After being hospitalized for COVID-19 only one month ago, businessman and former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has died. He was 74.

Staff detailed Cain’s battle against the coronavirus in an announcement on his website early Thursday morning.

“We knew when he was first hospitalized with COVID-19 that this was going to be a rough fight. He had trouble breathing and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. We all prayed that the initial meds they gave him would get his breathing back to normal, but it became clear pretty quickly that he was in for a battle,” Dan Calabrese, the editor of HermanCain.com, wrote.

Just five days before his death and after several weeks of treatment, doctors had reportedly indicated “they thought he would eventually recover, although it wouldn’t be quick.”

Despite doctors’ optimism, according to the statement, Cain, “never quite seemed to get to the point where the doctors could advance him to the recovery phase.”

Cain would later succumb to the virus on Thursday morning.

“He’s entering the presence of the Savior he’s served as an associate minister at Antioch Baptist Church in Atlanta for, and preparing for his reward,” Calabrese wrote.

Citing Romans 2:6-7 which says, “God ‘will repay each person according to what they have done.’ To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will…

(RNS) — John Ortberg, popular Christian author and speaker, has resigned as pastor of Menlo Church, a megachurch congregation outside of San Francisco.

His resignation is effective Sunday (Aug. 2).

“I have considered my seventeen years as pastor here to be the greatest joy I’ve had in ministry,” Ortberg said in a statement. “But this has been a difficult time for parents, volunteers, staff, and others, and I believe that the unity needed for Menlo to flourish will be best served by my leaving.”

In November, Ortberg was placed on leave after Menlo Church elders learned he allowed a volunteer who had admitted being attracted to children to work with kids at the church and in the community.

Ortberg had first learned of the volunteer’s admission in July 2018. He did not inform other church leaders or the youth sports team that the volunteer coached. Church leaders did not learn of his actions until Daniel Lavery, Ortberg’s son, sent an email blowing the whistle.

The pastor returned to the pulpit this spring after the elders hired a lawyer to conduct an inquiry into the matter.

But controversy at the church flared up again after Lavery revealed that the volunteer in question was his younger brother and the pastor’s youngest son, a fact that had been withheld from the congregation. Lavery, former friends of the Ortberg family and other critics of the decision have called in recent weeks for the pastor…

(RNS) — When André Gagné heard Stella Immanuel, a Trump-supporting doctor, talk about demon sex and hydroxychloroquine, he knew what she was talking about.

At least the demon part.

“That’s essentially Genesis Chapter 6,” said Gagné, professor of theological studies at Concordia University in Montreal. Or at least one interpretation of the passage.

In that chapter of the Bible, spiritual creatures known as the “sons of God” look down on human women, find them to be good-looking and decide to sleep with them, leading to the birth of a group known as the Nephilim. All of this behavior eventually culminates in the Flood.

Immanuel, a doctor and the head of Fire Power Ministries, made headlines this week — both for her medical claims and her beliefs about spirituality and conspiracies involving aliens— when she appeared in a video promoting hydroxychloroquine to fight COVID-19.

Gagné said he can’t comment about conspiracies. But the professor, who studies Pentecostal and charismatic Christians, said Immanuel’s spiritual beliefs sounded familiar.

Immanuel appears to be connected with African Pentecostal and charismatic church movements, where the spiritual world and the physical are closely connected.

What happens in the spiritual world affects the physical world in that belief system.

“It could be sickness, it could be prosperity,” he said about how the spiritual…

Pastor John Ortberg of Menlo Church in Menlo Park, California, has resigned as the congregation’s leader just over two weeks after a “supplemental independent investigation” was launched into the circumstances under which he allowed his son to work with children despite confessing he was attracted to minors, elders announced Wednesday.

“In recent days and after a process of mutual discernment with John and in consultation with the Presbytery, it is with a heavy heart that the board unanimously concluded that John should resign as Senior Pastor of our church. He agreed and tendered his resignation last week,” the church’s elder board said in a statement posted on the church’s website.

Ortberg was first asked to go on personal leave from the church on Nov. 22, 2019, while an investigation of concerns raised by a third party about a then unidentified church volunteer was conducted. Earlier this month, Daniel Lavery, a trans-identified woman who is Ortberg’s estranged daughter,…

Pastor John MacArthur of California’s Grace Community Church defended his decision to hold in-person services despite the state-mandated closure of churches, saying his congregation is “protesting lies and deception for the sake of the truth.”

On Tuesday, MacArthur appeared on  Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to explain why his Sun Valley, California-based church decided to reopen just two weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom indefinitely closed churches and other businesses in more than 30 of the state’s 58 counties as part of its response to the coronavirus.

“We are the original protesters,” MacArthur told Carlson. “We go back 500 years to the Protestant Reformation. We are still protesting lies and deception for the sake of the truth.”

According to MacArthur, in choosing to reopen, Grace Community Church operated under the Constitution’s…

An Episcopal priest who oversees a congregation in Georgia has become an internet celebrity after posting a video of himself parodying a song from the hit musical “Hamilton.”

The Rev. Lonnie Lacy, rector of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Tifton, posted a video to YouTube on Saturday of him parodying the “Hamilton” song “You’ll Be Back.”

In the popular musical, the song is sung by King George III to the rebellious colonials, with the villainous monarch swearing that he will be victorious in the war.

Lacy took on a more benevolent tone to his version, dressing up in clerical attire and speaking about the benefits of attending worship, with the clergyman dancing around the empty church.

The video shows Lacy optimistically setting up for the return of normal worship, removing ropes from the pews, setting out hymns and…

Drug addict turned evangelist Todd White openly confessed that he has been undergoing a spiritual transformation and has shifted how he teaches the Bible.

White, who is the founder and president of Lifestyle Christianity, preached a sermon on Sunday noting that God had been strongly dealing with him in the past six months.

White started out by offering an analogy by modern evangelist Ray Comfort who insisted that there is a fine line between a man-centered gospel and the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Noting that the “Bible says we are dead in our sin,” White then shared that he feels “like I just met Jesus again! There’s just this rekindled thing inside of me.”

“This has been the hardest season of my life,” he shared. “I’m like, ‘Lord, what are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m pruning every branch that you have.’ I’m like, ‘It’s not OK. It hurts.’ And He said, ‘If you were dead, it wouldn’t hurt. There are parts of you that need to die. I’m going to kill them.’” 

White shared that this convicted him and showed him that he had not been preaching “the whole Gospel.”

“I repent!” White exclaimed. “You have no idea. I will not be responsible. I believe that when I preach that the blood of people is on my hands.”

White also rebuked the modern church for preaching a feel-good message instead of addressing sin and stressing repentance.

“When you…

Christian author and radio host Eric Metaxas is facing criticism after saying that Jesus was white in a tweet.

According to the Christian Post, Metaxas, who hosts The Eric Metaxas Show, was responding to an announcement that the United Methodist Church would be working with author Robin DiAngelo to create videos on “Deconstructing White Privilege.”

DiAngelo is the author of the 2018 book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

“Jesus was white. Did he have ‘white privilege’ even though he was entirely without sin? Is the United Methodist Church covering that? I think it could be important,” Metaxas tweeted in response to the UMC announcement.

Jesus was white. Did he have “white privilege” even though he was entirely without sin? Is the United Methodist Church covering that? I think it could be important. https://t.co/lNv67Z7g5l

— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) July 27, 2020

Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., said Metaxas was wrong in calling Jesus white.

“Jesus was not a white, American man. The U.S. flag is not a symbol for the Church or for Jesus. The National Anthem is not a holy hymn. Slavery was not a ‘necessary evil.’ The oppressor even tries to control the response to oppression. The truth will make us free,” she tweeted early Tuesday morning.

Jesus was not a white, American man.

The U.S. flag is not a symbol for the Church or for…