With Oral Roberts “called home,” televangelist Rod Parsley appears to have taken up his message of “give me money or Satan will win.” This bizarre video below shows Parsley explaining that he is in need of cash because the Devil was trying to financially ruin him and left him with little operating capital. He does not mention that the church was just hit with a $3 million award in a child abuse case. The Devil appears in the details.
Continue reading “Devil in the Details: Televangelist Rod Parsley Calls on the Faithful to Give Him Cash After Devil Took His Money”
Category: Religion
There is an interesting ruling out of England’s highest court, which found that a Jewish school was guilty of race discrimination by refusing to admit pupils who are not considered ethnically Jewish. The ruling is the latest example of the collision course between anti-discrimination laws and free exercise of religion (and free association). For a prior paper on that conflict, click here.
Continue reading “Separation Anxiety: English High Court Rules Jewish School Violated Anti-Discrimination Laws By Excluding Students on Basis of Religion”
The application of Sharia law in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran has supplied this blog with a steady stream of cases involving stonings and censorship. Now, Israel’s Justice Minister Yaacov Neeman wants the country to adopt its own religious book, the Torah, as the basis for the country’s laws.
Continue reading “Justice Minister Calls For Israel to Adopt Torah Law As The Governing Rules for the Nation”
Oregon is preparing to try yet another child death case related to the Followers of Christ in Oregon City, a group of faith healers with a long record of dead children. The group was part of the focus of a recent column on the prosecution of parents for faith-based neglect. Jeff and Marci Beagley are mentioned in the column and are now challenging the criminal neglect statute as vague and raising free exercise of religion claims to block their prosecution for the death of Neil Beagley, 15.
Continue reading “Suffer Not The Children: Faith-Healing Parents Charged in Death of Teenager”
By last count, we were roughly 25 votes out of first place in the ABA competition. Twenty-five votes stand between us and ever-lasting glory. Who among us can now claim that we have done enough when we are mocked from across the Internet?
Continue reading “Flog the Blog: A Call to Arms for the Greatest Blogging Generation”
There is an interesting fight in Minnesota where State Senator Ellen Anderson made the modest suggestion that the state repeal laws making it illegal for a married woman to cheat on her husband and another statute that makes it a crime for single women to have sex at all. The response of the powerful Minnesota Family Council is to call for the law not to be repealed but strengthened to make it a crime for men to have sex outside of marriage.
Uganda is considering a new law that would impose the death penalty for some gays and sentence family members to up to seven years in jail if they fail to report gay relatives to authorities. The law would even jail landlords for accepting gays as tenants.
Continue reading “Uganda Law Would Execute Gays and Imprison Their Families”
A Connecticut dairy family is heralding the arrival of a cow with a white cross on its head. A Texas farming couple is showing an egg with a cross on it. Both are being cited as signs from God during this holiday season. Together they make for either a powerful message of the Almighty or a divine steak omelette.
Continue reading “Holy Cow: Connecticut Cow Is Latest Divine Sign To The Faithful”
The one thing that you can say is that Tillmon Webb, 33, had unshakable faith. The over 500-pound man sat down in his recliner in March after an injury and waited for God — never getting up for eight months until he died.
There is an interesting controversy in Brooklyn after the city yielded to the Hasidic community in sandblasting off bike lanes on roads. Hasidic leaders complained that they are having trouble obeying their religious law forbidding them from staring at members of the opposite sex with women biking around in shorts. Bicycle advocates have been trying to repaint the lanes.
Continue reading “New York City Erases Bike Lanes to Appease Hasidic Men Who Object to Seeing Women in Bike Shorts”
Christians are now organizing a boycott against businesses that fail to wish everyone “Merry Christmas” or use that offensive greeting “Happy Holidays.” Stores are being monitored and blacklisted for just wishing everyone “Happy Holidays” instead of referencing Christmas specifically.
Some people in Asheville, North Carolina are up in arms about a man just elected to the city council. No he is not corrupt or an adulterer. Those are virtually qualifications in today’s politics. The problem is not what Cecil Bothwell is but what he is not: God-fearing. Opponents are opposing his election on the basis of a provision of the North Carolina Constitution that bars atheists from public office. One is the former head of the NAACP. It is clearly unconstitutional and would make for a wonderful (and educational) challenge for North Carolina.
One has to love the t-shirt choice for this mugshot for Jenifer Stitzel, 34, a Christian preschool teacher arrested for having sexual contact with a 14-year-old boy on school grounds at the Central Valley Christian School in Tangent, Oregon. It all about trust.
Continue reading “Off on a Tangent: Teacher Displays Trust After Arrest for Child Molestation”
The voting continues with the ABA. Some would say that we are outmatched in second place with 66 votes to The Legal Satyricon with 106. But every great movie from Rocky to Star Wars has the underdog struggling before a thrilling victory. Yea, that’s us. Part Rocky, Part Jedi. Worse yet, that means a planet will be destroyed (who needs to threaten kittens) if we lose. By the way, the low numbers over all are the result of a weirdly rigid and awkward voting system. The result is that it suppresses the votes overall and requires people to go through a couple of steps. Below is your weekly inspiration to get the vote out.
Continue reading “We Few, We Happy Few . . .”
Iran has continued its crackdown on critics domestically and internationally. It has sentenced protesters to death over the demonstrations contesting the presidential elections. It has also reportedly created a unit to monitor critics abroad and threatened students on Facebook. Others have been forced to surrender their access codes at airports to allow police to review their sites.
Continue reading “Big Mullah is Listening: Iran Threatening Critics on Facebook and Other Internet Sites”