Hillsong: Founder Denies Sex Abuse Cover Up

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Hillsong: Founder Denies Sex Abuse Cover Up

Days ahead of an annual conference in New York’s Madison Square Garden, the founder of the Hillsong music and church empire is facing strict scrutiny for what he knew about sex-abuse allegations lodged against his father.

Hillsong is an Australian megachurch that has exported its influence to major global cities and into churches’ music across the U.S.

In 1999, Brian Houston’s father, Frank Houston, who was also a minister, confessed to sexually abusing an underage male at his New Zealand congregation 30 years before. In response, the younger Houston, who was then president of the Assemblies of God in Australia, fired his father, took control of the church and merged it with Hillsong.

The elder Houston died in 2004.

On Thursday and Friday, the son took the witness stand in Sydney and denied any attempt to cover up the allegations. Next week, Brian Houston will be in New York City for the church’s conference at Madison Square Garden.

In his testimony, Brian Houston denied trying to hide his involvement in a $10,000 compensation payment made to a man who was abused as a child by his father.

“I acknowledge the courage of the victim in taking the stand today to outline the trauma he has suffered by Frank Houston,” Brian Houston said in a statement. “However I disagree with his perception of the phone call with me, and I strongly refute that I—at any time—accused him of tempting my father. I would never say this and I do not believe this. At no stage did I attempt to hide or cover up the allegations against my father.”

Through what’s called a royal commission, the Australian government is scrutinizing how institutions—including the Pentecostal church network that gave birth to Hillsong—have handled sex abuse claims. A royal commission is Australia’s highest level of inquiry.

Frank Houston never faced prosecution for crimes committed in the 1960s and 1970s. The Assemblies of God in Australia allowed Houston to resign quietly with a retirement package.

“We believe that exposing child sexual abuse and the response of institutions to that abuse, and allowing survivors to share their traumatic experiences, is a powerful step in the healing process,” Brian Houston said in a statement. “Having to face the fact that my father engaged in such repulsive acts was—and still is—agonizing.”

Hillsong congregants, based in western Sydney, gave him a standing ovation after he delivered his sermon on Sunday addressing his father’s sexual abuse…Read More

Source and Original Content by Charisma News

US Theme Park Plans to Employ Only True Believers

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US Theme Park Plans to Employ Only True Believers

The developer of a Noah’s Ark-based theme park in Kentucky said recently he will only hire people who believe in the biblical flood. But state officials have said the developer could lose millions in potential tax credits if he does.

Ark Encounter is set to open in 2016 in Williamston, Kentucky. The theme park isn’t hiring yet, but its parent company Answers in Genesis does ask that employees sign a faith statement when they are hired.

“We’re hoping the state takes a hard look at their position, and changes their position so it doesn’t go further than this,” Ark Encounter’s Executive President Mike Zovath told Reuters.

Earlier this year, Ark Encounter received approval to collect a rebate from a portion of the sales tax revenues generated at the park. Over 10 years, that tax credit could be worth about $18 million…Read More

Source and Original Content by Christian Headlines

Homosexuality Debate Sparks Strong Reactions In The Vatican

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Homosexuality Debate Sparks Strong Reactions In The Vatican

Debating between proponents and critics of the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality has continued.

The issue came up during the two-week Synod on the Family convened by Pope Francis. Australians Ron and Mavis Pirola, who attended the summit, told bishops at the meeting that they had friends that invited their gay son and his partner home for Christmas.

“They fully believed in the church’s teachings and they knew their grandchildren would see them welcome the son and his partner into the family,” the couple told the bishops. “Their response could be summed up in three words: ‘He’s our son.'”

American Cardinal Raymond Burke, however, disagreed, saying that children shouldn’t be “exposed” to gay relationships.

“If it were another kind of relationship—something that was profoundly disordered and harmful—we wouldn’t expose our children to that relationship, to the direct experience of it,” Burke, who oversees the Vatican court system, told LifeSiteNews…Read More

Source and Original Content by Christian Headlines

ISIS: About 2Million People Flee Iraq

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ISIS: About 2Million People Flee Iraq

A total of 1.8 million people are in a “deadly, life-threatening situation” according to a UN report on Iraq. Their lives are in danger daily, while the influx of refugees is putting strain on locals – and schools have been delayed from opening.

The displaced people are being forced to take shelter wherever they can – even under bridges, and there are often not even blankets for them.

“I couldn’t bring anything with me,” refugee Sabria Suleiman told RT. “The only thing I have left is the children’s ID cards.”

Sabria’s and Ayham Suleiman fled with their family when radical Islamic State militants were attacking their settlement. They didn’t have time to take their belongings with them.

“We don’t really know what will happen. When we arrived here, we just followed other families to the school. We get no help from the authorities – we don’t even have blankets to keep us warm,” Marwan Murad Sabria, another member of the family, told RT.

Schools mostly stink, with garbage piling up, and there are few blankets and little food, RT’s Paula Slier, who is on the scene, said.

In its statement Wednesday, the UN stressed how grave the refugees’ plight is.

“The people who are here came here to seek refuge,” Deputy UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Kevin Kennedy told Reuters on Wednesday. “They are very traumatized, having seen things they did not want to see.”

Out of 1.8 million internally displaced people, over 850,000 have arrived in refugee centers from Anbar, Mosul and Sinjar in the last few months, fleeing the deadly conflict. In August alone, the number of IDPs was around 650,000 people.

Due to the growing numbers of refugees and the fact that they are forced to seek shelter inside schools, the school year had to be delayed for months. In the province, there are about 1,500 schools, and all of them are packed with refugees, bringing the entire educational system to a halt…Read More

Source and Original Content By BCNN 1

Pastor Arrested During Government Crackdown

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Pastor Arrested During Government Crackdown

A Chinese pastor, one of several in recent months to be arrested in a massive government crackdown on Christians, said that he is “grateful” to God for giving him the opportunity to go to jail. Forty-year-old Huang Yizi is facing up to seven years in prison for speaking out against the government’s demolitions of churches.

Huang was placed under arrest in August, The Telegraph reported on Monday, and was taken from his home in front of his wife and two children. He was charged with “gathering crowds to disturb social order.”

A similar charge has been used to arrest other pastors, including Zhang Shaojie, in the wake of Chinese government officials ordering the demolition of a number of churches.

“He seems well. He is grateful that God has given him the chance to serve time in the detention centre,” Beijing-based rights lawyer Zhang Kai said about Huang. The pastor is currently awaiting trial in the city of Wenzhou.

Zhang said that he believes his client is innocent of the wrongdoings he is accused of by the Chinese government.

“As a defense lawyer and judging from the evidence so far I don’t think Huang’s actions constituted any crime. Personally, I believe Huang’s arrest is directly related to the general crackdown on churches in Zhejiang.”

Huang had made a number of pointed remarks against the state, and had accused police forces of violently beating up members of a Wenzhou congregation that had been trying to protect a church’s cross from demolition.

In one major crackdown in September, over 100 Christians, including children, were arrested in Foshan city in China’s Guangdong Province. Close to 200 police officers were said to have stormed in during a service conducted in a house church, with worshipers calling it an effort to stop people from gathering and worshiping.

Members of the congregation revealed that the raid came without any warning, and that the police only left behind a notice explaining that people were arrested for an “illegal gathering…Read More

Source and Original Content By Christian Post

‘Think Ebola’, CDC Advises All Hospitals

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‘Think Ebola’, CDC Advises All Hospitals

The government is telling the nation’s hospitals to “think Ebola.”

Every hospital must know how to diagnose Ebola in people who have been in West Africa and be ready to isolate a suspected case, Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.

He said the CDC is working to improve protections for hospital workers after a nurse caring for an Ebola patient in Dallas became the first person to become infected with the disease inside the U.S.

“We have to rethink the way we address Ebola infection control,” Frieden said, “because even a single infection is unacceptable.”

The CDC is scrambling to interview all staff of the Dallas hospital who could have been exposed to the patient, a Liberian man who became sick after traveling to the United States and died at the hospital. Anyone at risk will be monitored, he said.

Before the nurse’s illness, those who cared for that patient while he was in isolation were told to check themselves for fever or signs of illness but weren’t monitored by health officials. The nurse self-reported her fever.

“We need to consider the possibility that there could be additional cases, particularly among the health care workers who cared for the index patient” — the Liberian man — “when he was so ill,” Frieden said.

Ebola patients aren’t contagious until they begin experiencing symptoms, Frieden said. As they get sicker, they become more infectious and the amount of virus in their bodily fluids increases — putting those caring for them at greater risk.

The CDC already was monitoring about 50 people who had contact with the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, before he was hospitalized. None have developed symptoms. They are still within the 21-day incubation period, however.

Frieden said the CDC is doubling down on Ebola training and support for hospitals and health care workers. But they still don’t know exactly how the nurse, whose name was not released, was exposed to the virus despite wearing the recommended protective gear…Read More

Source and Original Content By BCNN 1

45th Annual GMA Dove Awards

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45th Annual GMA Dove Awards

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LC_svfzP3o&list=PLkz8Hv8FdMI3OcN9xUHeyk7dsrsxNI8mY[/youtube]

45th Annual GMA Dove Awards

Dove Awards

Click here to View the Award Winners

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You might want to Watch last year’s edition

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axeWGFOCEXc[/youtube]

The UpTV broadcast of the 44th Annual GMA Dove Awards.

 

Australian Christian School Child Abuse Victim Testifies

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Australian Christian School Child Abuse Victim Testifies

The latest evidence given during an Australian sex abuse inquiry has revealed that children at a Christian school were repeatedly failed by authorities.

Emma Joy Fretton, now 34, testified on Friday. She told the royal commission that she was physically and sexually abused for more than four years at Northside Christian College in Melbourne. The abuse began when she was six years old.

Her abuser, teacher Kenneth Sandilands, was given a two year jail sentence in 2000 for offences against eight children at the school.

He received a second sentence in September 2014 for indecently assaulting underage pupils at St Paul’s Anglican Primary School in Frankston, Victoria, in the 1970s.

As well as sexually abusing her, Fretton said Sandilands would write obscene stories about her family and force her to read them aloud “and agree they were true”.

The abuse “destroyed her faith in the Lord,” the commission heard.

Fretton testified that she reported the abuse to school officials, but was told “not to say anything to anyone”. She was also assured that the school knew “what he is like” and that he would lose his job.

However, Sandilands remained Fretton’s teacher for another two years. Denis Smith, the senior pastor at the school, even faked a phone call to her mother. He told Fretton that her mother “couldn’t make it” to a meeting about the abuse, when in reality she was never informed about it.

However, Smith’s lawyer says pastor was not present at these meetings, the Guardian reports.

Also on Friday, Smith defended Sandilands’ appointment, insisting: “I was being guided by the educators, the principal, because they would know what was right and what is wrong.”

A teacher at the school, Margaret Furlong, also gave evidence. She told the commission that she reported three incidents of Sandilands’ abuse to the school’s principal, but was too “terrified and frightened” of Smith to take it further when nothing was done.

She referred to a “climate of fear” which may have stopped other teachers sharing concerns.

“From the very first day that I was employed at the college, we were told that the college was a ministry arm of the church, and we were under Pastor Smith and under God,” she said.

“I didn’t know what to do. I wish now that I had gone to the police.”

“I put my trust in people that I thought would do the right thing – people I classed as Godly men,” she added.

“These men did not do the right thing.”

Northside Christian College is linked to Northside Christian Centre, now Encompass Church, in Victoria… Read More

Source and Original Content by Christian Today

Ebola Crisis: Anglican Minister Calls for Calm Instead of Panic

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Ebola Crisis: Anglican Minister Calls for Calm Instead of Panic

A Church of England bishop has called for calm over the deadly Ebola virus and urged UK residents to focus on the “desperate need” of people in Africa rather than the extremely small possibility of it emerging in this country.

The Bishop of Croydon, Jonathan Clark, said many Anglican congregations in London have worshippers in particular from Sierra Leone, one of the three worst affected countries.

The Southwark diocese has thousands of refugees from Sierra Leone who fled the civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002 and devastated the country. They settled mainly in the Walworth and Peckham areas. Asylum seekers from more recent conflicts settled in Croydon itself because it is where claims are processed and where they have to report.

Bishop Clark, who recently added his voice to those calling for more refugees to be admitted to Britain from Syria in the wake of the onslaught by Islamic State, said: “There are a lot of people from Church of England in churches across the Southwark diocese.

“They cannot do the thing they would normally do, which is to go home. That would be just to put themselves and everyone else in danger. They are anxious and bereaved.”…Read More

Source and Original Content by BCNN 1

Alaskan Judge Strikes Down Gay Marriage Ban

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Alaskan Judge Strikes Down Gay Marriage Ban

Gay marriage will now be legal in the state of Alaska after the standing gay marriage ban was struck down by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess ruled that the ban was a violation of citizens’ constitutional rights.

Alaska was the first state to enact a gay marriage ban in 1998.

Burgess wrote, “The court finds that Alaska’s ban on same-sex marriage and refusal to recognize same-sex marriages lawfully entered in other states is unconstitutional as a deprivation of basic due process and equal protection principles under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution… Read More

Source and Original Content by Christian Headlines

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