religion
Washington (AFP) - The United Methodist Church, which has some 10 million members around the world, repealed on Wednesday a ban on ordaining gay clergy and same-sex marriage. Church leadership, at a conference held in North Carolina, approved the moves in a 692-51 vote. The church removed its 1984 ban on the ordination of clergy who are "self-avowing practicing homosexuals." It also decided that clergy who perform same-sex marriages will not be subject to any penalties. Neither will clergy or churches which refuse to hold same-sex weddings. "Delegates and observers applauded after the vote," t...
AFP
Houston (AFP) - A Texas man who opened fire at a Muslim-owned car repair shop, killing one person and injuring four, was sentenced to 37 years in prison on hate crime charges on Wednesday. Anthony Paz Torres, 39, was convicted in 2018 of the Christmas Eve 2015 attack at Omar's Wheels and Tires in Dallas and sentenced to 35 years behind bars. He pleaded guilty in September of last year to separate federal hate crime charges and received an additional 37-year sentence on Wednesday with credit for time served. "Hate crimes fueled by Islamophobia, or by bias of any kind, will be met with the full ...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - President Joe Biden may be a regular churchgoer, but his challenger Donald Trump, who rarely appears in church and spent Easter raging at opponents, is the only candidate comparing himself to Jesus Christ. Biden is a lifelong Catholic who attends Mass most Sundays and has talked often about the importance of religious faith in his personal life. To mark Easter, he issued a proclamation on "the power of hope and the promise of Christ's Resurrection." However, Trump -- who before entering politics reveled in his image as a playboy tycoon -- now talks loudest about God and, des...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - Former US president Donald Trump is selling Bibles ahead of the Easter holiday, encouraging his supporters to "Make America Pray Again" and buy what he describes as his "favorite book." The 77-year-old Republican presidential candidate, who counts conservative Evangelical Christians among his staunchest supporters, is selling the Bibles -- which contain the unusual addition of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence -- for $59.99. Trump, who unlike most US presidents rarely attends church except during public political events, has advertised the Bibles, which...
AFP
Los Angeles (AFP) - Donald Trump received a warm welcome Thursday when he appeared before an audience of evangelical broadcasters, delivering a campaign-style speech littered with professions of faith and pledges to protect Christians. The casino-owning playboy, who has been accused of paying hush money to a porn star, is wildly popular with the religious right in the United States, despite a life story at odds with their apparent values. But for many of them, he is on a mission from God to save America from becoming a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. And on Thursday, he gave them what they want...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - US President Joe Biden on Thursday slammed the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling that frozen embryos are children, a decision that has led IVF clinics in the state to halt operations because of their increased exposure to wrongful death lawsuits. Two clinics have issued statements announcing pauses, with reports of a third following suit. "The disregard for women's ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families is outrageous and unacceptable," Biden said in a statement. The pauses come days after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling in a lawsuit filed against a fe...
AFP
Los Angeles (AFP) - As a casino-owning playboy who has been married three times and faced multiple sexual misconduct allegations over the years, Donald Trump is an unlikely role model for America's evangelical Christians. But a huge number of these devoutly religious people believe not only that he is the best choice for president this November, but increasingly that he was chosen by God to save America from sliding into damnation. Not a bad rep for a man who plays golf on Sundays. And he'll have the ears of evangelicals on Thursday, when he addresses a group of religious broadcasters. In 2015...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - An Alabama university temporarily halted in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments on Wednesday after the high court in the southern US state ruled that frozen embryos outside the womb are children. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) said it had paused IVF treatments "as it evaluates the Alabama Supreme Court's decision that a cryopreserved embryo is a human being." "We are saddened that this will impact our patients' attempt to have a baby through IVF," the university said in a statement. "But we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians coul...
AFP
Teaneck (United States) (AFP) - They are only teenagers, but a pair of New Jersey high school students -- one Jewish and one Muslim -- are tackling an issue much bigger than themselves, bridging divides in their suburb shaken by the Israel-Hamas war. The effort originated soon after the October 7 attacks by Hamas and Israel's invasion of Gaza, when Rawda Elbatrawish, 17, took to Instagram to pitch an educational event. "I was originally going to do a protest, but I decided to do a dialogue instead," recalled Elbatrawish, who is Muslim. Liora Pelavin, 15, a fellow student at Teaneck High School...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - An Ohio man has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for trying to burn down a church that planned to host drag shows, the Justice Department said Tuesday. Aimenn Penny, 20, of Alliance, Ohio, pleaded guilty in October to attempting to set fire to the Community Church of Chesterland in Chesterland, Ohio. Penny was sentenced on Monday to 216 months in prison and three years of supervised release. According to court filings, Penny, a member of the neo-Nazi White Lives Matter group, attacked the church with two Molotov cocktails on March 25, one week before it planned to host t...
AFP
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