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Witch Hunter Conference Slated For Harvard

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

As reported today on MSNBC, a Wiccan TSA employee accused of witchcraft has been fired. As described below, listed apostles of a global evangelical movement that claims to fight witchcraft will, on April 1-2, be holding a conference at Harvard University.

While Salem has garnered all the attention, the real peak of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s witch craze was in what is now North Andover, where two dogs were tried and executed for witchcraft. It’s been a few years now since witch hunting was in vogue in Massachusetts, but the upcoming Social Transformation Conference to be held at Harvard this April 1-2 could help rekindle the practice. Footage from a November 2009 evangelical conference held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village near Honolulu shows scheduled Social Transformation Conference speaker Dr. Pat Francis up onstage, her voice cracking with intensity, shouting out “In the name of Jesus we break the power, of witchcraft power, every witchcraft power, we drive you out!”

As documented in my new 14 and 1/2 minute video, four of the speakers slated for the “Social Transformation” conference, to be held at the Harvard Northwest Science building, promote the idea that witchcraft is a pressing contemporary societal concern. Three of those also claim that entire family lines can be collectively cursed because of ancestral involvement in idolatry and witchcraft.

Witch Hunters To Hold Harvard Conference

The video demonstrates that these four conference speakers are “apostles” in a global evangelical network whose leaders appear bent on restoring a Pre-Enlightenment worldview in which believers and society are beset by demons including succubi and incubi, menaced by the conjoined threats of apostasy and idolatry, and plagued by “generational curses”–these apostles represent a Christian supremacist movement whose leaders encourage believers to cleanse the Earth of infidels and competing belief systems.

Controversy over the conference started with two pieces by Michael Jones of Change.org and Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out. Both organizations are committed to fighting for gay rights, and many of the speakers scheduled for the upcoming conference are tied to antigay organizing and rhetoric. As Jones’ story documented, some of the featured speakers slated for the conference, such as Bill Hamon, seem to advocate imposing the death penalty for homosexuality.

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Youth Pastor Had Sex With Teens To ‘Help Them Gain Sexual Purity’

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

“When they would ejaculate, they would be getting rid of the evil thoughts in their mind”

A former Council Bluffs youth pastor allegedly told the teens he is accused of sexually exploiting that he was trying to help them gain “sexual purity in the eyes of God.”

Brent Girouex, 31, told Council Bluffs police detectives in February that starting in 2007 he had sexual contact with four young men who he knew while he was a youth pastor for Victory Fellowship Church.

Pottawattamie County Attorney Matt Wilber said the number has risen since Girouex first talked with police on Feb. 16. Now, Wilber said there are at least eight people who have come forward.

Girouex was arrested on 60 counts of suspicion of sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist earlier this month and has been released on a $30,000 bond. He is due back in court on April 21.

The Rev. Lonnie Parton of Victory Fellowship Church said church leaders were stunned when four young men came forward with allegations against Girouex in February.

Once Parton learned of the allegations, he confronted Girouex and told him he needed to go to the police and make a confession. He did so on Feb. 16.

Court documents indicated Girouex told investigators the most sexual contact he had was with one teen over a four-year period, starting when the boy was 14 years old. Girouex speculated that he had “mutual” sexual contact with the teen between “25 and 50 times” over the four-year period.

When investigators spoke to the teen, who is now an adult, he told them the number was between 50 and 100 times.

Girouex allegedly said as a youth pastor he felt it was his duty “to help (the teen) with homosexual urges by praying while he had sexual contact with him.”

Several additional victims also spoke with detectives.

At least three others – who were teenagers when the incidents occurred – told investigators the events happened at Girouex’s home. All three said they were at the house to be helped with “sexual purity.”

Another man said he was 23 years old and having problems with his wife when Girouex wanted to “help him with his issues.” The man alleged Girouex pulled down his pants and began to touch his genitals.

Yet another man said that over a five-week period when he was 20 years old, Girouex slowly evolved sexually contacting him from touching him over his clothes to oral sex.

Court documents stated Girouex said during all of the incidents, it was only about “helping the victims gain sexual purity.”

“When they would ejaculate, they would be getting rid of the evil thoughts in their mind,” he allegedly told detectives.

While there are at least eight people who have come forward, Wilber said investigators are still following leads to see if there are more victims in the case.

Source: Southwest Iowa News

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British Supermarkets To Sell Christian-Themed Easter Eggs

Friday, February 18th, 2011

Church leaders have secured a small victory in their fight against secularism and the marginalisation of Christianity after major supermarkets agreed to stock the UK’s first and only Fairtrade charityEaster egg to mention Jesus on the box.

Morrisons, Waitrose, Co-op and Booths are to stock a limited supply of the Real Easter Egg, while some independent shops and cathedrals are also selling it.

However the Christian-themed eggs will not be found in the aisles of Britain’s three biggest supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda – which have a combined market share of just over 63%.

The Meaningful Chocolate Company says it developed the product with the help of bishops, schools and parents. It adds that of the 80m Easter eggs sold every year, the Real Easter Egg is the only one that explains the Christian understanding of the Easter festival on the box.

The packaging tells customers: “Easter is all about cute bunnies, fluffy chicks and eating too much chocolate, right? Well, not quite. We happen to think it’s a bit more meaningful than that. That’s because billions of people all over the world believe that Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, then rose again three days later … on Easter Sunday. Actually, many believe that chocolate eggs represent the boulder that sealed his tomb.”

The company has received more than 70,000 orders since the egg was launched in September 2010 and says it has exhausted its supplies of direct mail order eggs.

The Right Rev Nigel McCulloch, bishop of Manchester, welcomed the appearance of The Real Easter Egg on the high street. “It is great news that for the first time people will have the chance of buying an Easter egg from a shop that explains the significance of the festival on the box.

“I believe there will be widespread support for the product from the faith community with many others likely to be interested.”

Two charities benefit from the sale of the £3.99 egg. Traidcraft Exchange receives 30p from every egg sold and Baby Lifeline will receive 10% of the Real Easter Egg net profits.

Source: The Guardian

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How Numerology Ruined Myanmar’s Economy

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

If you have been following the news, you no doubt would have heard by now of Cyclone Nargis hitting Myanmar (also known as Burma) and the ruling military junta’s piss-poor disaster relief initiatives that makes FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina look like a shining moment in the Bush Administration’s history. It is estimated as of today that 155,000 people are dead and that number is certain to rise given the complete lack of food or medical aid and the completely unwillingness of the government to aid its own people. Apparently the regime is more concerned that foreign journalists and aid workers might report back the horrors of living in one of the least-developed countries in the world under a retrograde military regime; The callousness with which the regime is handling the situation hearkens back to how the 2007 and 1988 pro-democracy protests were brutally suppressed and is very different from China’s transparent and rapid response to it’s own major disaster in the Beichuan region.

But these instances do not constitute the only time the military junta has screwed over its own people. Of all the megalomaniacs, it is perhaps only General Ne Win and his successors who relied heavily on astrology and other superstition to chart out national policy…

A relatively harmless example of this is the practice of yadaya – a practice loosely resembling voodoo where a person essentially dresses up and impersonates an enemy to “steal” his or her powers. Thus on numerous occasions Burma’s generals have been known to dress up in drag as pro-democracy advocate and elected leader of the country Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, this story takes an ugly turn as, when told by his astrologer and numerologist that his lucky number was 9 and that he would live to be 90 if he “surrounded himself” with such auspicious digits, General Ne Win appeared before his country in 1987 and informed them that most of their money was now worthless. New money would be issued… not on the metric scale but rather in 45 and 90 kyat bills – since (for example) 45 is a product of and its digits add up to 9.

The result to the country was catastrophic. While 5 and 10 kyats remained legal tender, the now-invalid 50 and 100 kyats that were the mainstay of most of the middle class’s savings in the nation resulted in a collapse in purchasing power and Burma being named least developed nation in 1987. Perhaps the saddest part of the story is that Ne Win’s astrologer was right – the good general lived to be 91 years of age.

Posted in Hocus Pocus, Uncatagorized | No Responses »

The Destruction OF Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury Being Blamed On Anti-Christians

Friday, December 10th, 2010

Police tape surrounds the vandalised Holy Thorn tree on Wearyall Hill in Glastonbury as stunned locals look on. The branches were cut off overnight and a police investigation has been launched.

Standing proudly on the side of an English hill, its religious roots go back 2,000 years. But a single night of vandalism has left an ancient site of pilgrimage in splinters.

The Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury has been chopped down in what is being seen by some as a deliberately anti-Christian act.

A feature of the skyline surrounding the Somerset town, the tree has been visited by thousands retracing the steps said to have been taken by Joseph of Arimathea, who some say was Jesus’ great uncle.

According to legend, Saint Joseph travelled to the spot after Christ was crucified, taking with him the Holy Grail of Arthurian folklore.

He is said to have stuck his wooden staff – which had belonged to Jesus – into the ground on Wearyall Hill before he went to sleep. When he awoke it had sprouted into a thorn tree, which became a natural shrine for Christians across Europe.

To add to its sacred status, the tree ‘miraculously’ flowered twice a year – once at Christmas and once at Easter. It survived for hundreds of years before it was chopped down by puritans in the Civil War, but secret cuttings of the original were taken and planted around the town.

The tree in all its glory before it was hacked apart. Legend says it sprang from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, the man who helped Jesus of the cross.

It is from one of the new plants that a replacement tree was planted in the original spot over 50 years ago.

Yesterday residents of Glastonbury wept as they surveyed the damage done to the tree on Wednesday night. Katherine Gorbing, curator of the town’s abbey, said: ‘The mindless vandals who have hacked down this tree have struck at the heart of Christianity.

‘It is the most significant of all the trees planted here and can be linked back to the origins of Christianity.

‘When I arrived at the Abbey this morning you could look over to the hill and see it was not there.

‘It’s a great shock to everyone in Glastonbury – the landscape of the town has changed overnight.’

Every winter a sprig of thorns from one of the town’s trees is sent to the Queen to be used as a table decoration on Christmas Day.

Glastonbury mayor John Coles, 66, took part in the annual cutting ceremony last week using the tree at St John’s Church.

Yesterday he recalled watching a tree being planted on Wearyall Hill in 1951 for the Festival of Britain. Although that specimen died, it was replaced the following year and stood firm until this week. Mr Coles said: ‘It’s the saddest thing I’ve seen in Glastonbury. Some of the main trunk is there but the branches have been sawn away. I am absolutely lost for words.’

Experts had verified that the tree – known as the Crategus Monogyna Bi Flora – originated from the Middle East.

Avon and Somerset police have begun an investigation but because there was no tree preservation order on the Holy Thorn, it means the vandals are unlikely to be prosecuted. The land on which the Holy Thorn stood is owned by Edward James, who was arrested this week in connection with an investigation into failed currency exchange firm Crown Currency Exchange, of which he is a director.

According to the administrator’s report, Crown Currency collapsed owing £16million with little more than £3million in the bank. Last night there was speculation that the attack on the Holy Thorn may have been part of a vendetta against him.
Source: Daily Mail

BROUGHT TO LIFE BY JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA, CHOPPED DOWN BY CROMWELL’S ROUNDHEADS, REBORN THANKS TO LOCALS

Christian legend dictates that Jesus’s great uncle, Joseph of Arimathea (pictured below) came to Britain after the crucifixion 2,000 years ago bearing the Holy Grail – the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper.

He visited Glastonbury and thrust his staff into Wearyall Hill, just below the Tor, planting a seed for the original thorn tree.

Roundheads felled the tree during the English Civil War, when forces led by Oliver Cromwell (pictured) waged a vicious battle against the Crown.

However, locals salvaged the roots of the original tree, hiding it in secret locations around Glastonbury.

It was then replanted on the hill in 1951. Other cuttings were also grown and placed around the town – including its famous Glastonbury Abbey. Joseph of Arimathea was, according to the Gospels, the man who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus' Crucifixion.

Experts had verified that the tree – known as the Crategus Monogyna Bi Flora – originated from the Middle East.

A sprig of holy thorns was taken from the Thorn tree by Glastonbury’s St Johns Church on Wednesday and sent to the Queen

The 100-year-old tradition will see the thorns sit on Her Majesty’s dinner table on Christmas Day

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Canadians Lying About How Much They Go To Church

Sunday, December 5th, 2010

With a prime church-going holiday just around the corner, new research reveals Canadians are second only to Americans in overstating how often they go to church.

The University of Michigan study looked at more than 400 surveys done over 30 years and covering 750,000 people from 14 countries, including Canada, the United States, Britain and France.

It found that Europeans report their religious attendance more or less accurately, but there’s a big gap between what Canadians and Americans say and what they do.

Philip Brenner, a research fellow at the university’s Institute for Social Research, compared the proportion of people in each country who responded to surveys by saying they attended religious services regularly — two to three times a month — with time-use diaries that ask people to record everything they do on a given day.

When people are asked a direct question about religious behaviour, they’re more likely to give what they see as a desirable answer, Brenner says. But when they’re simply asked to record their daily activities, it produces a more accurate portrait because nothing is singled out.

“It’s not that the respondent is intentionally misrepresenting their behaviour, but rather they’re interpreting the question in a pragmatic way,” he says. In the U.S. over the past three decades, 35 to 45 per cent of people said they attended religious services regularly, but time-use information reveals that about 24 per cent is a more accurate figure.

In Canada, the percentage of people who said they worshipped regularly fell from 41 per cent in 1974 to 25 per cent by 2005, but over that time period, the percentage who actually attended religious services ranged from about 22 per cent in 1974 to 10 per cent in 2005.

In Europe, the biggest gaps between people’s reported and actual religious attendance are found in predominantly Catholic countries. But even in Ireland — where reported church attendance tumbled from 90 per cent in the 1970s and ’80s to about 46 per cent in 2006 — the gap was only about four to eight percentage points.

Reginald Bibby, a sociologist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, says once people develop a “churched” identity, it tends to stick and they answer questions about their religious behaviour based not just on what they actually do but on what they try to do and think they ought to do.

“The fact the level of exaggerated attendance in Canada remains fairly high points to the reality that significant numbers of people here — unlike the situation in much of Protestant Europe — remain open to the possibility of greater involvement in religious groups,” he says.

His research on Canada’s baby boomers and millennial generation reveals half of all teenagers are willing to acknowledge “never” attending worship services, compared to one in four adults — which demonstrates how ideas about religious attendance are changing, he says.

Source: Vancouver_Sun

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24% Of Republicans Think Obama ‘May Be The Antichrist’

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Birthers, deathers, now, apparently, there are Antichristers on the Obama warpath.

The Daily Beast’s John Avlon writes, “On the heels of health care, a new Harris poll reveals Republican attitudes about Obama: Two-thirds think he’s a socialist, 57 percent a Muslim—and 24 percent say ‘he may be the Antichrist.’”

Avlon, author of the book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, offers the poll as proof that “Obama Derangement Syndrome—pathological hatred of the president posing as patriotism—has infected the Republican Party.”

57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president” 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did” Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama “may be the Antichrist.” These numbers all come from a brand-new Louis Harris poll, inspired in part by my new book Wingnuts. It demonstrates the cost of the campaign of fear and hate that has been pumped up in the service of hyper-partisanship over the past 15 months. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing the United States in the process. What might be good for ratings is bad for the country.

The poll, which surveyed 2,230 people right at the height of the health-care reform debate, also clearly shows that education is a barrier to extremism. Respondents without a college education are vastly more likely to believe such claims, while Americans with college degrees or better are less easily duped. It’s a reminder of what the 19th-century educator Horace Mann once too-loftily said: “Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.”

Alibi.com blogger Erin McCullough writes, “Are you a Republican who is mostly non-crazy? (Leaving the belief that most taxes are bad aside.) Then, hey: Um, tell your fellow party members to stop being so batshit.”

The blogger adds,

It’s hard for Democrats to want to make concessions with sane Republicans (Olympia Snowe, and, hold on … I’ll get back to you) when dingholes like Texas Rep. Neugebauer (the latest in what’s becoming a trend of grown men who yell inappropriate things at work, which I can tell you from experience is not a luxury most of us have. His shout; “baby killer”) stinking up the wings.

Anyway. Craziness. There were plenty of people spouting crazy theories about Bush Jr. during his presidency, but most of those people were sitting outside of Winnings coffee, not in Congress. Sigh.

The poll seems to reveal that many Republicans share beliefs with the radical Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. The church run by Fred Phelps has been roundly criticized for picketing funerals of troops killed in the war on terror.

AOL News recently noted,

Members of the church, most of them relatives of founder Fred Phelps, have shown up at dozens of military memorial services in recent years, bearing signs with slogans like “God Hates the USA” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”

The tiny sect holds that soldiers’ deaths are God’s way of punishing America for its tolerance of homosexuals. The church’s Web site also refers to President Barack Obama as the “Antichrist Bloody Beast” and calls Israel a “savage hypocritical nation of filthy sinners.”

Source: Rawstory.com

Posted in Stranger than Fiction, Uncatagorized | No Responses »

Religions Family Tree

Monday, February 15th, 2010

This video purports to show which religions branched from which. Which religion begot which and all that. (Much more impressive when watched full-screen.)

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