A BBC reporter looks into the healing power of prayer and is oddly unimpressed. “Can I put my hand on your face?”, asks Alun Leppitt. Alun is the pastor of a Pentecostal church in Southampton. He’s a burly man who works as a video editor to pay the bills, but his passion is curing people through the power of prayer. I don’t have much wrong with me apart from a nagging mouth ulcer, but he’s willing to give it a go. “We command this mouth ulcer to go, in the name of Jesus,” he says, palm on my cheek. “We command any pain, infection or trauma to go.” I don’t like to disappoint Alun, but I can’t feel any difference. He has two more attempts but there’s no change. Read more
Brandon Fibbs has a beautiful post at On Faith about how Carl Sagan took his faith away and replaced it with something so much better: Read more
Pastor Bobby Davis was loyal to his Miracle Faith World Outreach Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which he’d founded and where he’d served for 47 years. A certified marriage therapist, David had been married for 50. Last Sunday, he unburdened himself, telling his flock that he had committed infidelity. Shouting ensued, so loud that it could be heard outside the church. Then, Davis collapsed, never to wake up. A congregation loudly confronted its long-time pastor about his alleged infidelity during a service — and in the midst of their yelling the pastor dropped dead. Read more
How often should your professional life and your personal faith overlap? Maybe you think the two should never intersect at all. Maybe you think there’s some space where the two could meet. Either way, I hope we can all agree that Birmingham, Alabama Police Chief A. C. Roper has crossed the line many times over. Roper has been a law enforcement agent for nearly three decades and he’s held the top post for seven years. At the same time, he’s been working on a side project called Prayer Force United, “an organization of pastors, city leaders and intercessors from local churches providing a covering of prayer over the city of Birmingham.” That alone wouldn’t be a problem. You can be a government official who also serves as a religious leader on the side. The problem is that Roper can’t tell the difference between the two worlds and he makes it sound like they’re the same organization. Read more
In January, the Sudbury Transit Authority (in Ontario, Canada) approved a month-long ad campaign for the Sudbury branch of the Centre for Inquiry with the message “Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone!” It’s a simple, non-offensive statement that basically amounts to we exist! And it worked: Not only did the group’s physical membership grow, the number of “Likes” on their Facebook page doubled too. So the group wanted to bring it back to headquarters to celebrate and take some pictures with it before using it in a second campaign this spring: … they wanted to keep the ad as a piece of history, marking the first time a secular group in Northern Ontario advertised itself. “As far as I know, it’s only the second time in Canada,” [group leader Spencer] Lucas said. “So it was a rare thing, and for Sudbury it was a first. So yeah, it was a pretty big deal to us. “A lot of our members were excited about it, and would have gotten a real kick to see the sign in person, since most didn’t get to see it on the bus, other than in photos.” Lucas went to the Transit Authority to pick up the ad, but he wasn’t expecting to hear this: Read more
Ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students in Israel have been exempt from serving in the country’s military since the nation’s founding. Military service is mandatory for both the irreligious and the moderately devout; but ultra-Orthodox Jews claim that when their children study the scriptures, they’re doing more important work for the country’s safety than those who serve as Hamas fodder. “Let the other families sacrifice their children instead,” has been the thinking in these circles. “Ours are just too godly.” But after years of debates and legislative wrangling, the free ride is over, reports the Huffington Post: Read more
In Cedar Rapids, a fire truck bearing a religious-y image and the words of Psalm 23 may have to undergo a slight renovation: Read more
A 700 Club viewer named Michele revealed that soon after she’d watched a horror film, she got into a traffic accident. And she wondered: “Did watching a creepy movie cause a curse, or the Lord’s protection to be lifted from me? Did I grieve the Holy Spirit?” Host Pat Robertson wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what had happened to Michele, he said. Read more
Yesterday, the U.S. House voted overwhelmingly in favor of H.R. 1814 (the “Equitable Access to Care and Health Act”), a truly nefarious bill that would not allow anyone claiming a religious justification to entirely opt out of compliance with the Affordable Care Act. Whatever you think of “Obamacare,” you have to have your hackles raised by the idea that someone can entirely avoid obeying the law of the land simply by claiming it’s against some tenet of his particular religion. As anti-“faith healing” activist Rita Swan warns us, this bill is not just popular among your standard conservative religionists, but particularly among Christian Scientists and other medicine-eschewing faiths who want carte blanche to remove themselves — and thereby their children — from science-based medicine and treatment. And of course that affects everyone. If more and more people leave the insurance system, they put more of a burden on the health care system as a whole when they face emergencies or seek care without the safety net of insurance, making all of our costs go up. Read more
Here’s how I know I’m getting old: I remember “The Boondocks” when it was still in newspapers. Aaron McGruder, the creator of the hilarious political/racial comic strip and cartoon series, will soon launch his latest project on Adult Swim and it looks like it should be pretty uncontroversial: Read more
