Two new undercover videos seem to show Planned Parenthood employees at clinics ignoring claims of statutory rape and advising pimps on how to get an unreported abortion for underage prostitutes.

In two new videos from Live Action, “Aiding Abusers: Planned Parenthood’s Cover-Up of Child Sex Abuse,” the pro-life group shows undercover investigators talking with clinic employees.

Live Action claims that its undercover sex trafficking investigation found eight different Planned Parenthood employees at seven different facilities in different states “showed a willingness to aid and abet sex traffickers.”

“Rather than reporting suspected abuse to authorities, Planned Parenthood has repeatedly looked the other way,” Live Action President Lila Rose said in a statement. “Because of Planned Parenthood’s atrocious record of returning victims to their abusers to suffer yet more abuse, Live Action has worked for a decade to expose the systemic abuse cover-up.”

Planned Parenthood officials have not responded to the investigations.

In the video investigation of sex trafficking, undercover investigators posed as pimps and prostitutes to ask employees how they could get an abortion for underage girls.

Undercover investigators said they were involved in “sex work” and worked with young girls about 14 to 15 years old.

However, in one instance, a clinic…

Thomas Hatley, a former chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, has called for the resignation of Kevin Ueckert, chairman of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s board of trustees, as well as the executive board members for firing the seminary’s former president Paige Patterson.

Hatley, who served as IMB chairman for eight years and has been a pastor in the SBC for more than 40 years, also called for the reinstatement of Patterson as president of the Texas seminary and an independent investigation of the claims that led to his firing.

“I recommend that the SWBTS board chairman and executive committee resign as board members for the following reasons,” Hatley wrote in an open letter to Southern Baptists after noting that conflicts should be handled biblically with both love and grace.

Among the reasons he listed as warranting the resignation of Ueckert and the seminary’s executive board is the lack of understanding of the need for decorum, process and…

The Christian pastor who was abducted on Sunday with his family in Burkina Faso’s north-eastern province of Soum has been released.

Local sources told national broadcaster Omega Radio that Pastor Pierre Boena, his son David and his daughter-in-law, Ami Sawadogo were released yesterday (7 June).

The report does not specifically mention the two granddaughters, Fasne-wendé Ouédraogo and Pélagie Sawadogo, who were also abducted during the raid on Sunday, but does state that the pastor was released “with all the other members of his family in Malian territory”.

The reason for their release is not known, nor is it known whether a ransom was paid.

Pierre Boena, a pastor with an Assembly of God church, was kidnapped on Sunday evening in his village of Bilhore, near the border with Mali.

At the time of the attack he was at home with four family members and a church member, Pauline Sawadogo, who was visiting with her two daughters, Sanata and Zoenabou, local sources told World Watch Monitor.

These sources suggested that Pauline and her daughters may have been kidnapped along with Pastor Boena’s family on Sunday. Speaking on Thursday they said the whereabouts of Pauline and her daughters remain unknown.

Meanwhile there has still been no news regarding catechist Basnéré Mathieu Sawadogo, and his wife Alizeta, who were abducted two weeks earlier….

Pastor John Gray was formally installed on Sunday as senior pastor of Relentless Church in South Carolina and was joined by many big name pastors, including Joel Osteen, and gospel artists who showed up to support him.

The more than 3-hour long service featured tributes and words of blessings from Osteen, Hillsong Church NYC’s Carl Lentz, Kirk Franklin, as well as video messages from Bishop T.D. Jakes, Rich Wilkerson, Brian and Bobby Houston and Pastor Chris Hodges, among others.

“[God has] called John to lay his life down so many people can walk over their lives,” Lentz said. “He’s not a guy that changes because of the platform; he changes any platform he’s on.

“This guy right here (Gray) is prepared to lay his life down. … This church is going to be about the name of Jesus.”

The Hillsong pastor also commended the founder of the megachurch, Ron Carpenter, for passing the baton.

“It’s one thing to give somebody your used car. It’s another thing to give them the best you got,” Lentz said to Carpenter, referring to the megachurch. “This is special. … I can understand someone giving away a church in a barn or something but you walk in and see this.”

Gray took…

Former Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson, who was recently terminated as president emeritus of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has decided to withdraw from giving the sermon at the denomination’s annual meeting next week in Dallas, Texas.

The news that Patterson was stepping away from the convention’s sermon was announced Friday morning by Scott Colter, his former chief of staff at SWBTS.

“Paige Patterson has announced his kind withdrawal from the convention sermon and evangelism report at #SBC18 in an effort to bring harmony to the Southern Baptist Convention,” tweeted Colter.

In a letter sent to SBC President Steve Gaines, Patterson explained that he was recusing himself from delivering the sermon following a lot of “soul-searching before our God” and to “contribute to harmony within the Southern Baptist Convention.”

“All of this I do with a heart full of confidence in our God and with the hope that He will favor the Convention and her churches with the benediction of heaven,” wrote Patterson, whose full letter was posted by the Baptist Press.

Remember those controversies as some U.S. state officials installed Ten Commandments monuments in their courts and schools? Imagine the uproar if instead the government had ordered the Christian cross to be installed in all state buildings.

The conservative governor of Bavaria, in southern Germany, has done just that, ordering that crosses be displayed at the entrances to government buildings across his state.

The result, predictably, has been confusing and controversial.

Bavaria’s premier, Markus Söder, has presented the move not as a religious dictate, but merely a reflection of the values his fellow Bavarians share. The cross, he says, “has a defining effect on the identity of our society,” and hanging it in public offices shows “our Bavarian identity and way of life.”

Critics have denounced the order as a bald effort to woo Bavaria’s traditionally pious and heavily Catholic conservative voters away from the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, an anti-immigrant party that claimed 94 seats in the country’s Parliament in federal elections last year. AfD’s fortunes have risen on a backlash against the influx of over a million migrants since 2015, mostly Muslims fleeing the Middle East.

Unfortunately for Söder, even the national heads of Germany’s Roman Catholic and Protestant churches — who both live in the Bavarian capital,…