Christianity - Page 29

A pair of migrants were arrested this week after allegedly breaking into a Christian chapel on the Greek island of Chios and looting it for money and sacred objects.

Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Ministry says it is setting up “a new museum” to house the Hagia Sophia’s “portable icons and Holy relics” indicating that the former cathedral’s Christian relics and iconography will be removed from the site, the Greek City Times reported Friday.

Black voters view former Vice President Joe Biden as central to political and social problems they perceive, said Rev. Darrell Scott.

Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) announced in a Tuesday statement that it would cover up images of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ in the Hagia Sophia, one of the holiest sites in Christianity, now that it has been converted into a mosque.

The ancient cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul – the former seat of eastern Christianity – could now be dedicated to use as a mosque after Turkey’s high court on Friday ruled its conversion into a museum in 1934 was unlawful.

Pandemic lockdowns and leftist-drive riots offer a vision of socialism under a Joe Biden presidency, said MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

The Church of England is “too white” while “Jesus was a black man”, according to the new Archbishop of York.

A Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) has sharply criticised Scotland’s left-separatist devolved government for allowing pubs to open ahead of places of worship as the country emerges from its coronavirus lockdown.

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas has come out against the proposal from Turkey to convert Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, saying such a move would strain relations between Christians and Turkey.

The government of Turkey issued a statement Wednesday saying Ankara was “shocked” at a statement from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque.

Hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition to demand the blocking of the upcoming film Habit in which Paris Jackson reportedly plays the role of a “lesbian Jesus.”

The Romanian government has passed a law declaring August 16 the “National Day of Awareness of Violence Against Christians.”

St. Albans Cathedral has said that in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, it will install a take on Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper that reimagines Jesus Christ as a black man above its altarpiece.

Pope Francis told the faithful Monday that Christians should avoid criticizing both civil and religious leaders because such complaints “change nothing” but instead create divisions in the community.

The Archbishop of Canterbury wants us to rethink the Western notion that Jesus was white and is wondering whether to remove monuments and memorials in Church of England buildings lest they offend someone.

A mosaic of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus erected to the memory of Polish soldiers who helped to liberate a Dutch city from the Germans has been vandalised with Black Lives Matter graffiti.

The city of Salinas, California, is forcing an evangelical Christian church to sell its downtown property, saying it does not fit in with the new look of the town.

A group of 50 Conservative MPs has forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government to back down from a proposal to extend Sunday trading hours, with the rebels saying it was essential to maintain the “common day of rest”.

The Guardian has promoted a petition calling for British honours depicting the victory of St Michael the Archangel over Satan to be redesigned, as the “offensive” imagery is “reminiscent of the recent murder of George Floyd”.

Twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that President Donald Trump has tried to “hijack” Christianity, most recently by posing with a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church.

A mob incited by Hindu radicals killed a 16-year-old Christian boy in Eastern India last week, stabbing him with knives and smashing in his face with a stone, Morning Star News reported.

Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has chosen Jakarta’s first Christian governor of Chinese descent, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, as a top candidate to oversee the construction of a new capital city in the majority-Muslim country, the Nikkei reported on Friday.

The U.S. State Department concluded in its annual religious freedom report released Wednesday that Venezuela is not a safe place to be a Christian, due to the widespread attacks on churches by the Maduro regime and its paramilitaries.

The State Department accused Indian officials on Wednesday of permitting, and sometimes promoting or participating in, mob violence against Christians, Muslims, and other religious minorities in its annual religious freedom report.

“Were it not for pastors, there would have been no civil rights movement,” said Robert Jeffress, noting America’s history of faith in politics.

The Rev. Emmanuel Saba Bileya and his wife, Juliana, were gunned down on their farm in eastern Nigeria by unidentified insurgents last week, local media report.

Countless American believers in the Bible, myself included, were inspired tremendously on Monday when President Trump stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, across the street from the White House, and held up the Word of God for all to see.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) shut down 48 state-run Christian Churches in a single county in southeastern China between April 18 and 30, Bitter Winter, a Human Rights magazine, reported on Sunday.

IVANO-FRANKIVSK, Ukraine (AP) – Wearing a white biohazard suit, a face shield and a blue mask over his mouth and nose, the Rev. Yaroslav Rokhman is hard to recognize as a priest when he visits terminally ill patients at a Ukrainian care centre.

George Floyd, the man whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police has set off nationwide protests, is being remembered as a reformer of his Texas hometown who encouraged black youth to turn from violence before he was killed.

A Polish prosecutor has charged an IKEA manager with violating the religious rights of an employee sacked for voicing strong objections, within the company, to a corporate event supporting tolerance for LGBT people last year.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has urged Christians to wear masks, practice social distancing, and forego singing and receiving communion during worship services to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

On Sunday, Chicago’s first openly gay mayor, Lori Lightfoot, mounted a raid on a black South Side church for holding services in defiance of her coronavirus lockdown orders.

Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker said Thursday that the push for reopening society from lockdowns comes from Christianity’s “malignant delusion” of belief in an afterlife.

Forty-two progressive faith-based institutions from 14 countries announced are divesting from the fossil fuel industry, the largest ever such joint announcement from religious groups.

Unidentified vandals broke into the Church of Saint-Jean-des-Cordeliers in southwest France Tuesday and jimmied open the tabernacle to steal the consecrated hosts.