In today’s issue: Congress delivers a blow to the Westboro ‘Baptist’ Hate group. Snoop Dogg ‘born again’ as a Rastafarian.
Plus: an important article in which author Debra Weyermann wonders why the FLDS cult is allowed to continue its abusive polygamist practices in Utah and Arizona.
And a ‘pastor’ says Kermit the Frog deserves the death penalty.
What a South Florida family of psychics did for 20 years was criminal fraud, federal prosecutors say.
But the defense team for the Rose Marks family says it was something very different — religion, free speech and a sincere belief in spiritual healing.
Our hand-selected collection of religion news items for today includes snake handling churches, the ‘Jesus is not a homophobe’ T-shirt, Tim Tebow, and an orthodox Jewish reality show.
Plus: psychics accused of criminal fraud claim ‘religious freedom’ as a defense. More…
It might sound weird, but even in 2010 the brooding Balkan countries can’t shake their addiction to psychics, clairvoyants, soothsayers and assorted ‘white witches’, all of which are still doing a roaring trade, from Bulgaria to Translyvania.
Every second Bulgarian who took part in a survey for the Sofia television channel BTV said they believed in supernatural powers, and especially feared a curse being put on them. Professor Ljubomir Halachev confirmed in the programme that “trust in psychic powers and second sight is widespread in Bulgaria”.
The apparently unchallengeable claim by Bulgarian clairvoyants and psychics to paranormal powers rests on the world-renowned reputation of their late peer, the seer Baba Vanga — who is claimed to have predicted, before her death in 1996, a number of world events, including the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the death of Princess Diana, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US — “two American brothers would fall under attacks by birds of steel” — and the sinking of the Russian nuclear cruise-missile submarine Kursk.
Today’s RNB Religion News Roundup includes: a guy helping Christians reconcile God with science; Londoners caught in the financial crisis turn to psychics (forgetting they, too, did not predict the economic turmoil); a Druid trying to save Stonehenge from government interference; atheists trying to expel God from the Irish constitution; a digitally recreated Vatican, and an appearance by the Virgin Mary.
Plus: some religion news links you missed if you’re not subscribed to our Twitter stream.
The RNB Religion News Roundup for Friday, Apr. 24, 2009 includes items about Scientology, Aum Shinrikyo, Korean cult leader Jeong Myeong-Seok, the continuing popularity of Aum Shrinrikyo’s jailed cult leader, and China’s on-going ban on Falun Gong.
Also: • A US state must pay benefits to the wife of a Jehovah’s Witness who died after refusing a blood transfusion • A killer turned pastor upsets his victim’s son • Nigerian preacher speaks out against witch hunts • Vampire story gets demoted…
Plus: what do you see? Pareidolia?
In today’s RNB Religion News Roundup, find out what Bono is doing in church, why the Dalai Lama is visiting an organization linked to a ‘cult’, and why Sony is in trouble with devout Hindus.
A former Guantanamo explains why he has become a Muslim.
Wizards in Russia are trying to conjure up a trade union. And more religion-related news…
A row has broken out between a ‘psychic surgeon’ who believes he once cured a man of cancer and a campaigner who says he is a con man.
Gary Mannion says he has been psychic since he was 13 but is furious a website called badpsychics.com ridicules his beliefs.
Witches get more respect than they used to here in the Witch City. That was a recurring theme among about 40 witches, pagans and Wiccans at a city-sponsored forum held Saturday night to educate the public and challenge stereotypes about their religion.
Mediums are fighting new EU rules designed to protect the public from dodgy traders, fearing that honest spiritualists could be targeted.