This section of Religion News Blog highlights religion-related news stories that may tickle your funny-bone, leave you flabbergasted, or at least scratching your head wondering: What were they thinking?
These items are not intended to ridicule or otherwise poke fun at those involved.
Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics over a turf war in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.
Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the church in preparation for Orthodox Christmas, on 7 January.
Is software licensing theft still a problem? Is the Pope a Catholic? Or perhaps more aptly, is the Pope a pirate? The answers are yes, yes and probably not.
That said, when security software vendor AVAST decided to track down exactly where one 14 user enterprise software license had ended up after it was discovered on a file-sharing site, it must have been somewhat surprised to find that it cropped up a couple of times in Vatican City.
Add another temptation for the faithful to resist: Facebook.
The world’s biggest social network can lead married people astray, says the head of the Living Word Christian Fellowship Church in Neptune, N.J.
So, in his Sunday sermon, the Rev. Cedric A. Miller will announce that married church leaders have to log out for good, or get kicked out.
This thinking runs counter to churches that are embracing social media to reach their flocks.
Evangelical Christians in Brazil have apparently banned the use of USB connections after claiming the technology is the mark of Satan-worshippers, the Guardian reports.
Apparently the revelation came after the evangelists noticed that the USB symbol resembles a trident. Presumably they’re not great fans of Britain’s ballistic missiles either.
Jewish law allows women to sleep with the enemy in order to get intelligence vital to Israel’s security, a rabbi was quoted as saying in a Israeli newspaper Monday, AFP reports.
The mass-selling Yediot Aharonot quoted an academic article by Ari Shvat, an expert in Jewish law, in which he said it was acceptable to have sex with “terrorists” in order to obtain information leading to their arrest.
The advice appeared to be directed at Israel’s Mossad spy agency, and is an exception to the traditional religious prohibition of deception and sex outside of marriage.
The restored grave of the last known “sin-eater” in England has been at the centre of a special service in a Shropshire village churchyard.
Campaigners raised £1,000 to restore the grave of Richard Munslow, who was buried in Ratlinghope in 1906.
Sin-eaters were generally poor people paid to eat bread and drink beer or wine over a corpse, in the belief they would take on the sins of the deceased.
Frowned upon by the church, the custom mainly died out in the 19th Century.
An Indian court has ruled that Hindu gods cannot deal in stocks and shares, reports said Saturday, after an application for trading accounts to be set up in their names.
Two judges at the Bombay High Court on Friday rejected a petition from a private religious trust to open accounts in the names of five deities, including the revered elephant-headed god, Ganesha.
“Trading in shares on the stock market requires certain skills and expertise and to expect this from deities would not be proper,” judges P.B. Majumdar and Rajendra Sawant said, according to Indian newspapers.
A Catholic priest in New Hampshire plans to visit a Candia water park to see if he can see the face of Jesus in the park’s lifeguard flag.
Incidentally, the ability of people to recognize familiar patterns in random images, such as cartoon characters in the clouds, is a phenomenon of perception called pareidolia.
A preacher and two congregants would be a full house in the church near here built by retired construction worker Bruce Larson.
The 6-foot-square exterior of the little white chapel translates into 4,032.25 square inches of interior floor space. That’s 767.75 square inches less than a queen-size bed, 1,272.13 less than the bed of a 2010 Chevy Silverado 1500 pickup, and almost 350 square inches bigger than a Twister game mat.
The structure in Sundet Cemetery about four miles northwest of Nielsville could be the smallest functional church in the world.
What do the Bible, a parachute and a pair of handcuffs have in common? Escape Artist Anthony Martin…
Martin, a nationally-recognized escape artist turned evangelist, has announced plans to attempt a “Leap of Faith,” in Ottawa, Ill., July 13, at 2 p.m. Martin will be handcuffed by an area locksmith before donning a parachute and leaping from an aircraft at 14,000 feet. He will have to free his hands in order to deploy the parachute and save his life.
The film of the stunt will be shown at Martin’s evangelistic outreaches.