying out, for this year we have the sausage roll in place of Jesus in order to flog some greasy bakery products. He’s not the Messiah – he’s some flaccid pastry filled with processed meat.. More

ISIS bride-turned-Texas Christian: Racism radicalized me

She went from the Islamic State to the Lone Star State.

The former bride of ISIS’s highest-ranking American member has described for the first time how she fled the extremist group in Syria and has settled down with her four kids in a suburb of Dallas, according to a new article from The Atlantic.

Tania Georgelas, 33, who became radicalized as a teen in England and later moved to Syria with Texan husband John Georgelas, explained how she and her hubby planned to raise their kids into jihadi fighters.

“Our dreams were to have land of our own, raise a family and train them be assassins or whatever, soldiers, and then eventually go join the jihad,” she said. More

Alabama pastor defends Roy Moore by saying 'some 14-year-olds ... could pass for 20'

Republicans who implicitly or explicitly support Roy Moore, the Alabama GOP nominee for Senate, despite the credible accusations that he sexually assaulted or harassed teenage girls as young as 14, tend to point to his support for tax cuts or opposition to abortion and transgender rights. Moore is still in a competitive race against Democrat Doug Jones in part because Alabama is about half evangelical Christian, and many evangelical Christians and their leaders either give Moore the benefit of the doubt or, like Gov. Kay Ivey (R), say they believe Moore's accusers but will vote for him anyway.

The Southern Baptist and other evangelical Christian leaders who support Moore are vocal about it, but the ones who don't, for a variety of reasons, are "reticent," says New York Times religion reporter Laurie Goodstein, who spoke to many of them. And of the ones who are vocal about their support, Earl Wise, a pastor from Millbrook, wins the prize for worst defense of Moore, so far. More

‘It will help future generations’: Muslim schools in north India set to modernise

Muslim faith schools in Uttar Pradesh will be required to teach English, maths and science subjects to secondary-school level in an attempt to equip students more effectively for the modern world, the Indian government has said.

The move was announced by Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary, state minority welfare minister for Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which won a landslide victory in India’s most populous state earlier this year.

Uttar Pradesh has an estimated 19,000 faith schools, or madrasas, but most teach only Islamic theology. Even madrasas that do teach these subjects – many are trying to modernise their curricula – make them optional at secondary school. More

Florida church changes sign after message misinterpreted as sexual

EDGEWATER, Fla. - A church in Edgewater is changing its sign after a message about forgiveness was misinterpreted by many in the community as a sexual innuendo.

The sign outside the Bella Villa Baptist Church read: "Forgiveness is swallowing when you want to spit."

Representatives from the church say the sign was "completely innocent" and was "intended as encouragement to forgive." However, many interpreted the sign in a salacious manner. More

'It's a revolution': polygamist sect loses power over Utah town for first time

A fundamentalist religious sect that commands its women members to wear pioneer-era dresses and that became infamous for mass polygamy and child marriage appears to have had its power over a small town broken for the first time in its history.

Three non-fundamentalist council members are reported to have won against incumbents loyal to the sect “by a landslide” in Hildale, southern Utah, on Tuesday night.

And, in a closer race, an all-but-official majority of voters have chosen a new mayor, who also ran as an “outsider” to challenge the authority of the fringe religion over the isolated community. More

UN expert says most of world lacks real religious freedom

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Three-quarters of the world's people live in countries that either restrict the right to religion or belief or have "a high level of social hostility involving religion or belief," the U.N. special investigator on religious rights said Tuesday.

Ahmed Shaheed told the General Assembly's human rights committee that religious intolerance is prevalent globally — and rising around the world.

He said over 70 countries currently have anti-blasphemy laws that can be used to suppress dissenting views, in violation of international human rights standards. More

Inside the sex scandal that brought down a multi-million dollar televangelist empire

A new TV show explores how the Jessica Hahn sex scandal took down a multi-million dollar televangelist empire.

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were famous in the 1980s for their successful TV ministry PTL (Praise the Lord) Club, later called The Jim and Tammy Show.

But the Christian conglomerate was all but destroyed after a local newspaper unearthed a shocking scandal - that Jim Bakker had paid $279,000 to Jessica Hahn, a church secretary.

That thread quickly unraveled an even bigger scandal after the Charlotte Observer found that Hahn had allegedly been paid the cash as hush money, after she was allegedly raped by Bakker in a hotel room in 1980 when she was 21. More

Lakeside Church Shocked by $9,500 Electric Bill

Songs of praise bring together the congregation at Calvary Chapel Lakeside’s Sunday service. Recently, the church said they had another issue bringing them together, the church’s electric bill.

“The Pastor brought it to me and I was like, I don’t know what’s going on,” church elder Eric Bryant said.

Eric is talking about the church’s June electric bill from San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E). The bill was for over $9,500.

“I was incredulous,” Eric said. More

London commuters ran onto the tracks after a man began reciting Bible verses out loud

Commuters on one of London’s busiest rail routes forced open the doors on a rush hour train and climbed onto the tracks after panicking over man reading the Bible.

The BBC reports that passengers became scared when a man began quoting Bible passages such as “death is not the end” out loud, causing them to flee the train outside Wimbledon station at 8.30am Monday morning.

One man who was on the train said the Bible reading caused a “crush” and a “commotion”, before someone asked the reader to stop “as he was scaring people”. More

Pope's psychoanalyst visits show his struggle in Argentina's 'dirty war'

One of the mysteries of the life of Pope Francis is how a man regarded for many years as an authoritarian by his colleagues was reinvented as a global icon of forgiveness.

The news that he visited a psychoanalyst every week for six months may cast some light on this question.

At the time of his therapy, he was 42 and Argentina was two years into the terrible struggle between a military junta that killed about 30,000 people and tortured many more, and the left, which included everyone from urban guerrillas to unarmed priests. Fr Bergoglio, as he then was, found himself in the middle as the head of the Jesuit order. More

Who is David Meade? Christian numerologist who believes the world will end on September 23

David Meade is a Christian conspiracy theorist who has made predictions about Doomsday. He wrote a book called Planet X – The 2017 Arrival – insisting Nibiru would crash into Earth in October – but then moved it forward by a few weeks.

His theory was given a boost this year when NASA discovered a new planet in the solar system, which they named Planet Nine.

Meade’s prediction is largely based on the Bible passage Isaiah, Chapter 13 9-10, it reads: “See, the Day of the Lord is coming – a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger – to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.

“The Stars of Heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising Sun will be darkened and the Moon will not give its light.” More

Christian parents 'to sue school' because boy in son's class was allowed to wear dress

Nigel and Sally Rowe said they had been bullied into “accepting a new moral framework which strongly conflicts with what we believe in”.

They raised concerns with the head after a six-year-old boy arrived at the unnamed school dressed as a boy one day and wore girl’s clothes on another.

But the school defended its behaviour, stating: “The refusal to acknowledge a transgendered person’s true gender” was ‘transphobic behaviour’.”

Today, Mr Rowe, 44, from the Isle of Wight, said: “I’m shocked that just because we question the notion that a six-year-old boy can really become a girl, we are transphobic. More

'Agnostic' Jeremy Corbyn upsets Catholics by taking Holy Communion

Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of "disrespecting the Catholic faith" after he took Holy Communion despite his apparent agnosticism.

The Labour leader, who has never practiced Catholicism, took wine and wafers during the funeral of the former GMB Union president Mary Turner, who died in July.

The Diocese of Westminster, which is responsible for the church Mr Corbyn was attending at the time, responded by saying that it expected celebrants to be "in full communion with the Catholic Church" in order to receive Communion. The left-wing New Statesman magazine reports that Mr Corbyn queued for Communion with his Mexican wife Laura Alvarez during the service at Sacred Heart Church in Kilburn, north London. More

They kept us as slaves: AP reveals claims against church

SPINDALE, N.C. — When Andre Oliveira answered the call to leave his Word of Faith Fellowship congregation in Brazil to move to the mother church in North Carolina at the age of 18, his passport and money were confiscated by church leaders — for safekeeping, he said he was told.

Trapped in a foreign land, he said he was forced to work 15 hours a day, usually for no pay, first cleaning warehouses for the secretive evangelical church and later toiling at businesses owned by senior ministers. Any deviation from the rules risked the wrath of church leaders, he said, ranging from beatings to shaming from the pulpit.

“They trafficked us up here. They knew what they were doing. They needed labor and we were cheap labor — hell, free labor,” Oliveira said. More

Christian multi-universe theories

The scholastic theology of the Middle Ages was very much in thrall to the philosophy of Aristotle. One of the themes of the Reformation was to move away from Aristotelian thought in favor of the Hebraic thought of the Bible. But already in the Middle Ages, Aristotle had his critics. In 1277, the Pope asked the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, to look into reports that some of the faculty members at the University of Paris were taking Aristotelianism way too far. So Tempier studied the matter and came up with a list of 219 propositions in Aristotle that were heretical. Any professor teaching them would be excommunicated and would lose his position.

Church-imposed censorship of the free inquiry and the untrammeled life of the mind that are at the heart of the university! So some would consider it. But a line of research today, detailed in the article linked after the jump, argues that Tempier’s list had the effect of liberating Western thought from Aristotle’s scientific teachings. And this, in turn, was an important factor in the rise of modern science. More

What U.S. Evangelists Did To Poison A Country

In 2009, authorities in Uganda began debating an Anti-Homosexuality Act, which threatened LGBT persons with life imprisonment and even execution for the “crime” of being gay. Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a coalition of organizations advocating for the protection of LGBT Ugandans, began recording and reporting abuses arising from that proposed law. Frank Mugisha, SMUG’s Executive Director, reported that, as a result of the bill’s consideration “People are calling the police [with names of suspects] and harassing others in the streets.”

When the law passed in 2014, reports of anti-gay incidents increased tenfold. In May 2014, SMUG issued a report detailing attempted lynchings, mob violence, home torchings, blackmail, firings, arrests, evictions and suicides. Tabloid newspapers also joined in the fray, publishing 29 stories outing hundreds of LGBT individuals, which led often to further violence and familial shunning. More

Pastor allegedly sleeps with General Overseer, rapes daughter

The assistant pastor of the Great Overcomes Ministry, Abaranje in Ikotun, Lagos, Okwudili Ozor, has landed in prison after he was accused of allegedly sleeping with the General Overseer of the church, Prophetess Gloria Udeh and her 15-year-old daughter.

The incident caused serious crisis in the church after allegation of adultery and rape was leveled against Pastor Uzor.

According to P M.Express, the alleged sex scandal has put the entire congregation in disarray as some members have left in annoyance because the church’s General Overseer, Prophetess Udeh was in the thick of the whole scandal. More

Black female Episcopal bishop of Indy diocese breaks stained glass ceiling

INDIANAPOLIS — On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows stepped out of the historic Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan into a city where she’d lived most of her life but suddenly couldn’t recognize.

Cars flipped upside down, buildings with shattered windows, ash coating everything. These were the features of the hellish streetscape a few blocks from Ground Zero.

In that moment, the North Tower of the World Trade Center came crashing down. Someone urged her group, which had been huddled in a stairwell during the attacks, to run for a nearby ferry terminal. Baskerville-Burrows, who grew up in a housing project on Staten Island, knew the way. Soon a ferry was carrying her away from the smoking city. Back in the building where she'd lived as a child, she knocked on doors she hadn't visited in years, seeking refuge from terrorism where she had once only feared the gunfire outside. More

Complaint Filed To Close Sex Club Posing As Church

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The Metropolitan Government has filed a complaint seeking an injunction to permanently close a controversial swingers club in Madison.

The filing made Thursday in General Sessions court, states that a permit had been issued to operate a church at 520 Lentz Ave in Madison, but instead the owners have been operating a sex club.

The complaint states that Freedom 4 All, Inc. is "maintaining a public nuisance by permitting acts of lewd conduct" and is in violation of city ordinances and state law which prohibit operation of the club within 1,000 feet of a school. More

Sikh Man Heads To Pentagon As A Soldier After Long Struggle To Join U.S. Forces

In 2015, Kanwar Singh saw an opening. He would approach the secretary of defense at a public event in Cambridge and get him on the record about whether Sikhs ought to be allowed to serve in the military with turbans and beards.

Shaking with nerves, Singh approached the microphone in a camouflage turban.

"I want to understand," the young man from Waltham asked. "What can we do to ensure anyone who's passionate and patriotic can serve without them having to give up on their religious beliefs?" More

Church loses labour case

The Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses of Namibia might have to start compensating its employees as stipulated by the country’s labour law after it lost a labour case in the High Court yesterday.

The congregation dragged the Social Security Commission to court in May 2016 after the Commission refused to deregister the church as a company and employer.

“The congregation is trying to evade its obligations under the SSC Act and this court cannot allow employees to be unprotected in the event they fall ill, become pregnant or die,” explained Judge Petrus Unengu.

The congregation approached the High Court, stating that its followers are not employees and thus the congregation cannot be regarded as an employer and it does not regard itself as one. More

'Mother' should not be used to describe a bomb, Pope says

Pope Francis on Saturday criticized the naming of the U.S. military's biggest non-nuclear explosive as "the Mother of All Bombs", saying the word "mother" should not be used in reference to a deadly weapon.

The U.S. Air Force dropped such a bomb, officially designated as the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) on suspected Islamic State fighters in eastern Afghanistan last month. The nickname was widely used in briefings and reporting on the attack.

"I was ashamed when I heard the name," Pope Francis told an audience of students. "A mother gives life and this one gives death, and we call this device a mother. What is happening?" More

Scientology Social Media Celebrates L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics on its 67th Birthday

In the year 1950, before just about all of the self-help books you’ve ever heard of, (and even before Norman Vincent Peale’s wildly influential ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’), a “self-help book,” one of the first to define the genre, from a writer previously known for fiction named ‘L. Ron Hubbard,’ was published and went on to become one of the most recognized self-help books of all-time,..it was – “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.”

Given the fact that the very same L. Ron Hubbard would later go on to start the always-in-the-news religion of Scientology, it may surprise you to know if unaware, that ‘Dianetics’ was a secular, nonreligious 180,000 word work supposedly written in only 6 weeks, according to Wikipedia. More

Adventist pastor comes out as bisexual, resigns her church

A Seventh-day Adventist pastor has resigned from her Arizona pulpit and announced via video that she is bisexual.

“Through study and prayer, I’ve come to a point of complete disagreement with the Adventist Church on their teachings about LGBT people,” Alicia Johnston said in a video posted on Facebook on April 22.

“I also myself am bisexual so I’ve come to an awareness of that and have realized I just can’t live my life with integrity anymore without being honest about that.”

The Arizona Conference Corporation of Seventh-day Adventists issued a statement calling Johnston a “gifted theologian and pastor” and noting its determination to abide by the stances of the church. More

Exhibit shows how Passover was artistically reinvented through the years

DURHAM, N.C. The text of the story is familiar to most Jews gathering around the table Monday (April 10) to recount the biblical story of their liberation from slavery in Egypt

. Indeed, many know parts of the Passover manual they will be reciting — called a “haggadah” — by heart.

But the images used to illuminate this ancient text, embellished with hymns, songs and prayers, tell an additional story. It is the story of Passover told visually through the ages.

Dozens of such books, spanning the 14th to the 21st centuries, are on display at a Duke University gallery and they showcase the artistic imagination used in the service of Passover, which is probably Judaism’s most widely observed holiday. More

Police arrest ex-church volunteer accused of sexually abusing nursery children during evening prayer

A former volunteer at a Catholic church in North Texas was arrested Wednesday on charges of sexual abuse stemming from allegations made in July, police said.

Francisco Guevara, 65, was arrested on two charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child and one charge of indecency with a child.

According to police, Guevara volunteered at the St. John the Apostle Catholic Church nursery, where two of the offenses occurred. The offenses occurred up to 7 years ago, when the victims were between 4 to 7 years of age. More

Hindu Temple, Previously A Jewish Synagogue, Will Become the First in Rhode Island

A former conservative Jewish synagogue in Warwick, Rhode Island, has reportedly been acquired by the Rhode Island Hindu Temple Society (RIHTS). The synagogue, named Temple Am David, is being converted into a Hindu temple, and it will be the first Hindu temple in Rhode Island.

Temple Am David has been in receivership since November, and it is expected to be turned over to a new faith, who are its new owners. The temple’s temporary receiver, Theodore Orson, of Orson and Brusini Ltd, a Providence law firm, said RIHTS signed a purchase and sale agreement in June for $400,001, which was approved in July by Kent County Superior Court. More

Did Jehovah's Witness elders fail to report sexual abuse?

While her abuser, Terry J. Monheim, pleaded guilty back in 2012 in York County Court, a lawsuit Fessler filed against Monheim and the church is going to trial Tuesday in Philadelphia.

Her goal in filing the suit, besides personal justice, is to remove the secrecy within the denomination that allowed her abuse to continue after it was reported to church elders, her attorney, Jeffrey Fritz, said Monday.

"Her main motivation is exposing that the policies of the Watchtower and the Jehovah's Witnesses are not following mandatory reporting laws in Pennsylvania," he said Monday. "That's what led to this happening to her, and continuing to happen to other victims within the religion, as well." More

Aliso Viejo pastor gets 6 years in child sex assaults

SANTA ANA – A youth pastor pleaded guilty Monday and was immediately sentenced to six years in prison for sexually assaulting two underage boys at church events in Aliso Viejo.

Brandon Ernis Lee McDade of Mission Viejo, 31, pleaded guilty to a count of committing lewd acts on a child younger than 14, two counts of committing lewd acts on a child between 14 and 15, all felonies, and a misdemeanor count of child annoyance, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office. McDade was also ordered to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. More

Pilgrim nation: The Householder God

When I said that this was a temple of Krishna to my friends, the priest (locally known as panda) frowned. ‘Sir, Krishna is an avatar. But our Jagannath is the avatari.’ Avatar is the descended mortal form of divine who walks the earth. Avatari is the divinity who descends; he can be Ram as well as Krishna. With this one sentence, I was reminded that while much of the rituals are Vaishnava, and the deity enshrined in Puri, Odisha, is linked to Krishna, he is called Jagannath, lord of the world, for a reason.

Yes, for most people, it is the only temple in India where Krishna is worshipped with his siblings, the elder brother Balarama and the younger sister, Subhadra. But for the locals, the enshrined deity is to be simultaneously identified with Vishnu, the preserver of the world, and is often called Ananta Vasudeva, the embodiment of infinity. His consort is neither Radha nor Rukmini, but Lakshmi herself. All the while, the priests will tell you that different people see the deity differently: the triad is different forms of Tara to the Shaktas, different Bhairavas to the Shaivas, embodiment of Buddhist ideas to the Buddhists, embodiment of Jain principles to Jains. More

Arrested Houston pastor accused in $200K theft of church donations

The former associate pastor of a Houston-area church has been accused of stealing more than $200,000 from his congregation, according to Harris County court documents.

Russell Thompson Jr., 55, had been with the City of Refuge Presbyterian Church, located in the 3100 block of Yellowstone near Old Spanish Trail. He resides in Pearland.

Thompson was indicted March 13 and arrested early last week, charged with theft. He is currently free on $30,000 bond and his next court date is April 14, according to court records. More

Jehovah's Witnesses charity drops attempts to block abuse inquiry

The UK’s main Jehovah’s Witnesses charity has dropped efforts to block an investigation into how it handled allegations of sexual abuse, including of children, after a legal fight lasting more than two years.

The Charity Commission launched an inquiry into safeguarding at the religion’s main UK charity in May 2014 after receiving allegations that survivors of rape and sexual abuse, including people abused as children, were forced to face their attackers in “judicial committees”.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, resisted the investigation into the Watch Tower Bible Tract Society of Great Britain (WTBTS), which oversees the UK’s 1,500 congregations and is believed to play a key role in deciding how claims of abuse are handled. More

Hindu Priest Arrested in Possible Love Triangle Murder Plot

SACRAMENTO -- Three and a half months after thieves entered a Sacramento home and left a 60-year-old man dead as they fled, new details are emerging about the last person arrested in the case and what may have motivated the killing.

While the crime, a vicious stabbing, according to witnesses, is alarming enough, the fact that the latest alleged murderer is a Hindu priest is sending shock waves through the Hindu community.

Ashok Kumar was killed in August in his home on Grandstaff Drive.

A month later Sacramento police arrested Tiwan Greenwade, Vicky Rainone and the victim's wife, Rohini Kumar, for murder. More

Trump’s Election Win in Church of Scientology’s East Hollywood Neighborhood

It surprised no one last fall when Los Angeles and California at large overwhelmingly backed Hillary Clinton in her failed bid for the presidency. Just seven of the city’s 1,700 precincts went for Donald Trump.

But while nearly all of the surrounding region voted for the Democratic former secretary of state, one little chunk of Hollywood best known for the Church of Scientology’s “Big Blue” complex went red, picking the Republican billionaire instead.

The precinct, wedged between Hollywood Boulevard and Fountain Avenue, tipped to Trump by just three votes, 347 to 344. It marked the first time since at least 2000 that the area went Republican. In 2012, President Barack Obama defeated Gov. Mitt Romney by 81 votes, 316 to 235. More

Pastor, Wife Arrested in $1,200,000 Congregation Fraud Scheme

A Virginia pastor, his wife and a friend of theirs are all being accused of defrauding their Alexandria congregation out of more than $1 million, Fox5DC reports.

According to the report, Terry Wayne Millender, who serves as pastor for Victorious Life Church in Alexandria; his wife, Brenda; and a friend, Grenetta Wells, who is also affiliated with the church, were all recently indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money-laundering conspiracy.

Authorities say the charges stem from an investment scam in which the Millenders and Wells convinced congregations to invest in their company, Micro-Enterprise Management Group, which allegedly helped poor people in developing countries through the provision of small, short-term loans to start or build up existing businesses by working with a network of established microfinance groups. More

Zimbabwe priest held over Mugabe death prophecy

Harare - Zimbabwe police on Monday detained a pastor who claimed that veteran President Robert Mugabe, who turns 93 next month, would die in October, his lawyer said.

Gift Mtisi said Pastor Patrick Mugadza was arrested at the magistrate’s court in Harare where he was appearing on separate charges of wearing the national flag and charged over the prophecy made last week about Mugabe's demise.

"He was appearing at the court on a different matter when police arrested him during a break and charged him over the prophecy," Mtisi told AFP.

"He was initially charged with undermining the authority of the president and the charge was later changed to insulting people of a certain race or religion." More

Sex, drugs and ancient scrolls: Scientists claim religion has same impact on brain as lovemaking, ecstasy and music

The brains of people who feel God's spirit are stimulated in a similar way to the more earthly desires of enjoying drugs, music, gambling and sex, scientists have revealed. Researchers used MRI scans to look into the brains of Mormons experiencing religious ecstasy.

Scientists from the University of Utah in the U.S. enlisted 19 church-going teenagers to take part in an hour long "exam" with four parts for the study.

The scientists recorded their reactions and studied the parts of the brain stimulated. This included six minutes of rest, six minutes of a video detailing their church's membership statistics, eight minutes of quotations by Mormon and world religious leaders, eight minutes of reading familiar passages from the Book of Mormon, 12 minutes of church-produced video of family and Biblical scenes and another eight minutes of quotations. More

Investigation Into Death of Jehovah’s Witness During Childbirth

On October 12, 2016, 26-year-old Eloise Dupuis entered a hospital in Levis, Quebec, Canada to give birth.

She never came home.

Dupuis began to hemorrhage while in labor and required a blood transfusion, which she allegedly refuse. She then died. According to the CBC, the child survived and is in good health. See this news story for more information.

Dupuis’ death, however, has now prompted an investigation by the coroner’s office, to see if medical mistakes were made and to note if she did indeed refuse a blood transfusion through an informed decision. The news article above states that Dupuis’ aunt and a group of her friends expressed concern that the family of Dupuis may have been the ones to pressure the medical staff into withholding blood, something forbidden among Jehovah’s Witnesses. More

Could ‘Harry Potter’ give rise to a new religion?

Could Harry Potter become a spiritual leader?

A Cambridge podcast treats the boy wizard’s story as holy and reflects on life’s big questions using the seven-book series by J.K. Rowling as a guide.

The online show, “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text,” currently holds the number one spot on iTunes’s religion and spirituality charts, ahead of best-selling author and televangelist Joel Osteen. Launched in May, the 25-minute Potter-cast draws about 100,000 listeners a week. More

Scientologists demand A&E Network pull former disciple Leah Remini’s exposé from air

Leah Remini has reportedly demanded the Church of Scientology pay her US$1.5 million after it lobbied a TV network to get her new show shut down.

A lawyer acting for the Scientologists tried to get the show, which threatens to reveal details about the church, pulled before it airs on cable channel The Arts & Entertainment Network.

The former Kings of Queens star was blacklisted after walking away from Scientology in 2013, criticizing officials’ treatment of their followers. Since then the 46-year-old has gone public with her disdain for the religion and is to reveal details about the church and former members of the religion in her series Scientology and the Aftermath, which debuts on November 29, 2016. More

13-Year-Old Jain Girl Dies After 68 Days of Fasting

For 25 days, Aradhana Samdhariya went to St Francis School in Secunderabad with just a bottle of boiled water. A Class VIII student, it was her breakfast and lunch. Some of her classmates knew she was on fast, but did not know she ate no food at all and was surviving only on those few gulps of water. This fact was known only to her family, relatives and close friends.

After the first week of fasting, she became withdrawn and lost interest in studies. Back at her home in Kot Market, she watched TV, lay around, drank more boiled water for dinner, and went off to sleep. From the 26th day of her fast, Aradhana stopped going to school altogether. More

West Helena pastor charged with rape, sexual grooming of 15-year-old

HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. -- Helena-West Helena police have arrested a pastor for allegations involving the rape of a 15-year-old church member.

Pastor Bishop Michael Jenkins is charged with rape and sexual grooming of a minor, police said. Just after 1 p.m., police and FBI agents went to Jenkins' home on South 7th Street.

He works at the Church of the Living God.

"The 15-year-old said that she was actually raped by this local pastor inside of the trailer," said HWHPD Chief Virgil Green. Police say that trailer was parked right in front of the pastor's house. More

Young Priests 'Too Scared' To Perform Exorcisms

Priests in Italy are finding it difficult to encourage young clergy to take up the rite of exorcism, one of the country's top practitioners has warned.

"I told the bishop that I can't find anyone willing to do this," 79-year-old Father Vincenzo Taraborelli told the BBC.

"Many of them are scared. Even priests can be scared. It's a difficult life." Fr Taborelli has been performing exorcisms – the expulsion of evil spirits from a person or place – for almost three decades, and sees up to 30 people a day at his church in Rome.

The Catholic Church downplayed the reality of Satan and demonic forces after the liberalising Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. However, the conservative Pope John Paul II was clear about his belief in the occult and Pope Francis has also reminded Catholics that "Satan is real". More

Utah Jehovah’s Witnesses church forced woman to listen to audio of her rape

A woman is suing a Jehovah's Witnesses church in Weber County after, she says, one of its instructors repeatedly raped her when she was a minor and the organization's leadership forced her to listen to an audio recording of one of the assaults.

The woman filed the lawsuit Wednesday in 2nd District Court, accusing the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses church in Roy — as well as naming the alleged perpetrator, several church leaders and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (the religion's headquarters located in New York) — of knowingly allowing the "unfit" instructor to rise to a position of authority without warning members of his "dangerous propensities" and past sexual transgressions.

No representative of the Roy church, 1950 W. 4400 South, responded to a voicemail from The Salt Lake Tribune requesting comment Thursday. More

How did the Star of David come to be?

From synagogues, clothes, temples, buildings and even flags like the flag of Israel, the six-pointed star has become a symbol of Judaism. Initially, the star, otherwise known as the Star of David or Shield of David, was not uniquely a representation of the Jewish community. This was unlike signs such as the Lion of Judah, the Lulav, and the Shofar and most prominent of all, the Menorah, which is a seven-armed ceremonial candelabrum. So this raises the question, how did this star become the official symbol of the community?

The earliest notable use of the star was decorative purposes according to Alec Mishory, a historian. The star was used to mark ancestry on printed work by Jewish printers in a bid to distinguish themselves from their competition. The hexagram was also used for Kabbalistic purposes from as early as the third century CE on tombstones, tables and other locations and traditional items. More

Man who claimed God punishes gay people with natural disasters sees his own home destroyed by floods

A man who claimed God punishes gay people with natural disasters has seen his own home destroyed by floods.

Tony Perkins - the leader of Family Research Council - might be regretting that statement after becoming another victim of the Louisiana flood crisis.

The disaster has seen several people killed and thousands left homeless. But people are viewing the destruction of his property as a glimmer of good news after what he has previously stated as fact. The group leader had to flee his flooded home in a canoe and now faces six months living in a camper van to mull over those words. More

Churches hope to attract youth with Pokémon GO

The game was released just last week, however, it has already become a huge hit. Virtual Pokémon could be found in subway stations, art galleries, libraries, zoos, parks, and even at several churches. The last few days saw a number of game-hooked people, especially young adults, flocking to the churches, not to take part in any Church service, but to capture and battle their Pokémon.

The game has certainly caught the attention of Church leaders. It has the potential to increase Church attendance. However, as of now, churches looking to draw in youth with the help of the game are not be able to register as a Gym or a PokeStop. What the Church leaders can do is turn their churches into a “charging station” for the players. More

Islamic State Issues Fatwa Against Children with Down Syndrome, Murders 38 Disabled Infants

The Islamic State has reportedly issued a fatwa ordering the elimination of children with Down syndrome and other congenital disabilities, reminiscent of Hitler’s infamous “Aktion T4” program, which administered forced “euthanasia” on an estimated 300,000 disabled persons.

According to the Iraqi activist blog Mosul Eye, sharia judges have ruled that ISIS followers are authorized to kill infants with Down Syndrome or congenital deformities. Already since the religious decree (fatwa) was issued, militants have killed at least 38 children between one week and three months old by lethal injection or suffocation. More

Inside the world of Mormon porn

Sister Rose opens the front door of her home. In the doorway stands a handsome young man in a white button-down shirt and paisley tie, with a more-than-suggestive look on his face.

After she invites him in, he sits down on her bed.

“So I hear you like elders,” he says to the older, married woman.

“Where did you hear that from?” she asks (knowing exactly where).

“My companion was feeling really guilty and told me all about it. You both could get in a lot of trouble for this—unless you let me in on the action,” he warns. Sister Rose barely hesitates before, well, letting him in on the action. She seductively peels off her patterned dress, but something is amiss. She’s wearing what appears to be pajamas under her dress—a white tee and fitted shorts. She then removes his clothes, and the young man is wearing the same tee and shorts set. More

Pro-Trump pastor whitewashes history of pastors during Jim Crow—including the history of his church

Pastor Robert Jeffress is senior past of First Baptist Dallas and the most visible evangelical pastor to back Donald Trump’s candidacy. Jeffress, a relative newcomer to politics, explains his activism as part of his God-given responsibility as a pastor and a Christian.

“When you look at American history, whenever there was a need for a great change, it was pastors who led the way,” Jeffress said in a video message. Jeffrees said pastors were the leaders during the American revolution and the fight for the abolition of slavery.

“And it was pastors who were at the forefront of the civil rights movement. What if pastors back then had said, ‘I’m not getting involved’? We would not have a country today,” Jeffress said. More

Bill Nye visits Noah’s Ark theme park

Bill Nye, known from his 1990s TV show as “The Science Guy,” toured the new Ark Encounter theme park in Kentucky with the head of the Christian apologetics ministry behind it.

And it was “like the debate all over again but more intense at times,” according to a blog post by Ken Ham, president and CEO of Answers in Genesis. Ham also posted on social media about Nye’s visit, which occurred on Friday (July 8).

“Bill challenged me about the content of many of our exhibits, and I challenged him about what he claimed and what he believed,” Ham said on Facebook. “It was a clash of world views.”

“I chose to visit the Ark Encounter to see for myself the extent of its influence on young people,” Nye said Monday in a written statement. More

Turkey Pursues Cleric Living in U.S., Blamed as Coup Mastermind

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says that a mild-mannered Muslim cleric living in self-imposed exile in rural Pennsylvania was pulling the strings of a coup attempt last week that almost succeeded in taking over the state, and killing Mr. Erdogan himself.

Now, Mr. Erdogan says that many thousands of Turkish citizens — soldiers, policemen, bureaucrats, teachers, judges, lawyers and many more professions — are all part of the cleric’s movement and must be punished. Tens of thousands of people have already been arrested or suspended from their jobs in the four days since the coup failed, after a night of violence that plunged the country into chaos.

Mr. Erdogan and the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, have been adversaries in recent years, and Turkey has said before that Mr. Gulen must be extradited by the United States. Now, though, Mr. Erdogan appears determined to get him back, a matter that threatens to aggravate relations between the two NATO allies.

But who is Mr. Gulen? And is it possible he is behind such a vast conspiracy? More

Western Wall Prayer Protest Turns Violent

The Western Wall in Jerusalem is the holiest of Jewish sites. It is sacred because it is the remnant of the remaining wall that once supported and enclosed the Second Jewish Temple by Herod the Great. The public plaza located at the Western Wall, last Thursday, June 16, saw the Haredi Jews, also known as ultra-Orthodox Jews, disrupting a government-sanctioned mixed-gender prayer service held by the Reform and Conservative Jews.

The Reform and Conservative Jewish worshippers were shoved, pushed, and spat upon by the Haredi Jews. A few of the Haredi Jews, in order to avoid looking at the women worshippers while pushing them, covered their faces with their hats. There were a dozen uniformed policemen present at the scene. However, they did not intervene, they just looked on. The Reform and Conservative Jews refrained from responding to the abuse. More

Church and state group takes aim at Hondo's 'God's Country' signs

HONDO, Texas - Twin signs praising Hondo as "God's Country" are catching hell from a group that advocates for the separation of church and state. But the city's mayor and local residents have no desire to remove the signs.

The two iconic signs on Highway 90 greet drivers with the message "This Is God's Country - Please Don't Drive Through It Like Hell."

Acting on complaints from two unidentified Texans, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent Hondo Mayor James Danner a letter last week asking that the city of Hondo remove the signs from public property. Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote the "This Is God's Country" message violates the First Amendment's clause against the establishment of a religion. More

Jehovah's Witness video under fire for homophobic message

A new Jehovah’s Witness video is drawing fire online for teaching children to be homophobic.

The animated video titled ‘Lesson 22: One Man, One Woman‘ continues an ongoing series by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, featuring a young girl learning the ways of Jehovah through her mother. In this video, the little girl asks her mother about a school friend who has “two mommies.”

“My teacher says that all that matters is that people love each other and that they’re happy,” the little girl says.

To which the mother replies “Well people have their own ideas about what is right and wrong. But what matters is how Jehovah feels. He wants us to be happy and he knows how we can be happiest. That’s why he invented marriage the way he did.” More

Lady Gaga to join Dalai Lama in Indy this weekend

Lady Gaga will join the Dalai Lama in Indianapolis on Sunday at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting. The pop icon is just the latest national figure to confirm a visit to the Circle City this weekend, joining former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and pop star Justin Bieber, who is in town for a Saturday concert.

The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet is slated to give the conference's keynote address urging local action to build kind and compassionate cities. The address starts at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at the J.W. Marriott Grand Ballroom. Afterward, Lady Gaga will join him for an onstage conversation, moderated by journalist Ann Curry. The panel also will be joined by businessman and philanthropist Philip Anschutz. More

"Is the Pope Catholic?" suddenly a serious question

It’s always been the jokey answer to a dumb question, but it’s now a serious issue for Catholic intellectuals who have been criticizing, and defending, the Catholic bona fides of Pope Francis, especially since the pontiff released a landmark document on family life earlier this month that some say calls into question the church’s teachings on the permanence of marriage.

“A catastrophe,” one traditionalist blogger called the apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia,” or “The Joy of Love,” which was released by the Vatican on April 8. Francis “departs from Church teaching” in the exhortation, wrote another.

“Suddenly the rhetorical question, ‘Is the pope Catholic?’ doesn’t seem so rhetorical anymore,” Claire Chretien wrote in a pointed critique at the conservative Web outlet The Federalist. More

‘The prophet will never lead the LDS Church astray,’ and other Mormon heresies

“The prophet will never lead the Church astray.” How many times do we hear that comforting statement in Mormon circles?

Some Mormons use it to comfort themselves when the Church has done something that just doesn’t feel right, whether it’s prohibiting the baptism of children of same-sex couples or denying the priesthood to blacks: “This must be God’s will despite what my conscience is telling me, because the prophet will never lead the Church astray.”

Others use it to bludgeon people who can’t fall in line behind whatever policy the Church has supported: “You must be apostate, because the prophet has spoken, and we have been taught that the prophet will never lead the Church astray. So either get with the program or get out.”

The problem with this understanding of prophets is that it contradicts one of the bedrock doctrines of Mormonism: agency. More

Could religion help you live longer?

Women who frequently attend religious services have a lower risk of death from all causes, including heart disease and cancer, than those who do not, new research suggests.

The study, published online by JAMA Internal Medicine, does not prove a cause and effect relationship, but the researchers say the association appears to be strong.

"The results suggest that there is perhaps something about the communal religious experience that is very powerful," study author Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public, told CBS News.

For the analysis, VanderWeele and colleagues pulled data from a long-running national health study of female nurses to examine attendance at religious services and subsequent death in women. More

Prince's Life as a Jehovah's Witness: His Complicated and Ever-Evolving Faith

Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman were childhood friends, lovers and founding ­members of Prince's Revolution band. If Prince had a musical family, they were it. So when the pair tried to put together a Revolution tour in 2000, they were hopeful, they told Minneapolis' Star Tribune in 2004, that their former bandleader would say yes. He didn't.

"He declined because of my homosexuality and the fact I'm half-Jewish," said Melvoin. She was told he wanted her to give a press conference denouncing her homosexuality and announcing that she was converting to Jehovah. "I was like: I guess we'll never hear from him again."

But just six years later, she stood beside Prince onstage in London, playing for millions of viewers at an awards show. In matching white suits, Melvoin and Prince hammered shoulder to shoulder on their guitars, him lustily singing "Purple Rain." Coleman was on piano. The early acceptance of the gay couple -- and then the rejection and acceptance all over again -- is an example of the ­puzzling ­contradiction that Prince acted out in his ­attitudes toward sexuality and religion. More

Who Was Mary Magdalene?

The whole history of western civilization is epitomized in the cult of Mary Magdalene. For many centuries the most obsessively revered of saints, this woman became the embodiment of Christian devotion, which was defined as repentance.

Yet she was only elusively identified in Scripture, and has thus served as a scrim onto which a succession of fantasies has been projected. In one age after another her image was reinvented, from prostitute to sibyl to mystic to celibate nun to passive helpmeet to feminist icon to the matriarch of divinity’s secret dynasty.

How the past is remembered, how sexual desire is domesticated, how men and women negotiate their separate impulses; how power inevitably seeks sanctification, how tradition becomes authoritative, how revolutions are co-opted; how fallibility is reckoned with, and how sweet devotion can be made to serve violent domination—all these cultural questions helped shape the story of the woman who befriended Jesus of Nazareth. More

The Church Collection Plate Goes Digital

Dylan Ciamacco, 25, first went to the Los Angeles outpost of international megachurch C3 as a teen. His mom thought a lot of the young people there—in skinny jeans, chunky sweaters, and leather jackets—dressed like him. He’d emerged recently from a “sick” (as in awesome) atheist phase, he says, mocking himself, and was looking to go back to church.

A typical service, Ciamacco says, opens with a band that would fit in at the Coachella festival, were it not for the Jesus lyrics: “What a savior, my Redeemer/Friend of sinners, one like me.” (In one podcast, a pastor, sermonizing about society’s obsession with markers of achievement, uses an Internet-approved term of endearment to channel his audience, asking, “When am I going to get my own bae?”) At the end, a member of the “worship team” will call on parishioners to tithe and pass the collection plate. But not all people reach into their wallet. Many take out their phone instead. More

Is the end of days looming for fundamentalist sect in Utah?

The new federal courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City is a massive, futuristic cube of metal and glass that looks imposing, austere and, above all, impregnable. Armed guards patrol the exterior 24 hours a day.

But if a certain group of polygamous religious extremists in a lonely corner of southern Utah are to be believed, this Wednesday the walls will split open and fall when one of their leaders, Lyle Jeffs, appears before the judge in a major fraud case, according to former followers of his sect.

Simultaneously, an earthquake will apparently cause the walls of a prison in Texas to crumble and Lyle’s brother, Warren Jeffs, the group’s “prophet” and supreme leader, will also walk free – despite the fact he has been serving a sentence of life plus 20 years in that state since 2011, convicted of having sex with underage girls as young as 12 that he took as polygamous wives. More

Dead for 48 minutes, Catholic Priest claims God is female

A Catholic priest from Massachussetts was officially dead for more than 48 minutes before medics were able to miraculously re-start his heart has revealed a shocking revelation that will change everything you once believed.

The 71-year-old cleric Father John Micheal O’neal claims he went to heaven and met God, which he describes as a warm and comforting motherly figure. Father John Micheal O’neal was rushed to the hospital on January 29 after a major heart attack, but was declared clinically dead soon after his arrival.

With the aid of a high-tech machine called LUCAS 2, that kept the blood flowing to his brain, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital managed to unblock vital arteries and return his heart to a normal rhythm.

The doctors were afraid he would have suffered some brain damage from the incident, but he woke up less than 48 minutes later and seems to have perfectly recovered. More

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