Robert Morris, of Greenway church in Dallas, accused of sexual abuse of girl in 1980s, beginning when she was 12
A Texas evangelical pastor and former spiritual adviser to Donald Trump has confessed to sexually assaulting a young girl in his past.
Robert Morris, a founding pastor of the Dallas-based Gateway megachurch, was accused by an Oklahoma woman of sexual abuse in the 1980s, beginning when she was 12 and continuing until the age of 16.
Made possible by an endowment offered through the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Sikivu Hutchinson has become "the first Black woman to teach a course on African American humanism," which was held at Pitzer College.
The Pitzer College Secular Studies program was founded in 2011 by sociology professor Phil Zuckerman. It offers a rare space in higher education dedicated to the academic study of nonreligion.
In an interview published at Psychology Today, Hutchinson describes the motivating force behind her secular work:
Because people of color are disproportionately poor, segregated, demonized as racial others, over-incarcerated and denied equitable access to education we don't have the luxury and the privilege to be secular or pursue a secularist agenda that isn't steeped in economic and social justice.
African American Humanism deals with issues like police brutality, systemic racism, discrimination in healthcare, and expanding access to healthcare, contraceptives, and safe-sex awareness, which all disproportionately affect Black women.
When identifying ways different types of people react to experiences, it is important to recognize the combined identity one experiences when less 'socially acceptable' identities overlap, creating an identity that affects one's experience differently than someone without the same overlapping identities.
Our world is in a state of rapid decline that suggests a potential end to our society, as well as an end to the American empire as it has stood for the last couple of centuries. As the individuals who are inheriting the crumbled pieces of humanity, it is critical that we sustain and rebuild our society so that it is one where all humans are recognized and treated as such. Hopefully, one day we will reach a point, both within the Black community, and throughout our society, where it is not demonized to be human in any form. I believe African American Humanist thought, and classes that provide a platform for educating youth about it, will be the groundwork and guiding force for that transition.
The myth that irreligiosity is always synonymous with immorality not only limits the space to be non-religious but is also inaccurate when you put history under a microscope and unearth the fact that Black freethinkers have long aligned themselves with the pursuit of freedom for the socioeconomically disenfranchised.
Jordanians died in Saudi Arabia after suffering heatstroke, said officials, with temperatures reaching 47C in Mecca
At least 14 Jordanian pilgrims have died while on the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia as temperatures soar in the kingdom.
Jordan’s foreign ministry said “14 Jordanian pilgrims died and 17 others were missing” during the performance of hajj rituals. It said its nationals had died “after suffering sun stroke due to the extreme heatwave” and that it had coordinated with Saudi authorities to bury the dead in Saudi Arabia, or transfer them to Jordan.
In our technological age people are often caught between two worlds, forced to choose between what is pleasurable and what is beyond pleasurable. Activity A may be a genuinely enjoyable activity, but as an ordinary pleasure it comes with certain discomforts and limitations. Activity B, on the other hand, promises to move past those limitations, satiating our desire for maximal pleasure. Who wouldn't want to choose Activity B, then, when the option is presented so readily? from The Rise of Hyperpleasures by Samuel C. Heard (Mere Orthodoxy; ungated)
Pitching his creed to a roomful of comic stars, the pontiff pronounced that it is good to laugh at God. In which case, he may enjoy these
A hundred top comedians are generally considered a tough crowd, but Pope Francis had them rolling in the aisles at the Vatican on Friday, with jovial praise for their profession.
More than 100 comics from around the world including Jimmy Fallon and Chris Rock visited the pontiff on Friday
Pope Francis said that laughing at God “is not blasphemy” as he met more than 100 comedians from around the world at the Vatican, encouraging them to use their powerful gift of humour to spread laughter “in the midst of so much gloomy news”.
The pontiff, himself prone to the odd quip, invited comedians including Jimmy Fallon, Chris Rock, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Stephen Merchant to the audience at the Apostolic Palace on Friday as part of his attempt to engage with contemporary culture.
In the Ukrainian Carpathians the Provody – a communal commemoration of the dead – takes on a new dimension during the war, to become a way of working through group mourning
The afternoon sun falls on a small wooden hut in a green orchard. People are hanging around. Some enter the yard, others leave the house. They talk and move quietly; mourning is going on. Inside lies an open, decorated coffin containing the body of an old woman. In the corner, a cantor reads psalms in a monotone. The others pray in silence. The house is visited by anyone who knew Hanna Tomashchuk. Whole families, along with children, pay their respects. The presence of the dead body does not embarrass anyone.
Kryvoryvnia residents celebrate the holidays in traditional Hutsul costumes during the Easter blessing of food.
Pontiff says speaking should be limited to eight minutes because ‘attention is lost’
Priests should keep their homilies short and speak for a maximum of eight minutes to prevent members of the congregation from nodding off, Pope Francis has said.
The homily, or message delivered during a church service, “must be short: an image, a thought, a feeling”, the pope said during his weekly audience on Wednesday.
Reverend James Lawson, an architect of the US Civil Rights Movement, whom Dr. King called "the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world," has died. Lawson went to prison for refusing the draft during the Korean War, and upon release he went to study with Gandhi, only to be called home to the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement by Dr. King. He led lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville that led to his expulsion from Vanderbilt University, helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, mentored the Freedom Riders in nonviolence and strategy, and was a leader in the 1968 sanitation workers' strike in Memphis (he is credited with the famous "I AM A MAN" slogan) where Dr. King was assassinated. He befriended and ministered to Dr. King's assassin, James Earl Ray. In his later years Rev. Lawson was the pastor at Holman United Methodist in Los Angeles, and led weekly nonviolence clinics there long after his retirement. His project was the civil rights of all people, and he advocated until the end for the rights of all people regardless of race, for the rights of workers, for LGBTQ people, and for reproductive rights.
One story that comes up over and over again in interviews with Lawson is this one, in a version taken from the Washington Post article about his death:
Rev. Lawson related to Halberstam an experience at age 10 that he said set him on the path to Gandhian pacifism. On an errand for his mother, he was crossing a street when a White child, roughly 5 years old and seated alone in a parked car, yelled a racial epithet at him. Rev. Lawson reached through the car window and slapped the child hard across the face. He then went home and proudly recounted the story to his mother.
"What good did that do, Jimmy?" she asked, her back to him as she cooked. "We all love you, Jimmy, and God loves you, and we all believe in you and how good and intelligent you are. ... With all that love, what harm does that stupid insult do? It's nothing, Jimmy, it's empty. Just ignorant words from an ignorant child who is gone from your life the moment it was said."
Some more links:
His Wiki page.James Lawson, towering Civil Rights activist and pioneer in nonviolent protest, dies at 95, The Tenneseean, June 10, 2024"When all kinds of people in the United States become human, the people who have been mistreating them as less than human then are fearful," Lawson said. "That's the issue of racism in the United States, sexism in the United States, violence in the United States."Nonviolence Is Power: A Conversation with Rev. James Lawson, The Beatitudes Center, 2022In my own thinking, Christianity as the most powerful religion in the world must break with the use of that power which has created so much havoc, including the conquest of nations, and telling other people around the world that their culture, their religion, is wrong and they must be baptized. We have a lot of baptized people in the United States who are deeply enmeshed in the culture of sexism, racism, violence and what I call "plantation capitalism." As I read and reread the Gospels about Jesus, I know full well that Christianity has to undergo a basic revolutionary change.James Lawson: Reflections on Life, Nonviolence, Civil Rights, MLK, United Methodist Church website, 2017"Our relationship and friendship is what brought [King] to Memphis in 1968 to the sanitation strike. I saw him twice on April the 4th, the day he was assassinated. What was left unsaid on that day, perhaps, might have been how much I appreciated his life and his leadership and to the extent to which I understood that to be indeed a carrying of the Cross that very few people recognized or understood."Organizing Principles: An Interview with Rev. James Lawson, Capital and Main, 2016Asked whether our nation's growing ethnic and racial diversity brings him hope for a better world, Rev. Lawson said, "The U.S. could be a bridge nation for the people of the earth, a terribly important model, if we could eliminate poverty, illiteracy, childhood neglect, etc. The U.S. could be an illustration that human history has never had — [a truly diverse people thriving together]. If we can do it, others can too."An Interview with Rev. James Lawson, The Believer, 2013.I began working in Los Angeles with Local 11 – the Restaurant and Hotel Workers Union – with nonviolence workshops twenty-five years ago. First I wanted to help people develop the character and the courage to organize. The workers were heavily intimidated and harassed on the work scene so that they were not willing to talk about their work pain, their wages. We found a major barrier in their fears, frustrations, and complicated acquiescence. Some of that produced anger in them, some of it also produced abuse in the family. But what we decided to do was to work on one-on-one activities—and I called it evangelism. One-on-one. We taught going to the worker in his community, in his home, and not doing this once, but doing it systematically, maybe once a week, for as long as it took. The organizer was to be generous and kindly throughout, use no harsh language and approach the person with compassion and love. Do not concentrate on getting the person to join a union. Concentrate on helping the worker talk about his situation on the job, in the family, in the community. Get to the point where the worker is talking about his fear, his frustrations, his pain. What I had found in my ministry–and I did not really fully understand it at the time and I don't fully understand it now– but what that did was ignite a spark in the worker. Then, with the organizer, it meant beginning to connect with other workers and beginning to realize that organizing with them is the key to changing his scenery. That represents nonviolence: helping this harassed person re-find his basic humanity and talk about it. This approach came directly from my understanding of nonviolence and my experiences in the 50's and 60's.
Destroyed artefacts in St Anne’s Anglican church include unique paintings by Group of Seven art collective
An early morning fire at a Toronto church has destroyed both a historic site and rare paintings by an acclaimed group of Canadian artists, leaving the city reeling from a “heartbreaking” loss.
Fire crews responded on Sunday to a blaze engulfing St Anne’s Anglican church, a national historic site in the city’s Little Portugal neighbourhood.
Based on the experiences of the Smallbone family who travelled to Tennesse in the 90s, this is so sugary it should come with a warning for diabetics
Given the current attitudes in what is now largely Republican Tennessee where this film is set, it’s somewhat surprising to see such a sympathetic depiction of the travails of a family of economic migrants from the southern hemisphere who come to America seeking their fortune. Gullibly believing that the offer of a job is real and facing economic hardship in his homeland, the somewhat deluded father hauls his wife and six children (seven if you count the one the wife is carrying), across the border where they only just escape scrutiny from suspicious border guards. When the promised job falls through, the parents are compelled to put the underage children to menial yard work and cleaning jobs so that they have enough to pay for basics such as food, beds and – eventually – petrol for a car given to them by a member of their church. Because they’ve overstayed their visas, they can only take cash-only employment, and they must rely on further charity to pay the exorbitant medical bills when the mother gives birth. The father refuses to return home, even when his family down south offers to foot the travel costs and the mother, home schooling the kids, persuades the children to believe it’s God’s will they stay where they are.
Of course, what makes this film different from scores of other dramas about migrant suffering, most of which end in tragedy, is that the family at the story’s heart are white Christian Australians. And given this is produced by a faith-based production company and directed by one of the family themselves, everything comes up roses in this supposedly true story, including a Christian-country-gospel recording career. The father, David Smallbone, is played by one of his sons Joel (who himself is played by young actor Diesel La Torraca); by the time the happy ending rolls round he’s learned to check his pride, thanks to a firm talking-to from his wife, Helen (Daisy Betts), the always smiling, perpetually upbeat, unsung hero of the title. The whole shebang is so sugary it should come with a warning for diabetics.
Ahead of the election in India, the Guardian’s video team travelled through the country to explore how fake news and censorship might shape the outcome.
Almost one billion people are registered to vote. The country's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been in power for more than 10 years, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is seeking a third term.
But critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.
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