Christian Photographers Shut Down Business Instead of Filming Homosexual Marriage Ceremonies

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Christian Photographers Shut Down Business Instead of Filming Homosexual Marriage Ceremonies

It came down to a matter of principles for Nang and Chris Mai. More specifically, their Christian principles.

The Novato, California couple surely will win plaudits from Bible believers everywhere for choosing to honor God by closing their photography business rather than shoot same-sex “wedding” ceremonies.

“[W]e have come to a difficult decision that we will no longer be in the wedding photography business,” the couple wrote on their website. “We are grateful for this experience as it has caused us to think about how our personal beliefs intersect with our business practices.”

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, T.J. Kelsall of San Francisco posted a comment on the company’s Facebook page earlier this month, which stated that Urloved Photography had declined to photograph him and his partner, Thai Lam.

The Mais said they referred Kelsall to another photographer who they thought would be more suitable as they personally were not comfortable with agreeing to the request themselves.

Then the firestorm started.

“Great shots, but this company denied me and my fiance, a same-sex couple, from their services,” Kelsall wrote on Facebook. “Stand up and say something about it.”

Following Kelsall’s complaint, the small business was “flooded with hate calls, emails and accusations that inaccurately depict our business,” the couple said…Read More

Source and Content by BCNN1

Over 25,000 Ebola Orphans to Receive Care by Joint Effort of Churches

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Over 25,000 Ebola Orphans to Receive Care by Joint Effort of Churches

“My mama is dead in my house and we don’t know what to do.” In Sierra Leone, an 8-year-old boy called the national hotline by dialing 1-1-7 earlier this month. The father had already died, presumably from Ebola, and this boy was now head of the household with five younger siblings. He had decided to call for a burial team to pick up his mother’s remains.

In West Africa, the death of parents from the Ebola epidemic has caused a surge in orphans. They are mostly young children age 5 and under. Government officials estimate 25,900 or more of them are in urgent need of comprehensive care in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. A very high percentage of these children have lost both parents to the virus. Many of the children are under quarantine. Fearful relatives are shunning or abandoning them as possible carriers of the virus.

But there is something worse for these orphans than abandonment: becoming infected with Ebola. “What I’m seeing on the ground is quite disturbing,” said Susan Hillis, a senior staff adviser in global health with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during an interview from Freetown, Sierra Leone. “Children under 5 in both Liberia and Sierra Leone, where I’ve been working, very commonly get into the ambulance with mom.”

She said typically an ambulance takes mothers to Ebola centers for admission. But there’s no one to take the children. “By that point, everybody knows the mother probably has Ebola, and they are afraid of the children, who could transmit the infection to whoever is going to take care of them.”

Until the Ebola outbreak, families often were willing to provide informal foster care. Hillis said, “In Liberia and Sierra Leone, with the history of such rampant and ruthless civil war, it has been common for people to take in children who are not theirs biologically. In Liberia, about 35 percent of kids live with parents who are not their biological parents.”

Inside an Ebola unit, contagious mothers or other patients sometimes spread Ebola to these uninfected children. But health officials now plan to place these children into interim care centers to protect them from infection. Some children still fall through the cracks. In one incident, officials found a 2-year-old abandoned in a home with the decomposing body of her mother, who died several days earlier…Read More

Source and Original Content by BCNN1

Christian Ministries Provide Refuge from Winter Cold for the Homeless

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Christian Ministries Provide Refuge from Winter Cold for the Homeless

Mary Jo Copeland will be cooking up a storm this Thanksgiving. Her guest list will include 400-500 people from Mary’s Place, the transitional housing community she has helped run for over 30 years, as well as their neighbors and anyone else down on their luck.

Located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Mary’s Place is a Christian housing community of 92 furnished apartments named for the Blessed Virgin Mary. Guests at the shelter stay for an average of three to six months and during their stay they each get three meals a day.

Thanksgiving, however, is the day for Mary to go all out. She puts flowers on the tables, plays music and invites her guests to dance. Mary Jo said cooking a huge Thanksgiving feast and providing transitional shelter for struggling individuals and families is part of her faith.

“They are going through a hard time and they are really trying to get on their feet,” she said. “Devotion to God requires we take care of His people.”

Transitional housing complexes like Mary’s Place and temporary shelters across the country are more likely to reach maximum occupancy during cold winter months. Winter’s biting cold and gusty winds drive needy Americans into emergency overnight housing, leaving shelters scrambling to provide basic necessities like food, clothing and toiletries to the less fortunate.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, an estimated 610,042 Americans are homeless on any given night. Andy Bales, the spokesperson at Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles, says he has noticed two changes where he works on Skid Row, the downtown stretch that contains one of the largest population of homeless people in the United States.

Bales said there has been an increase in the number of people seeking help, and their physical and mental conditions have deteriorated compared to families who have sought help in previous years. The ethnic make up of impoverished families and individuals has changed too. Bales says Asian men, a demographic that was rarely seen on Skid Row, are now a constant presence.

“It has to be something in our society,” Bales said. “Family breakdown, unemployment, mental illness. We see a lot of those, and the families that come seem to need more help… Read More

Source and Original Content by BCNN1

11 Deople Dead in Zimbabwean Church Service Stampede

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11 Deople Dead in Zimbabwean Church Service Stampede

Eleven people have been killed and dozens injured in a stampede at a stadium in Zimbabwe as thousands of people at a church service tried to leave through the same exit.

Around 30,000 people packed into a stadium in Kwekwe, 130 miles west of Harare, yesterday evening to listen to Pentecostal pastor Walter Magaya. When the service ended the congregation rushed towards a single exit, in a stampede that killed four people on the spot. Another seven were pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

The Zimbabwe Chronicle says that the incident happened when police closed other gates out of the stadium, forcing the crowd to the single remaining one. Concrete walls were broken down as the congregation tried to get out of the stadium and police fired teargas into the crowd, causing the stampede.

Three of the 11 who died were children and one was a pregnant woman…Read More

Source and Original Content by Christian Today

Female Pastor Arrested and Dragged on the Ground in Ferguson Protest

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Female Pastor Arrested and Dragged on the Ground in Ferguson Protest

A woman pastor was arrested during a peaceful protest in the troubled township of Ferguson, Missouri last night.

Pastor Rebecca Ragland, minister of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion, was one of five held after blocking a street outside the police headquarters in freezing conditions. The town is on edge as a grand jury is deciding whether to charge officer Darren Wilson in the slaying of 18-year-old Michael Brown in a case that has exposed fresh strains in often-troubled race relations in the United States.

The protesters waved placards and chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “Killer cops have got to go!”

Officers in helmets and shields were deployed after a commander told protesters not to block traffic.

Ragland told the Daily Mail that she was grabbed and dragged along the ground so roughly that her vest marked ‘Clergy’ was torn off. “I was completely stunned,” she said. “All I can tell you is what my body experienced. My mind at that point was just in shock. I was grabbed so hard that I fell to the ground. Then I was just being yanked and it was pretty rough. I’m hurting today.”

She said that the group of protesters was dispersing as the police moved in. “I think everybody was completely shocked. We were dispersing at that point. Then they came down so I turned around and I thought, ‘Well I’m a de-escalator so I need to stay at the front.'”

Ragland added: “The clergy want to be compassionate voices to soothe people who are so broken and hurt and to be a voice for the kind of justice that’s actually going to move the polarities to a point where they can heal instead of this place where we’re just shouting and hurting…Read More

Source and Original Content by Christian Today

120 Christian Students Face Deportation

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120 Christian Students Face Deportation

About 120 international Christian students attending a Bible college in Ohio could possibly face deportation after their school was recently denied recertification with the U.S. immigration exchange student program.

Although President Barack Obama plans to announce Thursday night an immigration overhaul that could allow nearly 5 million illegal immigrants to remain in the country, the 120 foreign Christian students at Marietta Bible College are in a bind after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to issue the school recertification into the the agency’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

In doing so, the school’s international students must either find a new school to transfer to or they will face deportation starting in February 2015. Additionally, the college may no longer accept international students.

bout 120 international Christian students attending a Bible college in Ohio could possibly face deportation after their school was recently denied recertification with the U.S. immigration exchange student program.

Although President Barack Obama plans to announce Thursday night an immigration overhaul that could allow nearly 5 million illegal immigrants to remain in the country, the 120 foreign Christian students at Marietta Bible College are in a bind after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to issue the school recertification into the the agency’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

In doing so, the school’s international students must either find a new school to transfer to or they will face deportation starting in February 2015. Additionally, the college may no longer accept international students…Read More

Source and Original Content by Christian Post

Kenyan Bishops Persistently Reject Tetanus Vaccine with Hormone

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Kenyan Bishops Persistently Reject Tetanus Vaccine with Hormone

Kenya’s Catholic bishops are holding firm in urging people to avoid receiving a tetanus vaccine being administered under a nationwide campaign because they say it contains a hormone linked to birth control.

A joint committee that includes representatives of the bishops and the Kenyan Ministry of Health met for the first time November 19 to discuss Catholic concerns about the vaccine, which was found to have beta human chorionic gonadotropin, which prevents women from becoming pregnant.

The joint committee was instituted November 11 at a meeting between Church leaders, including some medical doctors, and the parliamentary Committee on Health.

Dr Stephen Karanja, the chairman of the Catholic Doctors’ Association who attended the November 19 meeting, told Catholic News Service afterwards that the committee agreed to test samples of the vaccine at laboratories around the world.

The parties agreed to isolate three samples for testing, Karanja said.

“All of these (labs) will be privately owned, and the Kenyan government-owned KEMRI (Kenyan Medical Research Institute), which the Ministry of Health had earlier on recommended for the testing of the samples from the two parties, is not one of them,” Karanja said.

The doctor said no time frame is set for the testing.

In a November 6 statement, the bishops charged the vaccine, targeted to women of child-bearing age and not to men, was being administered in a campaign sponsored by the World Health Organisation and UNICEF that had been guarded by secrecy and deception.

The hormone, known as beta hCG, was discovered in vaccine samples that representatives of the bishops obtained and sent for testing to unrelated government and private labs between March and October.

The bishops said the test results were given to government health officials in mid-October.

The bishops accused the government of a “deliberate attempt to distort the truth and mislead 42 million Kenyans” after the Ministry of Health said in a report to the parliamentary Committee on Health November 4 that the vaccine was free of the beta hCG hormone.

“We are shocked at the level of dishonesty and casual manner in which such a serious issue is being handled by the government,” the bishops said.

“We are dismayed by attempts to intimidate and blackmail medical professionals who have corroborated information about the vaccine, with threats of disciplinary action. We commend and support all professionals who have stood by the truth,” they continued.

The vaccine has been linked to what the bishops described as “population control” when it was administered in other countries. They said the vaccine has been linked to infertility and miscarriages.

A 1993 report from the US National Institutes of Health said that beta hCG prevented “women of proven fertility leading an active sexual life” from becoming pregnant.

Source and Original Content by Catholic Herald

Sierra Leonian Children Receive Hundreds of Christmas Presents from Catholic College

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Sierra Leonian Children Receive Hundreds of Christmas Presents from Catholic College

Students and families from a Catholic college on the Wirral have filled 800 shoeboxes with Christmas presents for children in Makeni, Sierra Leone.

St Anselm’s College in Birkenhead selected the country because it has been severely disrupted by the spread of the Ebola virus.

The first gifts of “Operation Makeni” arrived last weekend, with the air freight cots paid for by donors from the college and local community.

Headmaster Simon Duggan said: “We are responding to the pleas of our friends in Sierra Leone and reaching out to those so much less fortunate than ourselves. It is our Christian duty to provide this support and there has been a magnificent response from our College family and contacts.”

The college’s twin school is St Francis in Makeni, Sierra Leone and was founded by Christian brothers.

A statement released by the college said: “The College has already sent more than a tonne of essential medical supplies to Sierra Leone since September, in partnership with the local Wirral community and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Trust.

“They have provided gloves, surgical masks, suits, aprons, goggles, dental equipment, ibuprofen, paracetemol, mattresses and body bags. Plans are underway to send a shipping container in the New Year, which will also contain items required for re-construction in Makeni, once the necessary funds have been raised.”

Source and Original Content by Christian Herald

Prayers Held in Advance of Ferguson Grand Jury Decision

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Prayers Held in Advance of Ferguson Grand Jury Decision

Southern Baptists recently gathered for prayer at the First Baptist Church in Ferguson, Missouri as the nation awaits the grand jury decision in regards to the Michael Brown shooting Aug. 9.

The jury is deliberating whether or not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, who is white. Wilson shot and killed Brown, an unarmed black18-year-old male.

The Baptist Press reports the North American Mission Board’s Gary Frost and Arkansas pastor Bill Elliff led the prayer summit.

“You know all the stuff that has been going on in North County St. Louis,” Jim Breeden, director of missions for St. Louis Metro Baptist Association, said during the Nov. 13 prayer summit. “We need and will take all the prayers we can get. But it’s not really about North County or about race relations; it’s really about God’s people humbling themselves and coming before the Lord.”

Participants prayed for repentance, the Ferguson community and beyond as well as pastors in the greater St. Louis area.

There are people poised for destruction and hoping all literal hell breaks loose,” Frost told the Baptist Press. “That’s the atmosphere we’re dealing with. But it’s not a matter of policing.

“Only God can heal and thwart the tactics of the enemy.” Frost said, referring to Satan. “We need to pray that God would thwart the plans of all the agendas that have shown up here for the purposes of advancing any person and not the glory of God.”

Source and Original Content by Christian Headlines

Christian University Keeps Bill Cosby as Speaker at Benefit Dinner, Despite Outcries of Sexual Assault

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Christian University Keeps Bill Cosby as Speaker at Benefit Dinner, Despite Outcries of Sexual Assault

Officials at a West Tennessee Christian University sparked a fiery debate over Christian values Wednesday for standing by their decision to invite embattled comedian Bill Cosby to serve as keynote speaker for the school’s benefit dinner scheduled for next month, despite outcry from an advocacy group for victims of sexual assault.

David Brown, leader of the Memphis Chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, charged in a WREG report that if the officials at Freed-Hardeman University — a private Christian institution associated with the churches of Christ — go ahead with plans to host Bill Cosby at their benefit dinner on Dec. 5, he will protest.

Cosby, who declared in a New York Post report in 2013 that, “I am a Christian” is facing mounting allegations of rape from multiple women. The allegations have resulted in him being dropped from projects with NBC, Netflix and TV Land, according to CNN. Freed-Hardeman University, however, is standing by its position, infuriating Brown.

“If he does show up Dec. 5 to the auditorium, I’ll be out there protesting, and I won’t be alone,” Brown threatened, according to WREG.

“I know this is about raising money, but you can raise money more admirably than this,” he continued.

Brown explained that he sent a letter to the university, saying, “If you keep him as your keynote speaker, your fine university will hurt so many, and you will never know the harm that you have done.”

In a response to his letter, Brown said the university noted: “oh, we are glad you got healed from your problem; however, we are still going to go forward.”

In interviews with The Christian Post on Thursday, officials at the university noted that the decision to invite Cosby to speak at the benefit dinner was made in the spring and pointed to a statement on the school’s Facebook page as their official response to the fiasco…Read More

Source and Original Content by Christian Post

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