Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Just when you thought the previous amazing Christian horror film, The Lock In, couldn’t possibly be topped, here come the Cheys. Writer/director Tim Chey and producer Susan Chey are a married couple whose movie, Final: The Rapture, which is in (a couple of) theaters now, was made for “less than 10 million dollars” (note budgetary wiggle room). It was reportedly shot in six countries over five months. In an interview this week with the Orlando Sentinel, the makers explain their cinematic and marketing strategy. Read more
Craig Lamar Davis worked in a Georgia church, but he was far from a saint. In fact, even though Davis knew he was HIV-positive, prosecutors say he had sex with others without disclosing his medical status, knowingly putting their lives in dangers for his own selfish pleasure. On Tuesday, Davis was found guilty in what was only his first trial. He faces another one, with a different victim. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports: Read more
Christian missiologist and Patheos blogger Benjamin Corey spent years of his life slandering gay people. That’s what he says, anyway. I’m not sure I believe him. I met Corey in 2007 or 2008 and we struck up a solid friendship, even though he was a social conservative back then and I was, well, anything but. I once asked him about his opposition to same-sex marriage — a cause I had been actively campaigning in favor of — and I didn’t hear slander from him, or hatred. Back then, Corey supported the notion of civil unions for gays, but not full marriage. He felt that marriage rights were the province of straight people only, because there was a sanctity to marriage that would somehow be tarnished if same-sex couples could wed. I don’t remember asking how he squared the sanctity bit with having broken his vows before God when he got divorced himself. Read more
Russell Romano, a longtime Illinois clergyman who left the active priesthood in 1991, is thought to have sexually abused more than a dozen boys in his heyday. As recently released records show (with the Catholic Church, there are always recently released records that astonish, despite everything we’ve already learned), church officials were perfectly clear about what Romano did. The Chicago Sun-Times recounts how at Quigley Preparatory Seminary, where Romano worked, Rector Rev. John Klein stated in writing in 1985 that he knew his employee “liked the boys.” When he confronted Romano about his habit of kissing and hugging boys, serving them alcohol and showing them pornography, “Russ immediately and without hesitation admitted that these (actions) showed poor judgement and they would stop immediately — that sincerely I should never worry about him doing any of this again.” Read more
