Despite its deep opposition to same-sex marriage, the Mormon Church is setting itself apart from religious conservatives who rallied behind a Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis, who cited her religious beliefs as justification for refusing to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
In a speech this week about the boundaries between church and state, Dallin Oaks, a high-ranking apostle in the church, said that public officials like Ms. Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, Ky., had a duty to follow the law, despite their religious convictions.
Trouble is, “Caitlyn” is really Bruce all dolled up to look like a woman. But “she” still has her man parts, for now at least. We know this nation has hit rock bottom when a popular magazine gives an award to someone who clearly has mental issues. Daily Caller has the story:
Photo: Kevin Winter, Getty Images
Glamour magazine named Caitlyn Jenner its “Woman of the Year” on Wednesday.
Along with Reese Witherspoon, Jenner will be featured on the publication’s December issue to celebrate 25 years of the magazine’s prize, Gossip Cop reports.
Christian Headlines has the latest on Bill Gothard, founder of Institute In Basic Life Principles. In 2014 Gothard resigned over sexual harassment charges:
A fundamentalist Christian ministry is under investigation for allegedly covering up sexual abuse of employees and children who attended its programs.
Christian Today reports that the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), which was once a leading organization within the Christian homeschooling movement, has been accused of covering up sexual abuse.
Five women have filed a lawsuit against IBLP, asking for $50,000 in compensation and stating that the organization “frequently received reports” of “sexual abuse, sexual harassment and inappropriate/unauthorised touching,” and that these serious allegations were never reported to authorities.
Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago — who is participating in the Synod of the Family at Pope Francis’ personal invitation — said at a press scrum in the Vatican press office this afternoon that the conscience is “inviolable” and that he believes divorced and remarried couples could be permitted to receive the sacraments, if they have “come to a decision” to do so “in good conscience” – theological reasoning that he indicated in response to a follow-up question would also apply to gay couples.
During the lengthy press briefing, the archbishop also spoke approvingly of the so-called “Kasper Proposal,” which would permit divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion in some cases. Cupich explained that he had distributed Cardinal Walter Kasper’s book, The Gospel of the Family, in which the cardinal had laid out this proposal, to all of the priests in his diocese.
Protestant pastors are increasingly polarized about Islam, with a growing share labeling the Muslim faith violent while a sharply rising minority calls it spiritually good, a new study shows.
Although a majority considers Islam dangerous, a small but increasing segment believes Islam is similar to Christianity, according to a new survey by LifeWay Research.
And two-thirds of Protestant pastors agree Christianity and Islam should seek to coexist in America.
The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule on their own authority; And My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it? (Jeremiah 5:31)
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As previously covered, Bethel Redding children’s pastor Seth Dahl has blasphemously claimed that in a vision Christ came to him and asked Dahl for forgiveness. You can watch this right here.
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In the above video, Dahl tells the Bethel Redding congregation of his experience with an enormous angel. Dahl asked the angel his name and then googled in the angel’s answer. The angel’s name was the same as that of a finance company. Dahl then realized the angel was “here for our finances at Bethel…”
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Dahl states, “You just need to hear a testimony so you can know what’s available to you ’cause I’m not trying to preach a sermon, I’m trying to invite you to a new way of life.”
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Yes, a way of life full of false visions and prophecies and dreams. Bethel Redding has taken many away from biblical Christianity.
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But it is apparent something else is happening as well. Because of these excesses (from Bethel Redding and elsewhere) many Christians are now afraid to draw near to God.
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“Experiencing God” has become a dreaded term. The great Reformed preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones, were he alive today, would be criticized by some well meaning discernment ministries for speaking about the “presence of God.”
In an interview with Christian Today Albert Mohler tells it like it is:
A leading Southern Baptist theologian and commentator is to issue a call for “faithful, biblical witness” in a book to be released next week.
The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Rev Dr Al Mohler, reflects in We Cannot Be Silent on the legalisation of same-sex marriage, the emergence of “transgenderism” and on divorce.
Interviewed for the seminary’s Southern News, Mohler said: “I am confronted daily with Christians who are asking one of the most basic questions and that is, ‘How did this happen?'”
In his book, Mohler says America’s Supreme Court will be held accountable by the court of “divine judgment” for legalising same-sex marriage.
This piece is about winning moms over to marijuana. The Economist reports:
AT A soirée on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, one woman greets her fellow guests with a delicate bowl of vanilla sea-salt caramels, each one laced with marijuana. “It’s quite subtle,” she insists. “I just keep a few in my bag for when I’m feeling stressed out.” Over light chat about family and work, the group quickly cleaned up the bowl.
It is a scene Americans will be accustomed to by about 2025, according to Jazmin Hupp, head of Denver’s Women Grow society. “Once moms are on board, that’s it,” she explains, taking a drag on a hot pink e-cigarette filled with cannabis oil. Her battle cry explains the recent surge in products such as vegan weed bonbons, cannabis kale crisps, cannabis spiced almonds and “high tea”.
A Canadian college that set up gender-neutral bathrooms in its dorms got a dose of reality recently when two women were videotaped by Peeping Toms – something critics have long warned would happen.
The incidents at the University of Toronto’s Whitney Hall took place Sept. 15 and 19 and have led to the school reconsidering its policies.
“Both victims (women) claimed seeing a cellphone reach over while they were in the shower,” Constable Victor Kwong of the Toronto Police told The Varsity student newspaper.
The person who did the recording has not been caught.
In a week-long nationwide sting, over 500 law enforcement officials coordinated by the FBI rescued 149 children from human trafficking—and the youngest one was 12 years old.
“It’s a really young age—we’re really concerned about that,” said Staca Shehan, executive director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which provided aid for the rescued children. “The majority of cases we see involve 15-, 16- and 17-year-old children,” Shehan said.
Runaway youth are especially likely to be exploited by predators who, after winning the children’s trust and obtaining their dependence, force them into prostitution.
Fuller Theological Seminary professor Daniel Kirk has changed his position on LGBT inclusion in the church. He announced on his blog this weekend that he now fully affirms same-sex relationships:
Is it time for us, not to “accept them into the body,” as though we were making some momentous decision ourselves, but to recognize that God has already accepted them—and we simply need to acknowledge what God has done? We could, like the apostles, exercise our faith by pointing to what it seems that the Spirit is doing and walk by that Spirit in our embrace of those whom God has already embraced. This is the road I’m choosing.
Full post is here. We share this not out of shock or surprise, but to keep you apprised of the daily darkening of the so-called visible Church that has departed from the truth of Scripture. Fuller, after all, was one of the first seminaries to become infected by emergent thought. (See Paul Smith’s must-read book, New Evangelicalism: The New World Order. It is also the home of famous alumni wolves Rob Bell and Tony Jones, a former professor.
Danny Danon, Israel’s new ambassador to the United Nations, is urging the Security Council to make a statement against what he described as “the incitement that fuels terror”.
During his speech, Mr Danon held up a piece of card with a diagram of a human body entitled “How to Stab a Jew”, which he said was “an example of what Palestinian children are being exposed to day in and day out, in school, after school”.
Two homosexual men recently “divorced” under Canadian law so that they could include a third man in their relationship, and now plan to have their sisters serve as surrogates to bear their children.
“We just want to say that love is love. It should be multiplied not divided,” Adam Grant told the Daily Mail. “It shouldn’t matter if you’re in a three-way or a four-way relationship.”
Grant and his partner Shayne Curran met Sebastian Tran at a nightclub in 2012, after “tying the knot” the year prior. A year later, they agreed to be open to seeing others.
When we talk about someone facing an existential crisis, we often mean that they’re unsure of their identity, don’t know how to move forward and are struggling to work out what they stand for – or even whether there’s meaning in life.
But to apply the term more literally, it means that person is fighting to survive – their very existence is being called into question – an existential crisis then, is a matter of life and death.
Both these definitions apply well to the Church of England. The Established Church is, by any definition, in serious trouble.
A suburban Chicago school district has announced that it will not allow transgender students to use locker rooms for changing and showering, defying federal civil rights officials.
Daniel E. Cates, the superintendent of Township High School District 211 in Palatine, Ill., said the district is sensitive to the challenges that transgender students face and has a support team to help them navigate at school. Transgender students are allowed to use restrooms in accordance with their gender identity, because there are private stalls, he said.
But the district will continue barring transgender students from communal locker rooms before and after gym and after-school activities, he wrote in a newsletter to families, to “ensure a respectful school environment” and “protect the privacy of all students.”
Islamists upset by a Christian-Muslim debate are suspected in the killing of a long-time evangelist in eastern Uganda who led many Muslims to Christ, sources said.
The mutilated body of Samson Nfunyeku was found close to his home in Kalampete village, Kibuku District early on Sept. 23, after the latest in a series of organized debates with Islamic scholars at Tirinyi Trading Center ended prematurely due to flaring tempers the previous night. He was 59.
According to a Daily Mail (DM) report “The posture we adopt as we stare at our phones causes excessive wear and tear that may eventually require an operation to correct it.” DM provides several X-rays.
These shocking X-rays show teenagers and children as young as seven developing hunchbacks and abnormally curved spines because of an addiction to smartphones.
A leading Australian chiropractor has warned that ‘text neck’ – a condition often brought on by bending over phones and tablets for several hours at a time – is becoming an epidemic.
Dr James Carter, based in Niagara Park, on the NSW Central Coast, said the relatively new condition can lead to anxiety and depression as well as spinal damage.
Evangelical heavyweight Albert Mohler expresses his view on Christians attending a gay wedding. Christian Headlines has the full report:
Christians should not attend a same-sex wedding — even of their own child — because it signals “moral approval” of the union, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said in a new book.
Boycotting weddings of gay friends and loved ones will be excruciatingly difficult, The Rev. Albert Mohler wrote in We Cannot Be Silent, which goes on sale Oct. 27.
“At some point, attendance will involve congratulating the couple for their union,” he wrote. “If you can’t congratulate the couple, how can you attend?”
Even if scientists prove people are born gay, the “sinfulness of homosexuality” would not be eliminated because human sin taints the world, Mohler said in addressing other topics of sexual identity. He contended that transgender people who are “saved” should consult with their pastors about whether to have surgery to return to their original gender.
The Mormon-owned international hotel chain Marriott continues to promote the company’s support of homosexuality through its marketing department, building off of its #lovetravels campaign.
The hotel chain has compiled several stories from homosexual partners in its ongoing promotional effort, which began last year, and is placing online banner advertisements to promote its “lesbian and gay travel” accommodations. It is also encouraging Tweeters to post its #lovetravels hashtag to show support.
The Marriott website has a page dedicated to trumpeting its support for homosexuality, stating that “[a]t Marriott, there is no room for inequality.”
Hundreds of Palestinian rioters set fire to the site revered by some Jews as the tomb of the Biblical patriarch Joseph in the West Bank city of Nablus early Friday, ahead of an emergency United Nations Security Council session to discuss the ongoing violence.
Palestinian security forces extinguished the blaze early Friday before Israel Defense Forces could arrive on the scene, according to the Jerusalem Post. There were no injuries in the fire, but the tomb suffered severe damage.
Daily Mail fills us in on the latest scientific discovery: transcranial magnetic stimulation. Participants in the study claim their belief in God dropped by a third. Atheists will be thrilled by the news.:
Psychologists have discovered it’s possible to significantly change a person’s beliefs simply by targeting their brain with magnets.
Using what’s known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, the researchers were able to temporarily shut down the part of the brain associated with detecting and solving problems.
People who were subjected to this treatment reported that their belief in God dropped by a third following the stimulation, while there was an increase in positive feelings towards immigrants.
The sin of homosexuality continues to plague the Roman Catholic Church. According to a Reuters report:
Pope Francis asked for forgiveness on Wednesday for scandals at the Vatican and in Rome, an apparent reference to two cases of priests and gay sex revealed this month during a major meeting of bishops.
“Today … in the name of the Church, I ask you for forgiveness for the scandals that have occurred recently either in Rome or in the Vatican,” Francis said in unprepared remarks during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square.
“I ask you for forgiveness,” he said before tens of thousands of people, who broke into applause. The pope then read his prepared address and did not elaborate.
Rumors of a third intifada, or Palestinian uprising, are growing amid a rash of stabbing attacks by Palestinians that have occurred, centering on Jerusalem, throughout October.
On Monday, a 13-year-old Jewish boy riding his bike in his neighborhood was stabbed multiple times by 13-year-old and a 17-year-old Palestinians, the Jerusalem Post reports. The younger Palestinian teen was subdued by a car driven by a passerby, while the older, who also stabbed a nearby 24-year-old Jewish man, was killed by police.
“Police continue to step up security and will continue to prevent or neutralize terrorists who carry out attacks,” said Jerusalem police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, who has tweeted updates about the incidents.
Following release of interview footage with Barack Obama and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, some are expressing concern about Obama’s remarks regarding those of the Christian faith.
“Tell me a little bit about how your interest in Christianity converges with your concerns about democracy,” Obama asked Robinson, being the interviewer.
“Well, I believe that people are images of God. There’s no alternative that is theologically respectable to treating people in terms of that understanding,” the novelist replied. “It seems to me as if democracy is the logical, the inevitable consequence of this kind of religious humanism at its highest level. And it [applies] to everyone. It’s the human image. It’s not any loyalty or tradition or anything else; it’s being human that enlists the respect, the love of God being implied in it.”
