| October 8, 2006 | - A ministry in Atlanta, Georgia, was sending camouflaged
devotionals to U.S. soldiers serving overseas.
| Source:
WTVM.com
|
| October 3, 2006 | - In Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, a man named Charles Carl Roberts IV, who said he was angry with God, entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse with guns, a bag of nails, a bucket, chains, clamps, and a tube of KY jelly, and shot ten girls, killing five; he then shot and killed himself. “We must not,” said the grandfather of one of the slain girls, “think evil of this man.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| June 15, 2006 | -
Gay
Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson said that he is “not an abomination before God.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 9, 2006 | - Three college students in Alabama were arrested for setting nine churches on fire. One of the students, Benjamin Moseley, was planning to appear in a school theater production called "Young Zombies in Love."
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 11, 2005 | - A religious studies professor at the University of Kansas was beaten up on a roadside after he mocked creationism in an email.
| Source:
CantonRep.com
|
| October 15, 2005 | - Four Amish children in Minnesota were diagnosed with polio.
| Source:
AP
|
| September 14, 2005 | - A federal judge in California ruled that requiring students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional. "Undoubtedly," read the court's decision, "the pledge contains a religious phrase."
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| July 20, 2005 | - Authorities in Malaysia arrested fifty-eight people who worship a giant teapot.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| May 8, 2005 | - Ave Maria University, a Catholic college founded by the retired CEO of Domino's Pizza, graduated its first class and gave an honorary degree to L. Paul Bremer, who told the assembled graduates that Muslim extremists were against the separation of church and state.
| Source:
Netscape News
|
| March 2, 2005 | -
President Bush said that his administration granted $2 billion to social programs at churches, synagogues, and mosques in 2004--20 percent more than in 2003. The President made it clear that these programs did not discriminate based on faith. “All drunks are welcome,” he said.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 22, 2005 | - and American evangelical groups were exploiting the ensuing chaos to recruit new members,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 1, 2004 | - It was revealed that a Hmong who recently shot five hunters in Wisconsin is a shaman.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 23, 2004 | - Americans were celebrating National Bible Week.
| Source:
House
|
| July 4, 2004 | - female rice farmers in Nepal were plowing their fields in the nude to please the rain god.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 3, 2004 | - The Bush-Cheney campaign asked church-going volunteers to provide church membership directories to state campaign committees, raising questions about whether the directive violates the separation between church and state.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 22, 2004 | - It was reported that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was crowned in the Senate office building after announcing that he is the "savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent." Several lawmakers from both major parties were present, including Rep. Danny Davis, who wore white gloves as he placed the crown on Moon's head.
| Source:
The Hill
|
| March 11, 2004 | - In Penticton, British Columbia, a man cut off his penis and testicles and ran through the street naked, trailing blood, screaming, "Repent, repent, fornicators."
| Source:
Calgary Sun
|
| March 3, 2004 | - Two hundred seventy-one Shiite worshipers were killed in simultaneous bombing attacks on mosques in Baghdad and Karbala; international telephone service was knocked out on the same day by a rocket attack.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 2, 2004 | -
Russian religious leaders refused to permit Roman Catholics to attend a conference on religious tolerance.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, was sentenced to death, eight years after his trial began.
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 14, 2004 | - "There will be a purge on God's orders, and evil will be eliminated like shadows," said the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the cult leader and owner of the Washington Times, in a recent speech. "Gays will be eliminated, the three Israels will unite. If not then they will be burned. We do not know what kind of world God will bring but this is what happens. It will be greater than the Communist purge but at God's orders."
| Source:
New York Press
|
| December 30, 2003 | - Religious "Yahwists," people who try to follow Old Testament lifestyle rules, sued Arkansas to force the state to permit Yahwist prisoners to eat kosher meals and to grow long hair and beards.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 26, 2003 | -
India's prime minister expressed support for building a Hindu temple on the site of a sixteenth-century mosque, which was destroyed by Hindu officials eight years ago, resulting in riots and killing. Hindus believe that Ram, a deity, was born there.
| |
| December 14, 2003 | - Lightning struck a church in Swaziland and killed a priest, five children, and three others.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| December 5, 2003 | - A priest was on the run in Congo after killing 64 members of his congregation with a potion he said would give them salvation.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 23, 2003 | - The Russian Orthodox Church denounced the Mormons for buying the names of dead Russians so they can baptize their dead souls. "Our ceremony is not rebaptism," said a spokesman for the Nizhni Novgorod Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, "it only gives the soul of the deceased person the freedom of choice to accept our belief or to reject it."
| Source:
Guardian
|
| November 18, 2003 | - L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul of Iraq, said that Saddam Hussein is "a voice in the wilderness."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 1, 2003 | - Shoko Asahara, the guru of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, claimed that he had lost control of his followers shortly before they released nerve gas in the Tokyo
subway eight years ago.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 25, 2003 | - The lawyer for Captain James Yee, the former American prison-camp chaplain who was arrested for being a Muslim spy, complained that his client was being mistreated in prison.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 19, 2003 | -
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, insisted that the war on terrorism is not a religious war.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 19, 2003 | - and the pope beatified Mother Teresa.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 17, 2003 | - A Buddhist abbot in Thailand cured a sick woman with a magic wooden penis.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| October 17, 2003 | - Prime Minister Malathir Mohammad of Malaysia denounced the Jews.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 15, 2003 | - Dr. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, said that Americans should remember that terrorists can "have serious moral goals." He said that "it is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that is shared by those who would not dream of acting in the same way, an aim that is intelligible or desirable." Dr. Williams also warned America not to become "trapped in a self-referential morality."
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| October 13, 2003 | - A Muslim girl in Oklahoma was suspended from school after she refused to take off her head scarf.
| Source:
CNN
|
| October 2, 2003 | - A two-year-old Iraqi girl was shot dead in her home by American forces after a roadside bomb went off next to a military convoy. "If we determine there were deaths and/or injuries to innocent civilians as a result of U.S. forces responding to an attack," said Major Anthony Aguto, "we will compensate the family with three years of standard Iraqi salary." The grandfather of the dead girl said they didn't want the money: "I submit my complaint only to God."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 1, 2003 | - School officials in Paris, Texas, apologized after the high school band played "Deutschland uber alles," with the Nazi flag flying, on the evening of Rosh Hashana.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 26, 2003 | - The Industrial Christian Fellowship, a Christian think tank, said that financial workers don't get enough prayer support and called on believers to pray for bankers and stockbrokers.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 21, 2003 | - A U.S. Army chaplain was arrested on suspicion of being a Muslim spy.
| Source:
Independent
|
| September 7, 2003 | -
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, resigned, and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, was injured in an Israeli
airstrike.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 5, 2003 | - The Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt condemned gay marriage.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 4, 2003 | -
Christians holding signs wept outside the prison; one sign read "Dead Doctors Can't Kill."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2003 | - The World Council of Churches denounced the invasion of Iraq as "immoral" and "ill advised" and called for the withdrawal of American forces.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2003 | - Paul J.
Hill, a Christian who murdered an abortion doctor in Pensacola, Florida, was executed by lethal injection.
Hill said that he was looking forward to getting his reward in heaven.
| Source:
New York Times, New York Post
|
| August 31, 2003 | - King Fahd of Saudi Arabia told Muslim clerics that it was time to start fighting religious extremism.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 28, 2003 | - Ireland's Roman Catholic Kiltegan Fathers paid $353,000 to the victim of a pedophile priest who once attacked the victim as his father lay dying nearby.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 28, 2003 | - Judge Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument was removed from the Alabama supreme court building as Christians howled in anger outside, blowing ram's horns and shaking Bibles at the sky; the state was forced to hire a company from Georgia for the job because no one from Alabama would do it.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 24, 2003 | - John Geoghan, a defrocked pedophile priest, was strangled to death in prison.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 23, 2003 | - Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama was suspended (with pay) for refusing to obey a federal court order to remove his big Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 13, 2003 | - Sylvester Stallone's mother said that her dogs, which she believes to be psychic, have predicted a victory for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California recall election, and an apocalyptic Christian preacher named Jack Van Impe claimed that he had been contacted by Condoleezza Rice, who he said asked him for an outline of what the end of the world will be like.
| Source:
MSNBC.com
|
| August 10, 2003 | - A Roman Catholic bishop in Canada warned that Jean Chrétien might burn in hell for legalizing gay marriage.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 9, 2003 | - The Archdiocese of Boston offered to pay $55 million to settle the lawsuits of 542 people who were sexually molested by priests.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 6, 2003 | - A forty-year-old Vatican document was discovered that commands "perpetual silence" and secrecy in dealing with priests who have sexual contact with "youths of either sex or with brute animals."
| Source:
CBSNews.com
|
| August 1, 2003 | - The Vatican issued an edict calling homosexual unions "evil" and describing adoption of children by gay couples as "doing violence."
| Source:
Guardian
|
| July 20, 2003 | - Officials from Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico changed the name of Highway 666 to Highway 491.
| Source:
AP
|
| June 28, 2003 | - The court also ruled that a California law that retroactively abolished the statute of limitations on sex crimes is unconstitutional; California's attorney general said that the ruling will lead to the release of about 800 child molesters.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 4, 2003 | - A Lutheran minister in Denmark was suspended from his job for saying that "there is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no resurrection."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 1, 2003 | - Eric Robert Rudolph, the Christian
terrorist, was arrested in North Carolina after a five-year manhunt.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| May 17, 2003 | - L. Paul Bremer, the new American overseer of Iraq, informed Iraqi leaders that the United States and Britain had changed their minds about setting up an interim government made up of Iraqis and that he would remain in control until further notice. Bremer toured Mosul and praised it as "a great example of embryonic democracy"; elsewhere in the city a crowd chanted "America is the enemy of God."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 8, 2003 | -
Administrators at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky ordered the removal of American flags from tables in the Methodist school's cafeteria.
“God's people do not wave flags as a sign of conquest,” the food-service director was told.
“We bear crosses as the sign of reconciliation.”
| |
| January 21, 2003 | -
Lawyers for the Archdiocese of Boston began subpoenaing the records of therapists who are treating victims of pedophile priests.
| |
| January 14, 2003 | -
A new report found that the Vatican's crime rate is among the highest in the world, with 608 criminal offenses last year in a state with just over 500 residents.
| |
| June 20, 2002 | -
Tom Cruise accepted a “happi” coat from the Japanese Transport Minister.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| May 14, 2002 | -
Cardinal Bernard F. Law was deposed in Boston by lawyers for 86 people who say they were sexually molested by the Rev. John J. Geoghan, whom the Catholic Church moved from one parish to another even though he was a known pedophile. When Law was asked whether he was aware that Geoghan was a child molester when he was placed in the parish of one of the victims, Law replied: “I was aware that there was involvement because, because of the, of having removed him out of one parish and putting him between assignments before sending him back to another, and then necessitating a letter that would not have been necessary unless there had been a problem.”
| |
| March 26, 2002 | -
The Justice Department's “Operation Candyman” led to the arrests of 90 people, including two Roman Catholic
priests, on various charges relating to child pornography.
| |
| February 12, 2002 | -
A senior Vatican official declared that illness is caused by sin.
| |
| February 5, 2002 | - CNN aired a video of Osama bin Laden in which he gloated that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people and the West in general into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”
| |
| December 11, 2001 | - Believing that his penis was a “cobra” driving him to sin, a Filipino farmer lopped it off with his machete and cast it away. “He wanted to be nailed to a coconut tree,” his mother reported. Doctors reconstructed the penis, though at considerably shorter length, and said the man would still be able to have children.
| |
| December 11, 2001 | - In Missouri, a pharmacist admitted to diluting cancer
drugs; he did it because he needed to raise money to pay $1,000,000 in taxes and a pledge to his church.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Prime Minister Sharon “declared war on terror.” A paper in the scientific journal Human Immunology found that Jews and Palestinians have no significant genetic differences; after receiving complaints, the journal's editor repudiated the paper and sent letters to libraries asking them to rip out the offending pages.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Rael, the leader of a Canadian UFO cult called the Raelians, which supports a company called Clonaid, said that his group had already cloned a human embryo, dismissing Advanced Cell Technology's claim to have done so first.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Attorney General John Ashcroft said he wanted to rewrite the FBI's guidelines to allow the agency to spy on domestic political and religious groups; the rules in question were imposed in the 1970s because of significant civil-rights abuses that occurred under the J. Edgar Hoover regime.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Rwanda hosted a gathering of genocide survivors that included Tutsis, European Jews, American Indians, Cambodians, and Armenians.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | - Some American police chiefs were refusing to go along with the federal government's order to round up and question 5,000 legal Muslim immigrants, saying it smacked of racial profiling, which is illegal.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | - A British vicar banned yoga from his church hall to protect his flock from the temptations of Eastern mysticism.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | - A couple in Colorado who because of their religious beliefs allowed their 13-year-old daughter to die of diabetes and gangrene without medical treatment were sentenced to 20 months' probation and 1,300 hours of community service. They were also required to provide medical insurance for their remaining 12 children.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | - A Russian airliner filled with Jews exploded over the Black Sea.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | -
Police in Togo raided a church whose pastor was suspected of Satanism, and found a panther's pelt, hyena paws, vulture eggs, and a hunchback's hump.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | - Another syndicated columnist called for the deportation of all Muslim aliens.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | - People in Tijuana, Mexico, were upset about their new area code, 666, the Number of the Beast.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | - The Rev. Jerry Falwell blamed the terrorist attack on the American Civil Liberties Union, abortion providers, gay-rights advocates, and the federal courts. It was because they had turned America away from God. “He lifted the curtain of protection,” Falwell said, “and I believe that if America does not repent and return to a genuine faith and dependence on Him, we may expect more tragedies, unfortunately.”
| |
| September 18, 2001 | - Ethnic and religious violence continued in Jos, Nigeria, where at least 165 people died and 928 were wounded.
| |
| September 13, 2001 | - Balbir Signh Sodhi, a 49-year-old Sikh, was shot dead at his gas station in Arizona, apparently by someone who wanted to kill a Muslim and was confused by Mr. Sodhi's turban.
| |
| September 4, 2001 | - Faith in the “New Economy” unshaken, Federal Reserve bureaucrats gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for their annual symposium and told one another that the productivity miracle wrought by computer technology would rise again someday and provide strong economic growth with low inflation.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | -
Alabama governor Don Siegelman proclaimed that if God had wanted boys to wear earrings, He would have made them girls.
| |
| August 21, 2001 | - A Zambian archbishop renounced his marriage, which was performed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and reconciled with the Pope, who had threatened to excommunicate him; the bishop's wife said her husband was a prisoner of the Vatican and went on a hunger strike.
| |
| August 21, 2001 | - A 35,000-page report on the life of Mother Teresa was being prepared for the Vatican by people who want to see the dead nun declared a saint.
| |
| August 14, 2001 | -
India closed 15 shelters in Erwadi, where crazy people were kept near a Muslim shrine, presumably hoping for some kind of miracle; 27 were killed recently in a fire because they were chained to poles.
| |
| August 7, 2001 | -
Palestinian worshipers hurled their shoes at Israeli
police outside Al Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount; others threw stones at Jews worshipping at the Western Wall.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | - In Nigeria, Muslim Hausas and Christian Jarawas continued to kill one another, as did members of the Azara and Tiv peoples.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | - The Vatican announced that it made an $8.5 million profit last year.
| |
| June 26, 2001 | -
Communists in the Italian
senate protested the upcoming Group of 8 summit, which will be held in Genoa next month, by holding up little signs that read, “Let's throw the G-8 into the sea.” Afghanistan's Taliban agreed to let the World Food Program employ local women to survey food needs there even though this would seem to violate God's
Law.
| |
| June 19, 2001 | - A group of Holocaust survivors sued the French railroad in a Brooklyn court because its trains were used to carry Jews and others to the death camps.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | - used pyrotechnic tear gas canisters in the Waco siege, where 80 Branch Davidians died in a fire; the government claims the fire was set by cult members.
| |
| June 5, 2001 | -
France's
parliament passed a law that permits the government to ban religious groups that it considers “sects,” but backed away from plans to outlaw “mental manipulation.”
| |
| June 5, 2001 | - The Vatican wheeled out the body of Pope John XXIII, dead since 1963, in a fancy new coffin; he was wearing a lace tunic, a red velvet cape, and an ermine-trimmed hat.
| |
| May 29, 2001 | -
McDonald's apologized to Hindus whom it lured into sin (condemning them, perhaps, to countless lifetimes of suffering) by secretly putting beef flavorings on its french fries: “We regret if customers felt that the information we provided was not complete enough to meet their needs.” After a five-year investigation, Heinz was fined $180,000 for underfilling its ketchup bottles and agreed to overfill them by 1 percent, at a cost of $650,000, for a year.
| |
| May 8, 2001 | - Thomas E. Blanton, a former Kluxer from Alabama, was found guilty of killing four black girls in 1963, when he bombed a Birmingham church.
| |
| May 1, 2001 | - After a construction worker at New York's Kennedy International Airport complained about a new mural to the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the artist voluntarily painted a loincloth over the genitals of Jesus, who originally was depicted naked and crucified.
| |
| April 24, 2001 | - Taro Aso, a candidate for prime minister in Japan, said that his country should try to attract “rich Jews” to help solve Japan's problems. “I think the best country is one in which rich Jews feel like living.” Aso later said he had been misunderstood: “If the phrase 'rich Jewish people' causes misunderstanding, I will correct it and stop it.”
| |
| April 17, 2001 | -
Alabama's
senate approved a constitutional amendment allowing the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools and state offices.
| |
| April 17, 2001 | - A Charlotte, North Carolina, federal judge told a man that if he wanted to be released on bail he would have to stop living in sin, because doing so violates an 1805 anti-fornication law, which reads: “If any man and woman, not being married to each other, shall lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit together, they shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor.” Israeli officials raided restaurants in search of leavened bread, which is banned during Passover; violators were fined $25.
| |
| April 17, 2001 | - Aum Shinrikyo, the cult that carried out the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo
subway in 1995, grew by 10 percent last year.
| |
| April 10, 2001 | -
Israeli
religious leaders declared that Viagra was not kosher for Passover, though a rabbi can authorize its use “in the event of urgent medical
need.” Customs officials in New York arrested a Canadian stripper who tried to smuggle 78,771 hits of ecstasy into the United States inside some Legos.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | - A new member of the hominid family was christened “flat-faced man of Kenya.” Arkansas legislators were debating whether to ban the teaching of evolution and radio-carbon dating techniques; a proposed bill would require teachers to tell students to mark “false evidence” or “theory” in their books next to discussions of evolution.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | - The Taliban explained that they destroyed Afghanistan's ancient Buddhist statues because a group of Europeans had recently visited and offered money to preserve the statues, but none to feed starving Afghani children.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | -
Italy's environment minister threatened to cut off power to the Vatican's radio station because it emits too much electromagnetic radiation.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | - The bones of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the former president of the American Atheists, were identified, as were those of her son and granddaughter. The bones were found on a ranch in Texas; the bodies were burned, their legs removed, and stacked in a shallow grave.
| |
| March 6, 2001 | -
Afghanistan's supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, ordered the destruction of all statues in the country, which has some of the most significant ancient Buddhist statuary in the world, including two giant standing Buddhas carved out of a mountainside in the seventh century.
| |
| March 6, 2001 | - Important clerics in Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran pointed out that the Mullah's interpretation of the Koran was incorrect. Mawlawi Qudratullah Jamal, the Taliban's minister of information and culture, replied that it was “not a big issue,” that the statues were “objects only made of mud or stone.” After announcing that the destruction of the Buddhas had begun, Jamal noted that “it is easier to destroy than to build.”
| |
| February 27, 2001 | -
Russia's chief veterinarian was blaming the outbreak of mad cow disease on the Jews.
| |
| February 27, 2001 | - A war-crimes tribunal convicted three Serbs of sexually enslaving Muslim girls and women during the Bosnian war.
| |
| February 27, 2001 | -
Pat Robertson was worried that cults such as the Moonies, Scientologists, and Hare Krishnas might obtain government funding under President Bush's plan to give money to religious organizations.
| |
| February 6, 2001 | - Falun Gong spokesmen pointed out that Master Li, their spiritual leader, prohibits suicide, though flying and being in two places at once are encouraged.
| |
| January 30, 2001 | -
Congo's president Laurent Kabila was buried; he was killed by his bodyguards, all of whom were recruited by Kabila as children when he was a rebel commander. They said they did it “because of suffering.” Johnny and Luther Htoo, a pair of twin boys who until last week were the leaders of the Burmese rebel group God's Army, admitted that they did not have magic powers or an invisible army under their command; Luther told a reporter that he just wanted “to live as a family” with his parents.
| |
| January 30, 2001 | - Five members of the Falun Gong meditation cult set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square.
| |
| January 16, 2001 | -
Afghanistan's chief mullah decreed that encouraging a Muslim to convert to Christianity was a capital crime; Mullah Muhammad Omar also let it be known that selling any kind of anti-Islamic literature would be punished by five years in prison.
| |
| January 16, 2001 | -
Israel's chief rabbis declared that Jewish law prohibits giving up sovereignty over the Temple Mount; the Islamic mufti of Jerusalem said much the same thing: non-Muslims, he said, are forbidden to control even “its depths, no matter how far down, and the space above it, now matter how high up.”
| |
| January 16, 2001 | - A new poll showed that most Americans think religion is good.
| |
| January 9, 2001 | -
New York
police
snipers were mobilized after two men from Pennsylvania, Michael Lewis and Eric “Black Hole” Storm, told officials that twenty members of a “survivor” cult were planning to commit suicide by drinking poisoned juice on the steps of City Hall; no one showed up, and the two men were taken away to the Bellevue psychiatric ward.
| |
| January 2, 2001 | - Two stolen koala bears were recovered from a dung-filled San Francisco home; the koalas were stolen by two Vietnamese Buddhist
teenagers who broke into the San Francisco zoo through a skylight and tried to give the bears to their girlfriends, who rejected the gifts.
| |
| December 26, 2000 | - Major media companies, fearing competition from church groups, community centers, and Boy Scout troops, purchased a piece of legislation that ended the plans of the Federal Communications Commission to license over 1,000 low-power radio stations to small organizations.
| |
| November 28, 2000 | -
Queen Elizabeth II was photographed wringing the neck of a wounded pheasant which a hunting
dog had dropped at her feet; British
animal-rights types were appalled. At church the next day, the Queen wore a red hat accented with pheasant feathers.
| |
| November 28, 2000 | - The Vatican denounced homosexuality as “a conception of love detached from any responsibility.”
| |
| November 21, 2000 | - Veerappan, the famous Indian bandit, finally released Rajkumar, the famous Indian actor, whom many Indians worship as a god, after holding him captive for 109 days.
| |
| November 21, 2000 | - The common people treated him like a god.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | - Umar Husseinzoda, the leader of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, was telling his people that God had visited a drought upon them for their impiety.
| |
| October 24, 2000 | - Three Falun Gong members died while in the custody of Chinese
police; 57 have died in custody since the government banned the meditation cult last year.
| |
| October 24, 2000 | - The Vatican announced that Sir Thomas More will be designated the patron saint of politicians.
| |
| October 10, 2000 | - Hundreds of members of the Falun Gong, a banned Chinese meditation cult with mildly apocalyptic doctrines, were beaten and arrested in Tiananmen Square.
| |
| October 3, 2000 | - Quebecois terrorists known as the French Language Self-Defense Brigade claimed responsibility for bombing a church in Montreal.
| |
| September 26, 2000 | - A British court ruled that a pair of Siamese twins must be separated even though the operation will be fatal for one of them; the parents, who are Roman Catholic, had refused on religious grounds to give permission for the operation.
| |
| September 12, 2000 | - The leaders of Aryan Nations, a white supremacist
cult in Idaho, were ordered by a jury to pay $6.3 million in damages to a woman and her son who were beaten by Aryan Nations security guards; after the verdict, Richard Girnt Butler, the pastor of Aryan Nations, said: “This is nothing. We have planted seeds.”
| |
| September 12, 2000 | - President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was served with a lawsuit while standing outside a church in Harlem; the lawsuit, which was filed in a Manhattan federal district court, seeks damages for the death of the plaintiff's husband, who was killed by members of Mugabe's party.
| |
| September 5, 2000 | -
Singapore established limited freedom of speech, including the right to criticize the government, in a corner of Hong Lim Park, between 7 AM and 7 PM, daily; speakers must register in advance with police, who post their names on a wall, and avoid subjects such as race, language, or religion.
| |
| September 5, 2000 | - A large group of religious leaders met and exchanged business cards at the United Nations; the Dalai Lama was excluded for fear of angering China.
| |
| August 29, 2000 | - An American priest who lived in Kenya for thirty-six years had his head blown off with a shotgun.
| |
| August 29, 2000 | - The Anglican Church of Canada will require regular sexual-abuse registry checks for all its ministers; Ernst & Young has said that sexual-abuse lawsuits brought by Canadian Indians will probably bankrupt the church.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | -
Russia's Orthodox Church rejected genetic engineering, homosexuality, euthanasia, and abortion while reaffirming private property and the church's close ties to the Russian military.
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| August 22, 2000 | -
Canadian Micmac Indians blocked a highway with bonfires near Burnt Church, New Brunswick, in a dispute with the government over lobster fishing rights.
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| August 22, 2000 | - Negotiations continued with Veerappan, the South Asian bandit, concerning the release of Rajkumar, an actor who is worshipped by many in India as a minor god; Veerappan has demanded political concessions on behalf of India's Tamil minority.
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| August 8, 2000 | - The supreme leader of the Taliban said that Afghanistan's severe drought was sent by God to punish the people for neglecting their religious duties and failing to show proper gratitude toward their rulers.
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| August 8, 2000 | - Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the rightist Israeli Shas Party, declared that the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust were reincarnated sinners who rightly suffered the wrath of God.
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| July 25, 2000 | - A twenty-five pound stucco ornament measuring four by six feet fell fourteen stories and cracked the skull of a tourist walking with his family in midtown Manhattan; the tourist, who was expected to live, was attending a six-day religious conference called “Changing Your World.”
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| July 25, 2000 | - The Russian Orthodox Church nominated Czar Nicholas II and his family for canonization.
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