Months after a group of Honey Grove Middle School students were scolded for praying for a fellow student at lunch, the Texas school has made the decision to permit its students to openly pray once again. 

Eighth-grade student Hannah Allen gathered together with a few fellow students back in September to pray for a classmate who had recently been involved in an accident. 

CBN News reports that while meeting during lunch, the group assembled around a vacant table, held hands and prayed. 

Not long into the prayer, Principal Lee Frost approached the students and declared, “Y’all don’t do that again,” although the prayer was both initiated and led by the students. 

The following day, Principal Frost told Allen and the rest of the group that they were only allowed to pray if they were doing so behind the cafeteria stage curtain, outside or when the gym was vacant. 

First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal organization, swiftly jumped to the students’ defense while contending that Principal Frost’s actions violated their rights. 

Keisha Russell, associate counsel for First Liberty Institute, stated the following in a letter: “Students should not have to hide or be exiled to pray for each other. School officials need to remember that students don’t lose their First Amendment rights at the school house gate. We’re hoping this issue can be…

Families hoping to avoid the culture wars on Thanksgiving morning likely were disappointed by the televised Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which featured a song from the Broadway musical The Prom and was capped by a kiss between two women.

Singers danced to the song It’s Time To Dance, which featured lyrics celebrating how “no one cares who your unruly heart loves” at the prom. It also proclaimed that proms can show people “how the world could one day be.” 

The musical number depicted straight couples, at least one male gay couple, and a lesbian couple dancing. 

The lesbian couple were the focus. They joined hands in singing, “This is more than I dared wish for,” and at the end of the song, they kissed.

The NBC audience averaged 23.68 million viewers over the three-hour broadcast, according to The Hollywood Reporter. 

Some viewers were upset. 

“Stop trying to influence children,” wrote one person on Yahoo Entertainment’s Facebook page. 

Another person wrote, “You have ruined the whole parade for me.”

But director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw stood by the number.

“For me it just was such a huge message that they [Macy’s and NBC] allowed it and they went for it and were committed to it, and I honestly cannot thank them enough,” he told Deadline.

Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, 

Christians in the Protestant tradition agree that drunkenness is a sin, but they’re divided on the subject of total abstinence from alcohol, according to a new survey from LifeWay Research.

A total of 87 percent of churchgoing Protestant Christians believe “Scripture indicates people should never get drunk,” the poll found. 

Fifty-nine percent say they never drink alcohol, while 41 percent do. That’s a slight change from 2007 when 61 percent always abstained and 39 percent drank. 

“While alcohol consumption continues be seen as mainstream in the United States, churchgoers’ attitudes about drinking haven’t changed much in the past decade,” Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research, said in a news release.

Meanwhile, 71 percent disagree that “Scripture indicates that people should never drink alcohol.” Twenty-three percent agree. That’s a change from 2007 when 68 percent disagreed and 29 percent agreed with the statement. 

The survey also found that:

— Alcohol consumption is more popular among Lutherans (76 percent) and Methodists (62 percent) than Baptists (33 percent), non-denominational (43 percent) and Assemblies of God/Pentecostals (23 percent).

— Male Protestant churchgoers (48 percent) are more likely to drink alcohol than are women (37 percent).

— Young adults (ages 18-34) are evenly split. Fifty…

On Tuesday night, the Tonight Show’s host Jimmy Fallon announced that Operation Blessing in partnership with Home Depot would be helping a deserving family in the audience rebuild their home which was severely damaged by Hurricane Florence. 

Earlier this year, the McArthur family’s home was devastated by Hurricane Florence causing water damaged and destruction to their home. Nonetheless, the family stayed faithful. 

In an interview with CBN News, Divya McArthur said she was finding peace in Romans 8:28 which says, “all things work together for the good of those that love the Lord.’ 

The family first met Operation Blessing when they came to help them gut part of their house following the hurricane. Though the organization had helped to start the rebuilding process for the McArthurs, they wanted to do more. 

According to CBN News, during the demolition, the organization told the McArthurs that the Tonight Show wanted to invite some of the people affected by the storm out to their show for some much-needed time away from the disaster. The family prepared for some time away from the destruction, but what they didn’t know was that God was about to provide them with everything they needed on national TV. 

During Tuesday night’s show, Fallon called Terry and Divya McArthur along with their 12-year-old son to the…

The prosperity gospel is a dangerous belief that can “overshadow the Gospel of Christ,” the pope’s communication advisers wrote in a Vatican-approved journal.

“The risk of this form of religious anthropocentrism, which puts humans and their well-being at the center, is that it transforms God into a power at our service, the Church into a supermarket of faith, and religion into a utilitarian phenomenon that is eminently sensationalist and pragmatic,” they wrote in the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica.

The prosperity gospel, which promises health and wealth to Christians, is a “pseudo-gospel,” according to writers Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa.

The theology makes God “in the image and likeness of the people and their situation, and not according to the biblical model.”

The article said that such theology gives people the false belief that because they are not rich, they are not faithful.

“On the contrary, poverty hits them with a blow that is unbearable for two reasons: first, the person thinks their faith is unable to move the providential hands of God; second, their miserable situation is a divine imposition, a relentless punishment to be accepted in submission.”

The article also quotes Pope Francis, who told Latin American and Caribbean bishops that the prosperity gospel makes the church “run like a business in a misleading way…

Satanists from the San Francisco Bay area are angry that their handmade satanic Christmas ornaments are being stolen off of their tree.

In the California Bay Area, hundreds of decorated Christmas trees stand in a local park for this year’s Christmas in the Park event.  Each tree in the park is sponsored by a different group, and this year, one of the trees is being sponsored by Satanic Bay Area. 

According to ABC7 News, the organization made around 140 handmade ornaments featuring pentagraphs and upside-down crosses for the tree. The group is quickly running out of ornaments as many of them have already gone missing. The organization is claiming that the ornaments are intentionally being stolen off their tree. 

In a press release posted to the groups Facebook page, member Daniel Walker wrote, “We’re fairly certain that people are taking [the ornaments] out of admiration rather than antagonism. But we’re running out so fast that we’re issuing this plea for light-fingered admirers to stop.”

According to the press release, last year The Satanic Temple had a similar experience when someone stole their goat-headed tree topper off of their Christmas in the Park tree. 

While the Satanic Bay Area group claims that they are participating in the event to show people that Satanic groups “are part of their local communities too,” many…