Thursday January 7, 2010
New Covenant Faith Center (Independence):
Anonymous responses to news articles on the Internet are accurately generalizing what the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating at an Independence church, according to an official involved in the investigation.
Anonymous accounts on Web sites of local broadcast stations have reported claims of child molestation and other types of physical and emotional abuse that happened at or near the church’s property.
» Full Story
Wednesday January 6, 2010
New Covenant Faith Center (Independence):
Jackson County sheriff’s deputies are expected to return to the home of Lloyd Sartain, pastor of New Covenant Faith Church in Independence, Mo.
Police arrested Sartain on a federal firearms violation during a raid at the church Monday night. He was later released without being charged. Police are now asking for the public’s help in the ongoing investigation.
» Full Story
Scientology:
The
Church of Scientology in Italy has announced it is initiating legal proceedings against the Daughters of St. Paul and Maria Pia Gardini, a Catholic author who was formerly a Scientologist and has returned to the Catholic Church.
In 2007 the Daughters of St. Paul’s publishing house published Gardini’s first book, ” I miei anni in Scientology” (“My years in Scientology”).
The first week of December, 2009 they released her second book, “Il coraggio di parlare – storie di fuoriusciti da Scientology” (“The Courage To Speak Out – Stories of Ex-Scientologists”).
» Full Story
Uganda:
Police in Uganda on Monday exhumed bodies of three children who died under suspicious circumstances and were secretly buried at a home of a detained
cult leader.
Police learnt of the cult after after a woman complained about her 3-year-old child who had been buried secretly, after being removed from her when she fell sick.
» Full Story
Dahn hak:
Dahn Yoga teaches that its physical exercises “can restore the vibrations of the body and brain to their original, healthy frequencies,” according to a video introduction on its Web site.
But Dahn Yoga is now defending itself from allegations by former employees that it is “a totalistic, high-demand cult group” that demands large sums of money from its followers and enshrines Lee as an “absolute spiritual and temporal leader.”
» Full Story
Tuesday January 5, 2010
Hate Groups • Islam • Religious Persecution:
Infuriated by an alleged anti-Islamic comment by a mentally ill man, more than a dozen Muslims attacked his Christian family here last week, beating his 20-year-old sister unconscious and breaking her leg.
The woman’s father, Aleem Mansoor, said his daughter Elishba Aleem went unconscious after being struck in the head with an iron rod in the Dec. 28 attack. Mansoor said a Muslim known as Mogal beat him and his daughter with the rod on the street in front of their apartment home after falsely accusing his 32-year old son, who suffers from schizophrenia, of blasphemy.
» Full Story
Religious Persecution:
An aid and advocacy group has warned that a recent decision by Swiss voters to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland is having ramifications for already persecuted Christians in several Muslim-majority countries.
“In Egypt there has been a huge outcry against the Swiss decision, which concerned only minarets, not mosques themselves,” said Barnabas Fund in its latest ‘prayer focus’ report.
» Full Story
Unification Church:
With cult leader Sun Myung Moon turning 90 in February, how the movement will survive beyond him is unclear. Moon’s children are at odds over how to run the church’s business empire.
Some second-generation Unification Church members are now looking for a less-radical version of their faith.
» Full Story
Al-Arqam • Exorcism:
An Al-Arqam follower who is charged with murdering a Malaysia couple admitted in High Court that he had hit the victims with a piece of wood, crash helmet and mop handle to exorcise them.
“I could see that there were many evil spirits in my house and in the bodies of all my family members which I needed to remove,” the man said.
» Full Story
Monday January 4, 2010
Islam:
The
attack on a Danish political cartoonist “runs totally against the teachings and values of Islam,” the umbrella organization representing Muslim countries has said.
If the attack was a reaction to Kurt Westergaard’s drawing of the Muslim prophet Mohammed with a turban shaped as a bomb, “then it should be rejected and condemned by all Muslims,” the Organization of the Islamic Conference said in a statement Sunday.
» Full Story
Homosexuality/Lesbianism/Bisexuality/Transg.:
Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived in Uganda to give a series of talks.
Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.
» Full Story
Sikhism:
The Sikh scriptures and the Punjabi language of many Sikhs were written in a script known as Gurmukhi. So to be fully initiated into the religion, you must know how to read it.
That has created a problem for Sikh immigrant communities.
» Full Story
Saturday January 2, 2010
Family Radio • Harold Camping:
Harold Camping, a false prophet who first predicted the world would end in 1994, is at it again.
Camping operates Family Radio, a worldwide evangelical radio ministry he turned into a cult of Christianity.
» Full Story
Hate Groups • Islam • Terrorism:
A Muslim terrorist armed with an ax and a knife tried to enter the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose caricature of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban sparked Muslim outrage — and outrageous behavior — throughout the world when a Danish newspaper published it in 2005.
Westergaard is one of 12 cartoonists whose drawings of the Muslim prophet were first published in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
» Full Story
Tuesday December 29, 2009
Winkie Pratney:
New Zealand-born evangelist, Winkie Pratney, has suffered an aneurysm during a visit to his homeland.
He is being kept at a New Zealand hospital and is said to be “doing well” by his son, William Pratney.
A frequent featured speaker and guest on national television talk shows, Pratney’s audio and video-tape lectures are carried by many effective outreach ministries as part of their training.
» Full Story
Religious Persecution:
A Christian of Jewish origin who has been attacked on the streets here four times because of his faith in Christ is seeking police protection.
Jerusalem resident Yossi Yomtov said police have been slow to investigate hate crimes against him by youths wearing kippahs, cloth skullcaps typically worn by observant Jews. In two of the attacks a youth plied him with pepper spray and stun gun shocks, he said.
» Full Story
Monday December 28, 2009
Calvary Chapel:
Pastor Chuck Smith, 82, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, California, and the father of the “Jesus People” phenomenon in Southern California, has suffered a “minor stroke” and is in a local hospital.
Greg Laurie, senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship, Riverside, California, said on his blog “Last night, Pastor Chuck Smith was taken to the hospital and had what was described by his doctor as a ‘mini-stroke.’ His doctor expects him to make a full recovery.”
» Full Story
Peoples Temple:
While reading an exposé about San Francisco preacher and
cult leader Jim Jones in 1977, Ken White was surprised to see mention of Michael Prokes, an old friend who had become a spokesperson for Jones.
Prokes killed himself a few months after the mass murder/suicide took place at the cult’s compound. White has now turned his friend’s story into a play.
» Full Story
Hate Groups:
American
neo-Nazis are using deceptive free music downloads to lure youth and college students into
anti-Semitism, according to the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of the B’Nai Brith organization. It said the new tactics specifically target high school and college students through advertisements in school newspapers.
Israel’s Arutz Sheva reports that a man who operates a racist web site tricked school papers “by changing his site when he placed ads offering music by independent artists, but after the ads were published, he returned the site to its usual white supremacist format.”
» Full Story
Islam:
As Western Europe is plunged into a new bout of anxiety over the impact of post-colonial Muslim immigration — reeling in varying ways from the implications of a recent Swiss vote to ban minarets altogether — some scholars see a destructive dynamic, with assimilation feeding a reaction that, in turn,
spawns resentment, particularly among young Muslims.
»
Full StoryFLDS • Polygamy • Winston Blackmore:
Winston Blackmore, Canada’s best known polygamist, foresees a year of doom for those that deliberately break up families or interfere with a person’s freedom.
The cult leader was charged with polygamy earlier this year, but the court quashed the charges on procedural grounds, deciding that the government had unfairly gone “prosecutor shopping” to find someone to prosecute Mr. Blackmore after two independent prosecutors had advised against it.
» Full Story
Religious Persecution • Robert Park:
A young American missionary, who has reportedly been detained for illegally entering North Korea on Christmas Day, was inspired to go there by a biography about the “first Christian martyr” of present day North Korea, suggested an e-mail obtained by BosNewsLife.
Robert Park, 28, wrote in last week’s e-mail that he was “amazed” by the book ‘Chosen for Choson’ on the life and violent death of another 19th century missionary, Robert Jermain Thomas, written by Stella Price.
» Full Story
Thierry Tilly:
Three generations of an aristocratic French family have “awoken” from the spell of an Oxford-based guru who is accused of spinning a lurid fantasy to rob them of their fortune.
At least eight members of the Védrines family, aged between 96 and 24, are now said to be ready to give evidence against Thierry Tilly, a self-proclaimed financial genius, master spy and agent of an age-old secret order.
» Full Story
Sunday December 27, 2009
Superstition • Witchcraft:
Dozens of villagers in the Kenyan district of Kisii are falling prey to superstitious groups accusing them of
witchcraft.
The poverty-stricken western district, known as Kenya’s sorcery belt, has seen an increase in mob attacks on individuals and even killings.
The poor and elderly in particular are being targeted.
» Full Story
FLDS:
Hate mail from a polygamist sect makes West Texas lawmaker Harvey Hilderbran happy and proud.
The state representative is probably in for more feedback from members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He authored new laws in 2005 to send a message to those who built and inhabit a small FLDS city in his district: Don’t mess with Texas.
» Full Story
WHERE THE WILD ROSE GROWS 