Shrine Of The Weeping
Shirley MacLaine Consecrated
by Chuck Shepherd
May, 1998
On the day before Good Friday, reported the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Ernesto A. Moshe Montgomery consecrated the Shrine of the Weeping Shirley MacLaine in a room in the Beta Israel Temple in Los Angeles.
Inspired by an image he said he had while riding in the actress's private jet, Montgomery said a subsequent, large photograph of him with MacLaine was "observed shedding tears," which had inspired prayers and testimony of miraculous healings.
Fortune Tellers
More Trustworthy?
USA Today
January 5, 1999
Five times as many Americans believe biblical prophecies can predict the future as think pollsters can. Percentage who say each of these can predict the future:
Religious Figure
Stumps For Tyson
by Chuck Shepherd
July, 1998
Rev. Muhamed Siddeeq, spiritual adviser to Mike Tyson, telling the New Jersey State Athletic Commission that the fighter is of such great character that not only should he get back his boxing license (which was removed after he bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear in his last fight) but is a prime candidate to succeed Kofi Annan as U.N. secretary general: "I see Mike solving many of the world's problems."
British Moralist's
Proclamation Backfires
by Chuck Shepherd
May, 1998
British historian and conservative moralist Paul Johnson, whose recent essay on marriage to honor his 40th wedding anniversary so annoyed his mistress of 11 years that she ratted him out to British newspapers, admitted in a subsequent interview in London's Observer in May, "I've been having an affair, but I still believe in family values."
Tenant Jailed For
Terroristic Threats
by Chuck Shepherd
June, 1998
Minneapolis tenant Mr. Souk Sourihamath, 36, was jailed for making terroristic threats against his landlady after police found seven booby-trap explosives in his apartment.
Another tenant said he did not know Sourihamath very well except that he told him he had recently had a party with extraterrestrials in his room.
Chicago's 'Atheist
Guy'
Explains Battery Charges
by Chuck Shepherd
June, 1998
Rob Sherman, prominent anti-religion media activist around Chicago (known as The Atheist Guy), was charged with misdemeanor domestic battery for allegedly punching his 16-year-old son.
Sherman told reporters he was disciplining the boy for refusing to do
his chores and merely wanted to "put the fear of God into him."
Incest Rampant In
Alberta Hutterite Sect
by Chuck Shepherd
May, 1998
Eleven men, ranging in age from 17 to 62, were charged with sexual assault and incest in a Hutterite religious sect community near Calgary, Alberta.
Among the sentences meted out was one to a 31-year-old man who had relations with his daughter and another woman and who attributed his lapse to a feeling of excessive confidence after having been made boss of the community's pig barn.
Abernathy Quits Georgia
Politics To Join Seminary
by Chuck Shepherd
July, 1998
Georgia state Sen. Ralph David Abernathy III, son of the late civil rights leader, announced his retirement from politics after his $400 re-election filing fee check bounced.
His legislative career included an incident of following a female into a state Capitol ladies' room and of being caught with marijuana in his underwear at the Atlanta airport.
He said he plans to enter the seminary.
Moonbeams Foiled
by Chuck Shepherd
July, 1998
In South River, New Jersey, Yugoslavian-Americans Boris Angelevski, 56, and his wife and 31-year-old son, after fighting among themselves about the son's becoming too Americanized, threatened police and barricaded themselves inside their apartment for 11 hours before giving up.
Police knew the apartment well, based on previous domestic disturbances: The floors and walls are lined with aluminum foil, they said, which according to Boris was to keep out "moonbeams and rays from the outer planets."
They Must Have
Holes In Their Heads
by Chuck Shepherd
June, 1998
Distrust of modern medicine has led to the increasing popularity of therapeutic self-trepanation (drilling a hole in the head to unseal the skull), according to a Chicago Tribune story.
Trepanation activist Peter Halvorson recalled that drilling into his own skull 25 years ago ("Smoke was coming out of the hole," he said) brought him "a heightened, childlike sense of awareness" and a permanent state of higher consciousness.
Neurosurgeons contacted used words like "amazed" and "stunned" at the craze, but according to the report, trepanists seem so confident of the procedure that criticism of them just wasn't sinking in.
Rev. Pat Warns
Orlando of
'Gay Days'
Judgements
by Chuck Shepherd
June, 1998
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told his "700 Club" TV audience that the city of Orlando, Florida, was taking a big risk to sponsor the recent "Gay Days" festival. "I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes," he said, "and I don't think I'd be waving those [Gay Days logo] flags in God's face if I were you." Homosexuality, he said, "will bring about terrorist bombs, it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor."
Devout Christians Overweight
by Chuck Shepherd
May, 1998
According to a Purdue University study, Christians who are the most avid in their religious beliefs are more likely than other people to be overweight, with Southern Baptists at the top of the list.
"I fit the mold," said Rev. Jerry Falwell, speaking to a Newhouse News Service reporter. However, he said, "I don't think God gives a flip either way."
Roman Catholic
Confession
Software Available
by Chuck Shepherd
April, 1998
Warsaw, Poland, computer programmer Andrzej Urbanski announced the availability of his confessional software for Roman Catholics. The program, which is password-protected for privacy, asks 104 questions to narrow and focus the particular sins to which the parishioner is confessing, then ranks the sins by gravity in suggesting penance.
Rabbinical Rulings
Tighten Sabbath Laws
by Chuck Shepherd
July, 1998
Recent Rabbinical Rulings, according to the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot:
Publicity Stunt Backfires:
Evangelist Fined
by Chuck Shepherd
March, 1998
Evangelist John Holme was fined about $1,700 in Salisbury, England, for a stunt in which he went up in a motored paraglider so he could preach from above the rooftops to sinners on the ground.
Said Holme, "I thought that maybe if they heard this voice booming out from the sky, they would think it was God."
Holme had steering problems in the wind and came down close to some houses, and although no one was injured, he was fined for creating a dangerous condition.
Pentecostal Moralist's
Stunt Backfires
by Chuck Shepherd
December, 1997
Rev. Joyce Mines of St. Stephen's Pentecostal church in York, Virginia, distributed leaflets in a townhouse community, intending to save souls and increase her church's membership but instead drew criticism.
She said the fliers were aimed at girls and young women but asked readers, "Did your grandma have ways like a whore?" "Did your mother have ways like a whore?" "Do you have ways like a whore?" "Are you now raising a whore?"
Mines said no offense was intended.
Baptist Moralist
Jeffress'
Stunt Backfires
by Chuck Shepherd
August, 1998
Earlier this year, Wichita Falls, Texas, Baptist minister Robert Jeffress wrote a $54 check to the city library to purchase all the copies of the book Heather Has Two Mommies and another children's book on living with homosexual parents, with the goal of retiring them from circulation.
However, subsequent publicity caused so many library patrons to request the book that, according to the library's standard guidelines, it will have to order several new copies to satisfy demand.
Thinking About Excercise
by Chuck Shepherd
March, 1998
Researcher Dave Smith of Manchester (England) Metropolitan University revealed that thinking about exercise is almost as productive as doing it. His group of exercisers improved 33 percent in a month, and his non-exercisers did not improve at all. However, the non-exercisers who practiced the exercise mentally improved 16 percent when it came time to do the exercise again. Reasoned Smith, "If you can improve neural input to the muscle, you can recruit more muscle fiber and exert more force."
Moralist Stumps
For Family Farm
by Chuck Shepherd
May, 1998
Jim Gordon, a candidate for South Carolina's elected agriculture commissioner, told a campaign stop audience in Greenville that the two most important issues stifling the family farm are access to technology and "the homosexual agenda." "How does that relate to agriculture?" he asked, rhetorically. "We can't have Bob and Bob being married" without hurting the concept of the family farm.
Christian Stole Statues
To Furnish
Modern-Day "Noah's Ark"
by Chuck Shepherd
May, 1998
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, house painter David Maas, 31, was arrested and charged with the theft of 11 statues and figurines from several churches and is suspected of taking 18 others.
According to police, he said he wanted to furnish a new version of Noah's Ark that he planned to construct; the Ark would house the newly-saved Christians between now and March 1999, when, according to Maas, either communists will destroy all Catholic churches or a giant asteroid will wipe out much of Earth.
New York Rabbis
Charged In Beatings
by Chuck Shepherd
March, 1998
In Brooklyn, New York, four Orthodox Jewish men charged that several local rabbis had arranged for them to be beaten up as threats to get them to agree to religious annulments of their marriages.
According to the charges, which were being investigated by the district attorney, the rabbis collected fees from the men's ex-wives, who, though they are divorced under state law, still cannot remarry within the faith unless their ex-husbands agree to a "get," which is a religious divorce.
Some Orthodox Jewish men refuse to grant the "get," in order to obtain leverage in child custody disputes.
Jews Okay Pig's Heart
For Transplant
by Chuck Shepherd
April, 1998
Renowned Israeli surgeon Jacob Lavee said he would soon attempt the world's first heart transplant in which a human receives a pig's heart. Lavee said he was confident of overcoming the two big obstacles: (1) Though his likely heart recipient would be Jewish, several leading authorities said the ban on eating pig meat should not stop the use of a pig's heart to save a human life, and (2) The British firm Imutran has created a breed of genetically engineered pigs whose hearts can more easily adapt to the body of a human.
Virgin Mary Image
Promotes Smoking
by Chuck Shepherd
June, 1998
While Joe Camel-type ads lose favor in cigarette promotions in the U.S., ads in other countries are stepping up their use of sensitive sales images, according to an April San Francisco Examiner report. In the Philippines, the tobacco industry association used (along with packs of Winston and Camel) the Virgin Mary on its 1998 promotional calendar.
Pacifist Sect's Nude
Protests Rekindled
by Chuck Shepherd
February, 1998
As the U.S.-Iraqi conflict heated up, two members of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors attempted to revive the pacifist sect's tradition of protest in Burnaby, British Columbia. They went on a 25-day hunger strike in jail, where they are serving two-year sentences for setting fires to their own homes, which they said Doukhobors frequently do to demonstrate sacrifice against longstanding evils, including taxation and public education. The other hallmark of Doukhobor protests is frequent public nudity, which it says shows a rejection of wealth and status.
Intriguing Progress From
Canadian Historical Agency
by Chuck Shepherd
January, 1998
The official historical agency Heritage Canada released its 1998 calendar marking such benchmark dates as "World Book and Copyright Day" but making no mention of Christmas and Easter.