A church in California is suing the city of San Rafael for forcing it to pay property taxes which religious institutions are ordinarily exempt from. 

The city of San Rafael adopted a tax called the Paramedic Services Special Tax in 2010, which, according to CBN News, allows the city to annually tax non-residential buildings at a rate of up to 14 cents per square foot. 

Under the California State constitution, churches, schools and other religious institutions are typically exempt from property taxes, but the city is insisting that Valley Baptist Church is responsible for paying the substantial tax bill of $13,000.

The city is claiming that though the Paramedic Services tax may be considered a property tax, it is not a regular property tax, but a “special tax,” thus making the church responsible to pay. 

Valley Baptist attorneys, however, believe the special tax is unconstitutional, which was a main part of their argument in court on Tuesday. 

“We’re asking the court to call this violation what it is—an unconstitutional property tax,” said Pacific Justice Institute Attorney Ray Hacke, who is representing Valley Baptist in this case.  “Evidence shows that the city has no intention of collecting paramedic tax money from the public schools, which are protected by the same tax exemptions as churches under the California Constitution.  They are not only…

The United Kingdom’s highest court ruled in favor of a Belfast bakery owned by evangelical Christians who would not bake a cake with a message that promoted same-sex marriage. The unanimous decision overturned a £500 fine that had been imposed on Ashers Bakery, which is owned by Daniel and Amy McDaniel. 

In 2014, Gareth Lee went to Ashers and placed an order for a cake that he wanted to take to an event organized by those who were pushing for the legalization of same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. He asked for the cake to feature Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie and the inscription “Support Gay Marriage.” Mrs. McArthur took the initial order but later informed Lee that she could not bake the cake in good conscience and gave him a refund.

Lee, a gay man, sued Ashers for discriminating against him based on his sexual orientation and political beliefs. A Belfast county court and a court of appeals both ruled that Ashers discriminated against Lee. 

In the judgment, Lady Hale explained that the court believed there was no discrimination involved because Ashers refused to bake the cake based on the message it conveyed, not because of the person who ordered it. “It is deeply humiliating, and an affront to human dignity, to deny someone a service because of that person’s race, gender, disability, sexual orientation or any of the other…

TIZI-OUZOU, Algeria, October 10, 2018 (Morning Star News) – Two Christians in Algeria are facing trial after the Muslim wife of one accused them of suggesting she leave Islam, her husband said.

Rachid Ouali and his 67-year-old friend, Ali Larchi, went before a judge in Bouira, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of Algiers, on Tuesday (Oct. 9), after Ouali’s wife filed a complaint in July accusing them of bringing her to a church service and of urging her to leave Islam, Ouali told Morning Star News.

He and Larchi deny the accusations, which Ouali’s wife later told him she made under pressure from relatives, Ouali said. His wife’s name is withheld.

Residents of Lekser, 30 kilometers (19 miles) southeast of Bouira, Ouali and his wife went to have lunch at Ali’s home in nearby Bechloul in late June. Ali and his wife and five children are well-known in the area as Christians who receive guests of all kinds, Ouali said. Bouira Province lies in Kabylie Region, which has a sizeable population of Christian converts from Islam.

As the two wives conversed and the two families were enjoying the meal, Ouali and Larchi began telling each other anecdotes of Christ’s faithfulness in their lives, Ouali said. Mentions of Jesus’ name and exclamations of “Hallelujah” were frequent, he said.

Upon overhearing this conversation, Ouali’s wife suddenly jumped…

This year’s “Woman, Thou Art Loosed! Master Class” women’s conference, hosted by Bishop T.D. Jakes of the 30,000-member megachurch The Potter’s House, will tackle domestic violence in observance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Attendees of this year’s conference, held Oct. 18-20 in Dallas, Texas, are being asked to bring an extra bag in their suitcases as part of the Bags-2-Go campaign presented by The Potter’s House United MegaCARE. The bags can be “new and gently used, of all kinds and dimensions,” and will be given to domestic violence victims in partnership with Genesis Women’s Shelter, according to a press release sent to The Christian Post.

“October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month,” notes the press release. “One in four women in the U.S. experiences domestic abuse, while one in three women does so in Texas. Once a woman decides to leave an abusive relationship, belongings and toiletries are often thrown into plastic or garbage bags, usually ripping and falling apart before the woman makes it to a designated safe place or women’s shelter.”

“The Bags-2-Go…

Switzerland’s lower house passed a bill in September that would add homophobia and transphobia to the national criminal code and require a fine or up to three years in prison for offenders.

The bill passed the National Council, 118-60, and now goes to the upper house, the Council of States, according to the newspaper Le Temps. Five members abstained.  

The bill would place sexual orientation and gender identity alongside race, ethnicity and religion in the criminal code and ban “incitement to hatred or discrimination against a person or group of persons,” according to Le Temps. 

National Council member Mathias Reynard asserted that “homophobia is not an opinion” but instead a crime. 

“Victory!” he wrote on Twitter after the bill passed.

Yves Nidegger, another member of the National Council, expressed concern about the law’s “legally problematic and indefinable” terms. He also wondered whether “pedophilia, bisexuality, gerontophilia, necrophilia, fetishism, zoophilia, and so on … are sexual orientations that must be protected or not protected.”

Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com.

Photo courtesy: Kirsty Lee/Unsplash

Hundreds responded to the message of salvation and turned from their sins last weekend at a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association revival in Mexico’s third largest city.

Franklin Graham, the son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham and president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, preached at the Festival de Esperanza (Festival of Hope) in Monterey at the request of local churches.

According to Graham, over 16,000 attended Saturday night’s service in Arena Monterrey. On Saturday afternoon, a FestiKids event was held in which at least 1,000 people responded to Christ, according to BGEA.

On his Facebook page, Graham wrote that hundreds responded to the call during Sunday evening’s sermon “to turn from their sins and trust Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.”

BGEA reports that at least 700 “came forward to make a decision for Christ” by standing in front of the stage during Graham’s sermons.

“I told the full house at Arena Monterrey that there was nothing more valuable than a soul,” Graham wrote. “Your soul lives inside your body and when your body dies, your soul will live forever in…

A Hindu parliamentarian is accusing Christian missionaries of trying to harm Indian culture.

Parliamentarian Rakesh Sinha says he wants India to become a Hindu nation. 

“It is time to launch a drive to get rid of Christian missionaries from the country,” said the Hindu group, RSS-National Volunteer Corps.

Added Sinha: “Christian missionaries in the past 300 years worked to destroy the culture of the indigenous people.”

But Prabhajar Tirkey, who is president of the Rashtriya Isai Mahasangh ecumenical forum, said India has benefitted from the work of Christian missionaries. He added that he and others are working to petition India’s president and chairman of the parliament to expel Sinha.

Earlier this year, Sinha said Christian missionaries were a “threat for the unity of the country.”

He said that democracy in the area had “weakened” because of the “conversion of people … into Christianity.”

“The conspiracies hatched by these missionaries are threat for the country,” he said.

Three states in India have upcoming polls at the end of the year ahead of the federal elections in May. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governs the three states, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The group supports Hindu interests. According to reports, many in India are “fed up” with the BJP.

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Reformed theologian John Piper has said that the “one kind of sin” believers must “take care of right away” is the sin that hurts others.

Responding to a question about how to make time to confess sin amid the busyness of life, Piper, the founder of DesiringGod.org and former lead pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, explained that Christians should immediately interrupt their busy schedules to repent of sins that hurt other people.

“If we discern that the words we have spoken or what we’ve done has wounded somebody or caused them to sin, I think Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:23–24 about leaving our gift at the altar and hastening toward reconciliation really does apply in principle here,” he said. “If they’re hurt, then let’s just stop what we’re doing, apologize, and seek to make it right.”

The pastor contended that repentance doesn’t need to be long-winded; God would “gladly receive from us a two- or three-second whispered, ‘Oh Lord, I’m so sorry. Please help me. Please forgive me.'”

“We must remember that there is no merit assigned in the Bible to any particular length of confession or repentance or remorse for sin,” he offered. “In fact, when Jesus teaches the Lord’s prayer and how to apologize to God for sin,…