Members of Inland Hills Church in Chino, California, are now grappling with grief after their lead pastor, Andrew Stoecklein, succumbed to self-inflicted injuries Saturday after a battle with depression and anxiety, his church said. He was 30.

“Inland Hills Church grieves with heavy hearts as our Lead Pastor Andrew Stoecklein was welcomed into Heaven on Saturday night after battling depression and anxiety. It’s not the outcome we hoped and prayed for, and today we grieve as a church family,” the megachurch said in an announcement on Facebook late Sunday.

“In his time leading Inland Hills, Andrew reached so many with his warm wit, passionate heart for God, and teaching that always, always pointed others to Jesus. The loving husband, father, son, and friend that he was will continue to inspire us in leading others into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ,” the announcement continued.

The news of Stoecklein’s death came shortly after the church revealed that he had tried to take his own life on Friday morning and was placed on life support.

“IHC Family and friends, please pray for our lead pastor, Andrew Stoecklein. He tried to take his own life Friday morning, and is…

A federal court ruling has reversed rules that regulate the pornography industry. 

The change, which was ruled on in early August, alters U.S. Code Title 18 section 2257 that says producers in the pornography industry must keep records of the age of actors. The law also said that government officials could review those records at any time. 

Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Pornography Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, and University of Massachusetts-Boston professor David L. Levy, said the changes are “the only way to verify and track performers’ ages and serves as a major incentive for businesses across the complex supply chain to monitor content.”

Judge Michael Baylson of the U.S. 3^rd Circuit of Appeals ruled that many of the section’s requirements were unconstitutional. Under the new law, porn producers will use an age verification form.

“A lot of the lawyers that I’ve spoken to did say it’s pretty much a rabbit hole of law. So it might be better for us to think of another way to try and prevent children from being used in pornography,” Dines said.

“We’ve got to act quickly because I don’t trust them to not be uploading images of children,” she said.

In previous years, the federal government has strongly enforced the section 2257 law. In 2006, the company behind the “Girls Gone Wild” series was fined $2.1 million for violations.

The Free…

Marriott International bought hundreds of copies of the Bible and the Book of Mormon two years ago and is now placing them in hundreds of hotels. 

All total, about 300,000 rooms will have the two religious books by year’s end, according to the Associated Press. The Bible and the Book of Mormon are being put in rooms of hotels that fall under the Starwood brand, which Marriott bought in 2016.  

The founders of Marriott are members of the Mormon church.

“There are many guests who are not digitally connected who appreciate having one or both of these books available,” Marriott told AP in a statement. “It’s a tradition appreciated by many, objected to by few.”

The Marriott family has been placing the two books in its hotel rooms since opening their first hotel in the 1950s, according to AP. It’s so important to the family that the Marriott corporation places language in the contract with franchisees that a Bible and Book of Mormon be placed in every room.

Not everyone agrees with the tradition, though. John Ollila, founder of the travel blog LoyaltyLobby, told AP that publicly traded companies should remain neutral in religious conversations. 

“Why wouldn’t they want to target the widest possible market?” he asked.

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

Photo courtesy: Unsplash/Shelby Miller

…

This weekend, at a Madden gaming tournament in Florida, a gunman opened fire, killing 2 and injuring several others before turning the gun on himself.

Sunday’s tournament was located at the GLHF Game Bar in Jacksonville, Florida, and was supposed to be a fun event for gamers to compete, hoping to win the opportunity to advance to the next competition in Las Vegas, where they could play for cash prizes. Instead, the event turned into tragedy.

Shortly after the tournament began, gunman, David Katz, opened fire. The competition was being live-streamed on the gaming website, Twitch, and ended “abruptly… after several shots were heard.”

“Shortly after 1:30 p.m., 911 calls started pouring in about a shooting…” CNN says, mentioning that “Officers were on the scene within two minutes.”

As people started fleeing the Game Bar, nearby firemen, who happened to be training across the street, ran to the scene. They saw victims running with gunshot wounds and administered first aid. Other firemen were able to locate a police officer. The firemen began treating people at the scene “and found three victims, including Katz’s body.”

The other two victims have been identified on social media as Taylor Robertson of Ballard, West Virginia, and Elijah Clayton of Woodland Hills, California. Both were esteemed players of Madden and had won prizes in the past,…

Televangelist Ernest Angley and his megachurch, Grace Cathedral, are being sued for sexual misconduct and for allegedly forcing a former associate pastor to go through with a vasectomy.

According to the lawsuit, filed last week in Summit County Clerk of Courts, former Grace Cathedral employee Brock Miller is accusing Angley of “predatory, harassing, and offensive behavior,” including being asked to masturbate and strip naked for massages. 

Miller also alleges that Angley, who is now 97, forced him “to undergo a vasectomy — to ensure that he was never able to have children” as a condition of his employment at Grace Cathedral in January 2004. Miller was 18 at the time.

At the time of his employment, Miller lived across the street from Angley. A few months into his employment, Miller invited Angley to his house because he wanted to ask the preacher questions about his upcoming marriage. Some of those questions were sexual in nature but Miller says he felt comfortable asking them “because he (Angley) was a man of God and a father figure to him.”

During that conversation, Angley allegedly asked Miller to masturbate in front of him to “make sure he was…

A Jacksonville city councilman who represents the district where Sunday’s mass shooting occurred says America needs to return to God.

Florida city councilman Reggie Gaffney told WJAX-TV in Jacksonville that America and Florida have a “gun problem” and a “faith problem.” 

“We’ve really got to ask ourselves two questions,” he said. “What are we going to do about guns? And we’ve really got to get focused on getting closer with the Lord, because this city is under attack.” 

The shooting at a video game tournament at a waterfront mall known as Jacksonville Landing resulted in three deaths, including that of the alleged shooter, 24-year-old David Katz, who killed himself. Eleven were injured. 

Florida Gov. Rick Scott echoed the Jacksonville city councilman’s comments about faith.

“Every parent has to say to themselves: What can I do better? Our church leaders have to say to themselves, ‘What can we be doing to get people more involved in faith?’ Because when I was growing up, this wasn’t happening. And it’s happening now,” Scott said.

Young men, Scott said, are taking actions that were unthinkable when he was growing up. “Something’s changed,” since he was a child, Scott added, according to First Coast News.  

“There’s something wrong. Why are young men willing to give up their life? Who…

NEW DELHI, August 27, 2018 (Morning Star News) – Christians’ confidence in the judiciary in Nepal was shattered after a court sentenced a 63-year-old pastor to 10 years in prison on rape accusations the complainant later renounced, church leaders said.

 

Pastor Govinda Prasad Dhakal, 63, was sentenced on June 7 upon conviction for “frequently raping a minor” he and his wife had adopted in 2016. Christian leaders and his family roundly refute the allegation, citing an attempt by the alleged victim’s family to extort money from him with a false accusation.

 

“We are not happy to see the verdict, because everything was pre-decided,” Tanka Subedi, chair of the Religious Liberty Forum Nepal (RLFN), told Morning Star News.

 

The complainant, the now-12-year-old girl’s mother, confessed before the court that she had fabricated the rape story in a fit of anger over the pastor’s unwillingness to pay the girl’s school fees after he returned the child to her custody, a source present in the courtroom said. Authorities arrested Pastor Dhakal on Dec. 12, 2017, based on the mother’s initial statement.

 

Prabhushanta Dhakal, Pastor Dhakal’s younger son, was a witness to the courtroom proceedings. He said the mother expressed remorse, saying she never thought the pastor would end up in jail.

“The girl’s mother in the court confessed, ‘I was…

A local library in Lafayette, Louisiana has recently decided to host “Drag Queen Story Time” on October 6^th of this year. The purpose of the event, according to the Lafayette Public Library System, is to “share stories of individuality, openness and acceptance with families seeking an opportunity to show their children that every person is unique and should be treated with equal respect.” However, the mayor and various local members of government have challenged whether this event is something in the best interests of the children of the town.

Lafayette’s citizens have mixed reactions to the event. Theresa Elberson, the director of the Lafayette Public Library, where the event is being held, shared with KATC excerpts of emails that she received:

“We were horrified to learn that our public library is planning promote deviant lifestyles in the name of tolerance” said one email.

However other emails voiced support: “We need programming like this to show our children how differences are beautiful, insightful and most importantly completely normal.”

Drag Queens, according to Dr. Jennifer O’Brien writing for Psychology Today, are when a male, who is typically gay, dresses and acts like a woman for the purpose of entertainment in nightclubs and bars. “Dressed in stereotypical feminine clothing and with elaborate makeup and wigs, they usually adopt an…

Pope Francis has been accused by a former top Vatican official of covering up sex abuse in the Catholic Church for years.

Francis, who at the World Meeting of Families in Ireland over the weekend apologized to the faithful for cover-ups from others, has since given an enigmatic response to the accusations.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who previously served as the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States in one of the top diplomatic positions, states in an 11-page letter, published in The National Catholic Register, that “corruption had reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy.”

Viganò claims that Francis and other Vatican officials were made aware of the long list of accusations against former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, including that he took sexual advantage of young seminarians.

He insists that Pope Benedict XVI imposed sanctions on McCarrick in 2009 or 2010 and ordered him to withdraw to prayer and penance, but that Francis decided to cover for him and even put him in a position of a trusted counselor.

The alleged papal cover-up of McCarrick continued for years, the letter states, until finally the cardinal was removed from public…