After a video of a man being raised from the dead went viral, an investigation found that one South African Church paid people to pretend that the pastor performed miracles on them.

According to Church Leaders, South African news channel funded by the South African Government, SABC1, began to look into Pastor Alph Lukau and his Alleluia Ministries International church (AMI) after a video began circulating the web in February of a man named “Elliot” who was supposedly resurrected. 

The video shows Elliot lying in a coffin surrounded by hundreds of people during a church service, some who were claiming to be his family members and one claiming to be his landlord. As the man laid in the coffin with his eyes wide and mouth gaping, Pastor Lukau asked the people claiming to know him how and when he died. One woman who said that she was the man’s landlord, told Lukau that Elliot died on Friday because he could not receive medical care. At that, Lukau placed his hands on the man – who was already visibly breathing – and yelled: “Rise Up!” Elliot immediately sat up and Lukau along with several other men removed him from the coffin. Lukau can then be heard yelling into a microphone, “The dead man is alive! The coffin is empty!” A woman also holding a microphone then yelled, “Jesus! This is what you call an uncommon miracle!”

The video, which has now garnered over…

Some Liberty University students are protesting against Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife, Becki Falwell, after the couple said they would raise their granddaughter “as a girl.”

“She’s our granddaughter, and we’re raising her as a girl,” Mrs. Falwell said. “We’re not letting her have a choice. God makes the choice of what the babies are going to be and God decided she would be a girl.”

According to the Washington Examiner, the Falwells were speaking at a satellite Conservative Political Action Conference event that also featured Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News commentator.

The Falwells also said their granddaughter always has a baby doll with her, while their own sons grew up around guns.

In response, some 30 students at Liberty University carried waving gay pride flags and signs on campus supporting transgender rights.

The signs said, “LGBTQ Lives Matter” and “Hate is a choice, being transgender is not.”

“We’re out here mainly to start conversations, but to also be supportive,” said Elizabeth Axley, a sophomore demonstrator who is bisexual. “Yes, this is a Christian campus and, yes, Jerry Falwell Jr. has insinuated that he does not care about you but that does not mean that every Liberty student does not care about you — we love you.”

Caleb Fitzpatrick, a senior…

Catholics and Protestants in the United States have major a difference in drinking habits, as do mainline Protestants and evangelicals, according to a new Pew Research Center report. 

Sixty percent of Catholics say they have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, compared to 51 percent of Protestants who say the same.

Yet there is a divide within Protestantism: 66 percent of white mainline Protestants have consumed alcohol within the past 30 days, while 48 percent of black Protestants and 45 percent of white evangelical Protestants have done so. 

By comparison, 65 percent of Americans who are unaffiliated with any religion say they’ve consumed alcohol the past month.

“The relationship between religion and alcohol consumption remains a nuanced one, and not all U.S. religious groups eschew alcohol to the same degree,” Pew’s Philip Schwadel wrote in an analysis. 

White evangelical Protestants are most likely to view alcohol consumption as morally wrong, too. Twenty-three percent of them say drinking alcohol is morally wrong, compared to 13 percent of black Protestants and 7 percent of white mainline Protestants who say the same. Fifteen percent of Catholics say consuming alcohol is wrong.

“In the United States and many other countries, religiously active people are less likely to drink alcohol than those who are not as religious,” Schwadel wrote….

A leading pro-life leader is criticizing House and Senate Democrats for promoting a bill that would protect kittens in research experiments from harm, days after the same Democrats opposed a bill that would protect human babies who survive abortion.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, introduced the Kittens In Traumatic Testing Ends Now Act, on March 7, which would halt experiments within the U.S. Department of Agriculture that cause pain to kittens. A USDA laboratory breeds kittens and euthanizes them when the experiment is complete. Nearly 3,000 kittens have been used in research since 1982, according to one USDA administrator.  

“The KITTEN Act will protect these innocent animals from being needlessly euthanized in government testing, and make sure that they can be adopted by loving families instead,” Merkley said in a press release. 

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, noted that Merkley had voted days earlier against a bill that would require medical care for babies who survive abortion. It was known as the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

“‘Ridiculous’ doesn’t begin to describe a party that tells America to back away from the tables of crying newborns while it rushes to the rescue of kittens instead,” Perkins said in his Wednesday Washington Update. “I suppose we should also tell firefighters when…

MOSCOW (RNS) — Authorities in Vladivostok, the largest city in far eastern Russia, are planning to erect a gigantic statue of Jesus Christ on a site once designated for a monument of Vladimir Lenin.

The statue, which has not yet been approved by the Russian Orthodox Church, is to be 125 feet high – the same height as the Christ the Redeemer monument in Rio de Janeiro, according to blueprints made public by Vyatsky Posad, a Russian Orthodox Christian center. The statue will stand on top of a hill looking east over the Pacific Ocean.

Soviet authorities issued orders for the construction of a 98-foot-high bronze statue of Lenin at the site in 1972. Another statue, of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, was planned to be built on a neighboring hill. But construction hitches meant the plans were repeatedly postponed, before eventually being scrapped altogether in 1990.

Supporters of the Jesus statue are enthusiastic, despite the lack of details about the project. Descriptions of the statue as a “symbol of the unity of the Russian people” that would “bless” ships leaving and arriving in the port city were later deleted from the Vyatsky Posad’s website, for reasons that remain unclear. Attempts by Religion News Service to contact the Vyatsky Center for comment were unsuccessful.

Other Russian media outlets, however, have published blueprints for the project, and…