( Read more... )

Last November 35 members of the “True Russian Orthodox Church”, a generic extremist sect that believes in the imminent apocalypse and thinks that barcodes are the mark of the Beast, etc etc, barricaded themselves inside an underground cave in Russia to shelter from the coming apocalypse. They threatened to set themselves on fire if any attempt was ( Read more... )

You know, it’s all too easy for us secular types to be cynical about religion, but it’s time we acknowledged that institutions can change with the times. No longer, for example, is the Catholic Church simply a repository of unbridled wealth and power maintained by peddling ridiculous superstitions to the credulous and vulnerable. Twenty-first- ( Read more... )

Thank you to liquidindian for this post, without which I might never have come across the Spiritual Science Research Foundation-which offers, for example, the chance to “Learn how spiritual healing chants can overcome mental illness caused by ghosts”. Here’s this week’s featured case study:

( Read more... )

Of all the tribulations that have faced Christianity through the ages, surely the greatest has to be the modernisation of the spelling of one of the translations of its holy book:

This particular edition of the Cambridge Bible that calls itself a King James Bible is not genuine. IT’S A COUNTERFEIT! It’s not the Bible of my forefathers ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Floods are judgment on society, say bishopsThe floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God’s judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops. One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have ( Read more... )

A recent survey had around 63 per cent of Britons counting themselves as secular, while even more recently 82 per cent of us reckoned religion was “divisive”. Let’s see the numbers after last night’s showing outside Parliament-my money’s on a slight rise in the divisionistas. Please God ( Read more... )

It shouldn’t be any surprise that the BNP’s Nick Griffin was cleared of race hate charges. He had confined himself to giving Islam a good slagging, and the Government’s attempt to make that illegal foundered last year.

( Read more... )

Beyond the Veil, Fatima Mernissi:[For hardliners] the sexual act is considered polluting, and is surrounded by ceremonials and incantations whose goal is to create an emotional distance between the spouses and reduce their embrace to its most elementary function, that of a purely reproductive act. During coitus, the male is actually embracing a ( Read more... )