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White Baptist Church Refuses To Marry Black Couple

The First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs, Mississippi refused to marry a Black couple who have attended regularly, because they are Black. The 129-year old Baptist church told Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson just one day before their wedding day that if the pastor, Dr. Stan Weatherford,  married them they would fire him. Pastor Weatherford married the couple in another location.

“The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if [the pastor] went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,” Charles Wilson told reporters, according to David Edwards at The Raw Story:

“He had people in the sanctuary that were pitching a fit about us being a black couple,” Te’Andrea Wilson added. “I didn’t like it at all, because I wasn’t brought up to be racist. I was brought up to love and care for everybody.”

Dr. Stan Weatherford, the church’s pastor, was forced to perform the marriage at another church after he was taken by surprise by his congregation’s outrage.

“This had never been done before here, so it was setting a new precedent, and there are those who reacted to that because of that,” Weatherford said. “I didn’t want to have a controversy within the church, and I didn’t want a controversy to affect the wedding of Charles and Te’ Andrea. I wanted to make sure their wedding day was a special day.”

Church officials said they would hold meetings to decide what to do if another non-white couple wanted to use their facility in the future. They insisted that all races were welcome at the church.

“I blame the First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs, I blame those members who knew and call themselves Christians and didn’t stand up,” Charles Wilson said.

“These are exciting times for Crystal Springs,” the church’s website says.

video at the source

[TW Sexual Abuse] - German priest admits 280 counts of sexual abuse

(BBC) A German Catholic priest has admitted 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys in the past decade, saying he did not think he was doing harm.

Named only as Andreas L, the priest told a court in Braunschweig that he had first abused the nine-year-old son of a widowed woman parishioner.

After being banned by his diocese from making further contact with the boy, he abused two brothers, aged nine and 13.

Thousands of Germans have left the Church over revelations of abuse.

[READ MORE]

This scumbag was also quoted as saying, “It was never my impression that the children did not consent”

Children can’t consent fuckface.

I honestly don’t know how anyone could still be catholic after all the higher ups in the church that have been caught fucking children and all the effort that was made to cover it up. 

Interracial Couples Banned From Kentucky Church

huffingtonpost.com

In a move to “promote greater unity” among its body and the Pike County community it serves, a small Kentucky church voted to ban interracial couples from membership and from participating in certain worship activities, Kentucky.com reports.

Though reminiscent of some Jim Crow-era mandate, the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church actually made the decision earlier this month, following a visit from 24-year-old Stella Harville, daughter of the church’s secretary and clerk, and her 29-year-old fiance, Ticha Chikuni, a native of Zimbabwe.

According to Harville’s father, Dean Harville, Stella brought Chikuni to the church in June where they performed a song for the congregation.

Following the visit, pastor Melvin Thompson told Harville that his daughter and her fiance could not sing at the church again. Thompson later proposed that the church go on record saying that while all people were welcome to attend public worship services there, the church did not condone interracial marriage.

His proposal, which was accepted by a 9-6 vote last week, also suggested that married interracial couples be prohibited from becoming members and used in worship activities, except for funerals.

“It’s not the spirit of the community in any way, shape or form,” said Randy Johnson, president of the Pike County Ministerial Association, according to Kentucky.com.

While Pike County and the surrounding community come to grips with the church’s decision, researchers at Ohio State University and Cornell University say black-white marriages in the United States are soaring, increasing threefold, from 3 percent in 1980 to 10.7 percent in 2008.

[SOURCE]

What year is it again????

USA Today - Christian politics create unholy alliances

By David P. Gushee | usatoday.com

This version of Christian politics is inherently corrupting to Christian faith, ethics and witness. It encourages politicians to take God’s name in vain, and to do so routinely. (That would be a violation of the Ten Commandments, if Christians still cared about such things.) It tempts church leaders to abuse their offices and abandon their core vocations as they entangle themselves with politics. It confuses the message of Christianity with that of the politician of the moment. It damages the moral witness of Christians in culture. It makes it harder for millions to even consider the claims of historic Christian faith. It drives many away from God altogether.

This kind of Christian politics is also corrupting of American politics. When a significant minority of the body politic votes mainly on the basis of what amounts to religious tribalism, it encourages everyone else to do the same thing. But tribal politics is toxic. It has destroyed nations from Yugoslavia to Lebanon. And it does nothing to bring to office leaders with the skills to actually solve our everyday problems. We need effective leaders, not religious symbols.

Christian politics also contributes to a weaker understanding of the purposes and limits of American government. The United States has one of the most brilliantly constructed political systems in the world. But fewer and fewer Americans understand either its structure or the reasons for that structure. Constitutionalism, majority rule with minority rights, checks and balances, federalism, the tripartite diffusion of power — not to mention religious liberty and the separation of church and state — these are treasures, admired and imitated all over the world. But when political allegiance is determined first and foremost by religious litmus tests, these treasures are put at risk.

[FULL STORY]

300,000 babies stolen from their parents - and sold for adoption: by the Catholic church in Spain

By Polly Dunbar | dailymail.co.uk

Up to 300,000 Spanish babies were stolen from their parents and sold for adoption over a period of five decades, a new investigation reveals.

The children were trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns in a widespread practice that began during General Franco’s dictatorship and continued until the early Nineties.

Hundreds of families who had babies taken from Spanish hospitals are now battling for an official government investigation into the scandal.
Several mothers say they were told their first-born children had died during or soon after they gave birth.

[FULL STORY]

Columbus church gets up in arms about “Good without god” billboard on their property, ends up having to pay property taxes

Columbus church must “render unto Caesar”

by: Freedom From Religion Foundation

A decision by Christ Cathedral Church, 3350 Allegheny Ave., Columbus, Ohio to remove a Freedom From Religion Foundation billboard has had expensive consequences for the church.

Shortly after Columbus atheist Dylan Galos’ “Coming Out of the Closet” billboard, stating “I can be good without God,” went up in late June, Rev. Waymon Malone Jr. of Christ Cathedral Church said it had to go, and it was moved to a new location. The church owns the property the billboard company was leasing near its parking lot.

After finding no record the Church paid property taxes for this commercial use of the property, FFRF sent a letter July 7 asking Franklin County Auditor Clarence Mingo II to investigate.

A few days later, FFRF Staff Attorney Patrick Elliott got a phone call from a member of Mingo’s staff. “He said that the billboard property will be taxed. It is approximately one-tenth of an acre that will be taxed at a yearly rate of $185,” said Elliott.

FFRF further inquired in an Aug. 1 letter to Mingo about the church-owned property at 407 Stelzer Road that is directly behind the billboard. It was purchased in 2006 for $550,000 and is receiving a tax exemption. Several private businesses are leasing most of the building.

Teach & Learn Child Care, AMC Realty and AMC Transport, all with listed addresses at 407 Stelzer Road, are headed by Anthony Malone. FFRF does not know how Pastor Malone and Anthony Malone are related.

On Sept. 22, FFRF received confirmation that the property will now be fully taxed in 2011.

After assessing the property value for 2011, the Franklin County Auditor determined the property to be for commercial use and valued at $735,300. In 2010, the property was assessed at $673,700, nearly all of it tax exempt, as it was listed as “a place of worship.” The Church failed to pay about $1,645 due for 2010 (for a small portion then considered commercial), and now owes $1,900 including penalties. Commercial property taxes are expected to be more than $18,000. To date, the church has not submitted a new application for exemption and would need to provide evidence of exempt use.

“Apparently this church doesn’t heed the scriptural advice in Matthew 22:21 ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,’ ” noted FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.

“Has this church, that was so offended that a grad student could be ‘good without God,’ been good with God?”

On Aug. 5, Christ Cathedral Church’s Facebook page warned that “Satan and his imps” were going after them, “but I think they’ve been their own worst enemy,” said Gaylor.

[SOURCE]

Why Are Christians Leaving the Church? Turns Out It’s the Churches’ Fault

by Hemant Mehta The Friendly Atheist

David Kinnaman, the president of the Barna Group (a Christian-focused polling organization), just released his newest book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith.

So why are Christians — real, churchgoing Christians — leaving the faith later in life?

No single reason dominated the break-up between church and young adults. Instead, a variety of reasons emerged. Overall, the research uncovered six significant themes why nearly three out of every five young Christians (59%) disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15.

You can see Kinnaman’s six reasons here.

In short…

1. The Church is too insular — They tell you everything outside the church is bad and wrong… even though young people know that’s not the case.
2. Church isn’t important, relevant, or interesting to the younger generation.
3. Christians are too anti-science.
4. Christians are sex-negative, wrongly pushing abstinence-only education and avoiding frank discussions about sex.
5. Christianity is too “exclusive” — you’re either one of them or you’re the enemy.
6. Christians are hostile to those who doubt any part of the faith.

I have no reason to doubt Kinnaman’s findings — and keep in mind these are only the top six reasons, not all the reasons. I’ll admit to being surprised that “I just stopped believing what they preached” and “I was ashamed of the church’s stance on homosexuality” didn’t make the cut.

Here’s the takeaway from the findings, though: Christians aren’t leaving the faith because people like us are pulling them away from it. They’re leaving the faith because the Church is pushing them away.

Even if atheists never wrote another book or blog post, young people will continue to fall away from Christianity. We can always help the process move faster, though, by constantly discussing/debating these issues in our communities, challenging the lies they tell, pointing out their hypocrisy and intolerance at every opportunity, and giving brand new atheists a community to join when they leave their Christian groups.

The Church is doing the bulk of our work for us. But there’s no reason we can’t help them out.

[SOURCE]