(RNS) — A Northern California church that had gathered to pray for the resurrection of one of its parishioners announced Friday (Dec. 20) that it would be moving on with memorial services for the two-year-old child, who died a week ago.

“Here is where we are: Olive hasn’t been raised. The breakthrough we have sought hasn’t come,” Bethel Church said in the statement. “And so, we are moving towards a memorial service and celebration of her life.”

“The joy of our faith is that, though we haven’t seen the miracle of Olive being raised, she is alive in the presence of God,” the statement read.

Further details about the memorial service are unavailable at this time, said Aaron Tesauro, a Bethel spokesman.

Kalley Heiligenthal, a worship leader and songwriter for Bethel Music, announced on social media Sunday (Dec. 15) that her daughter, Olive Alayne, had stopped breathing and been pronounced dead. She publicly called for people to pray that her girl be resurrected.

The faithful heeded that call and gathered at Bethel Church in Northern California in the following days to worship and pray for Olive’s resurrection. Supporters of Heiligenthal spread the hashtags #wakeupolive and #victoriousawakening across social media and described their prayers as radical worship and a spiritual awakening.

The church, in the statement, noted that seeking a miracle from God to raise her from the…

NAIROBI, Kenya, December 23, 2019 (Morning Star News) – When Florence Namuyiga’s Muslim husband asked her why their 7-year-old son was singing Christian songs, she remained silent.

Namuyiga, a 27-year-old mother of three in central Uganda’s Lwebitati village, Kitumbi Parish in Mubende District, had been secretly attending church services with her 2- and 5-year-old sons since putting her faith in Christ on May 17. She had not chanced taking her 7-year-old son until Nov. 24.

“That evening, while back at home, my son began singing some of the Christian songs that were sung in the church,” she told Morning Star News by phone. “My husband began questioning me where the son picked such kinds of songs, but I kept quiet. He then turned to our son, who narrated what he saw in church of both men and women worshipping together in one big hall. Thereafter we went to bed with no communication with my husband.”

On Nov. 29 her husband, 34-year-old Abudalah Nsubuga, told her she had to go to Friday mosque prayers, she said.

“I refused,” she said. “He started beating me up with sticks, blows and kicks. When I fell down, he left me and went to the mosque. I began bleeding with serious injury on my left arm. That evening he did not come to the house but slept in the house of one of my co-wives.”

Early on the morning of Nov. 30, he showed up at their home, she said.

“He arrived and…

More than 50 years after it first aired, A Charlie Brown Christmas remains one of the most beloved TV specials of the season among people of faith, primarily due to Linus’ bold recitation of the gospel message.

But that famous scene was added to the special over the objections of the producer and the animator, who believed that Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz had crossed a line in wanting Linus to recite the Bible.

The special first aired in 1965.  

Producer Lee Mendelson recounted the controversy in author Charles Solomon’s 2012 book, The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation.

“I said, ‘Sparky, this is religion. It just doesn’t go in a cartoon,’” Mendelson said, referencing Schulz’s nickname and the debate over the scene. “He looked at me very coldly and said, ‘Bill, if we don’t do it, who will? We can do it.’ He was right. That’s been the most commented-on little sequences of that show – Linus telling the true meaning of Christmas. But every time I see that scene, I wince. It’s such poor animation, such bad drawing.” 

Mendelson later told the Huffington Post, “When [Schulz] said, ‘You know, we’re going to have Linus read from the Bible,’ Bill and I looked at each other and said, ‘Uh oh, that doesn’t sound very good,’ But then Schulz said, ‘Look, if we’re going to do this, we should talk about what Christmas is all about, not just do a…

In a series of tweets last week, Christian leader and author Beth Moore decried the “increasingly amoral condition of our country” and pleaded with her fellow faith leaders to repent for the “sins of nationalism, racism, sexism, hatred, white supremacy, murder, our lying, our cheating, our bribing, our abuse of power, our bloodthirst, our greed.”

In the Twitter thread, which Moore posted the morning after President Trump was impeached by the House, Moore recalled her reaction to the 1992 election of former President Bill Clinton.

“In early November 1992, I stood in front of the TV watching the last of the election results, tears pouring down my face,” she wrote. “Our country had just elected Bill Clinton president. He was magnetic, brilliant, smooth and utterly immoral. I was a registered Democrat at that time.”

Then in 2016, Moore, lacking faith in either candidate “stood in front of a screen bereft of hope either way that our country was about to elect a president who was honorable.” She wrote, “For days to come, I muttered aloud almost daze-like, ‘Our country just elected Donald Trump president.’” Moore noted that in 2016 she was a registered Republican.

In early November 2016, I stood in front of a screen bereft of hope either way that our country was about to elect a president who was honorable. For days to come, I muttered…