A group of "ultraconservative" Russian Orthodox Christians is attempting to defend religious freedom in an unusual way: demanding that the United States relinquish control of Alaska.

The death toll from an accidental fireworks explosion during a religious procession in Mexico has risen to at least 17 people, the Associated Press reports.

Facing forgery charges, Hong Kong feng shui master Tony Chan has embraced Christianity and changed his name to "Peter."

Who owns Jesus' name? If you're a start-up clothing company, you may find that "Jesus" belongs exclusively on Italian denim.

The similarities between National Public Radio's (NPR) "Science Friday" and Colorado pastor and radio host Bob Enyart's "Real Science Friday" were no coincidence: Enyart intended his show to challenge—not imitate—NPR.

Update (Feb. 17): The New York Times has an in-depth report on Golb's actions and sentence.

Raphael Golb, son of Dead Sea Scroll scholar Norman Golb, will head to jail as a result of his unorthodox methods of supporting his father: fraud, forgery, and harassment of another Dead Sea Scroll scholar, Lawrence Schiffman.

The Iowa State Supreme Court ruled last week that a male dentist who fired his attractive female assistant did not discriminate against her or violate the state's civil rights law.

The historic Kawaiahao Church, locally known as Hawaii's "Westminster Abbey," unintentionally unearthed in August one of the largest native Hawaiian burial sites in state history. Now, though, the church likely will rebury the 600 disinterred bodies after a state court ruled that the church moved forward on its construction project prematurely.

Following a 16-month standoff, an Assemblies of God church in Cuba has evicted nearly 30 people who had been holding a prayer retreat in its Havana sanctuary since last August.

An Indiana church faces bankruptcy after failing to pay off $1.9 million in debt. The twist? Lindberg Road Church of Christ is fighting back, saying its bank encouraged church leaders to finance its upgrades by taking out life insurance policies on elderly members.

ChurchAds.Net, a United Kingdom-based ecumenical charity, is best known for its annual holiday campaign: "Christmas starts with Christ." Past campaigns have featured a bus shelter nativity and an ultrasound Jesus; but this year, the group is targeting consumers with a rather different image: Godbaby.

Logging in with Jesus—literally—might not be such a good idea.

According to SplashData, the word Jesus is now one of the web's worst passwords, ranking among the top 25 most frequently used and easily guessable log-in phrases. SplashData, which releases its list annually, says this is the first year that Jesus has appeared on the list.

Cadbury recently won a legal battle to prevent chocolate competitor Nestle from using a trademarked shade of purple on its candy wrappers. Now, though, the U.S.-based confectionery giant is under fire from an unexpected source: the Church of England.

Bishop Stephen Cotterell warned Cadbury that it should stop being "so precious over purple" after Meaningful Chocolate Company, a small Christian fair trade producer, redesigned its special Advent wrappers under legal counsel. The specific advice? "Advent purple belongs to Cadbury."

Police have arrested a Macon, Ga., man accused of trespassing on church property. His reason for doing so? Releasing cockroaches onto the church's front steps.

Members of Fountain Temple AME Church started noticing the problem in August, when roaches began appearing outside the foyer, The Macon County Telegraph reported. When the pastor's husband, James Denson, set up a surveillance camera to monitor the building, he found footage of "a man on the porch with no shirt on and white cups or containers in his hands. He was there maybe 25 seconds, emptying cups of clinging cucarachas."

Sanitarium Foods, a cereal company owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia, has lost its two-year legal battle to keep Australian bakeries, restaurants, and grocery stores from using the word "granola."

The denomination trademarked "granola" as an "invented word" in 1921; this week, a federal judge disagreed, saying the word can be "easily found in dictionaries," reports Adventist Today.

The Adventist church plans to keep defending its intellectual property.

Nik Wallenda became the first man to walk right over Niagara Falls Friday night, a 30-minute tightrope televised live on ABC News.

Wallenda told reporters it took "a lot of praying, that's for sure. But, you know, it's all about the concentration, the focus, and the training."

QMI Agency reported earlier on the details of Wallenda's faith.

The King of the Wire puts his faith in the King of Kings.

Just before Nik Wallenda steps onto the wire tonight in an attempt to become the first person to walk a tightrope across the mouth of the Horseshoe Falls, he’ll form a circle with a dozen close friends and members of his close-knit Christian family and they’ll say a prayer to Jesus Christ.

The cross Wallenda wears around his neck every time he walks on a wire isn’t just a fashion statement, it’s a message about the religious beliefs the American performer holds close to his heart.

“I grew up in a born-again Christian family. A Bible-believing, God-fearing family. That’s the way I was raised and I find comfort and peace in that,” he said.

The Toronto Star has these details from tonight's walk.

His wife and three children held hands and prayed with him minutes before he began. They were there when he reached the end. His engineer uncle perched close at hand; he was a key player in making the stunt happen.

...Moments before strapping on the harness, the daredevil joined hands in riverside prayer with wife Erindera — an eighth-generation wire walker herself; Nik proposed on a wire — and their three children Yanni, 14, Amadeus, 11 and Evita, 9. Prayer comes easily to Nik, a born-again Christian, who thanked God and Jesus out loud — and through his microphone to the world — for much of his 25-minute feat.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune writes, "He told ABC his faith in the Lord kept his emotions in check, but that his extensive preparation was an equal component of success."

The New York Times used a biblical analogy to describe it:

He started just after 10 p.m. in mist so thick he was not visible on the Canadian side for more than 10 minutes after he started. The walk, which took about 30 minutes and was televised by ABC, had an Old Testament feel to it.

"I don't know what people will say about me 100 years from now, but it's got to be pretty impressive," he told ABC.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The granddaughter of Trinity Broadcasting Network founders Paul and Jan Crouch has accused some of the network’s directors of illegally distributing “charitable assets” worth more than $50 million for their personal use.

Brittany B. Koper, the daughter of Paul Crouch Jr., was TBN’s chief financial officer until last September. She says she was wrongfully fired after she refused to cover up the alleged distribution scheme.

The allegations are not against TBN itself, but against Koper’s former attorneys from Davert & Loe, who have also done legal work for TBN. She has accused them of breach of fiduciary duty, professional negligence, and other transgressions.

“Her assertions are outright fiction and wholly without merit,” Douglass S. Davert, one of the attorneys named in the suit, told The Orange County Register. ”The allegations are defamatory and to the extent they get printed we are going to defend ourselves vigorously.”

Colby May, spokesperson for TBN, told Pat Robertson’s CBN News that the assertions are “a bold faced lie.” The fact is that Ms. Koper has confessed several different times to embezzling money, he said. "She and her husband, basically, in the dark of night up and moved to New York [after leaving TBN].

The Orange County Register reported that Davert & Loe had filed a similar lawsuit against Koper and her husband last October. They accused the Kopers of forging documents and misappropriating nearly $400,000 in funds, but the suit was dismissed without settlement in January. Tymothy MacLeod, Koper’s attorney, said the suit was a preemptive attempt to discredit Koper.

“It’s kind of a sordid affair,” he told the paper. “Many layers. But at the heart is the wrongful termination. She was terminated for insider whistle blowing.”

Additionally, the suit claims TBN officials threatened Koper at a hearing regarding the reasons for her firing. “When questioned about the grounds for termination, Matthew Crouch, a director at Trinity Broadcasting, began tapping the firearm he had brought to the meeting and asked Ms. Koper what she thought would happen when she wrote a memo to the board critical of Matthew Crouch’s financial improprieties,” the suit says. “Matthew Crouch continued tapping the gun he was holding to ensure that Ms. Koper recognized the lethal threat being made.”

Last October, Paul Crouch Jr. left his role as vice president and chief of staff at TBN to join The World Network as director of project development.

A recent New York Times piece on the rebranding of 3M's Post-it notes has this interesting backstory:

In 1967, a 3M scientist, Spencer Silver, invented a glue with a slightly granular surface that prevented complete adhesion, but the company could not find an application for the underachieving adhesive. Then, in the early 1970s it introduced the Post-it Bulletin Board, essentially a photograph of a cork bulletin board coated with the substance and to which pieces of scrap paper could be attached.

That idea failed when people realized how much dust such a sticky bulletin board could accumulate. The article continues:

Then Art Fry, another 3M scientist, was practicing with his church choir and grew frustrated that slips of paper he used as bookmarks kept falling out of his hymnal. So, using some of Mr. Silver’s adhesive, he made sticky bookmarks, which evolved into notepaper.

The congregation, by the way, was North Church, a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Blessed be the glue that temporarily binds...

The captain of France's national soccer team is said to have blamed noise from the "vuvuzela" for keeping his team awake at night and contributing to a poor match against Uruguay in the World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa.

But Tinyiko Maluleke, president of the South African Council of Churches, told Ecumenical News International that the three-foot noisy horns are forcing the world to wake up and acknowledge Africa's past sufferings.

Nearly 85,000 people have logged on to a website, www.banvuvuzela.com, to silence the horns during the World Cup; a little more than 9,000 want to keep them.

Soccer fans and players say the constant noise from the horns can cause hearing loss and makes the matches unwatchable, even on TV.
Coaches on the sidelines say the noise makes it difficult to communicate with players on the field.

"In the 19th century, white missionaries sided with colonials and gave blacks the Bible, while they took the land. Now, we have created the vuvuzela, which is one of the most obnoxious instruments: very noisy; very annoying. It will dominate the World Cup," Maluleke said recently in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the 2010 World Missionary Conference.

"I see the vuvuzela as a symbol -- as a symbol of Africa's cry for acknowledgement."

They say it only takes a spark to get a fire going.

The famous “Touchdown Jesus’ statue outside Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio was hit with a lot more than a spark, and some Christians are trying to understand why.

"This is not right," a church member by the name of Gifty told WDTN news after the Monday night fire that resulted in around $700,000 worth of damage to the statue and the church’s nearby theater. "We just all have to go on our faith and ask God. This cannot be a coincidence."

“Something is not right that we have to pray about,” she said.

The Dayton Daily News posted audio of an almost embarrassed 911 caller alerting authorities to the June 14 conflagration.

“I swear to God this is not a prank,” he said to the dispatcher. “I just saw lighting strike it and it is on fire.”

The statue’s official name is the “King of Kings,” but many use the nickname “Touchdown Jesus” because it depicts Christ raising both arms to the sky. The church installed it in 2004, with a steel frame covered in wood and Styrofoam and coated with fiberglass mat and resin. Church leaders have said they plan to rebuild.

“It sent goosebumps through my whole body because I am a believer,” said Levi Walsh, 29, quoted in the Middletown Journal. “Of all the things that could have been struck, I just think that that would be protected. ... It’s something that’s not supposed to happen, Jesus burning,” he said. “I had to see it with my own eyes.”

“It meant so much to so many people,” said church member Cassie Browning to the Dayton Daily News. “The statue can be destroyed and gone, but Jesus can’t be.”

"I'm thinking it's a sign from Jesus that we need to learn something, as Christians, as a whole, we're not doing something right," said church member Kevin Jones to WHIO.

Others have chimed in with their views. On the Internet, Lindsay Van Kirk of SportsGrid.com’s “Power Grid” blog wryly suggests that the fall of Touchdown Jesus is a sign that recent controversies in the football world may have “made God a bit mad.”

Mark Brumley, on Ingatius Press’ “Insight Scoop” blog, thinks that the fire is a sign that lightning and fiberglass do not mix according to the laws of God’s universe. But, he says, if the fire sparks self-examination among Christians who see the charred remains, maybe that was part of God’s plan.

“Since most of us usually have something to repent of or to repent more deeply of,” he wrote, “the destruction of the statue certainly can be taken as a providential reminder to turn away from sin.”

A British computer game retailer says it owns the souls of 7,500 online customers after it inserted language into the terms and conditions contract, FoxNews reports.

The contract "immortal soul clause" states that customers grant the company the right to claim their soul.

"By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions."

While all shoppers during the test were given a simple tick box option to opt out, very few did this, which would have also rewarded them with a £5 voucher, according to news:lite. Due to the number of people who ticked the box, GameStation claims believes as many as 88 percent of people do not read the terms and conditions of a Web site before they make a purchase.

The company noted that it would not be enforcing the ownership rights, and planned to e-mail customers nullifying any claim on their soul.

Apple rejected an iPhone application that would allow people to put their own image on Jesus' face. The Me So Holy app would enable someone to take a mug shot and crop it to replace Jesus' face. Apple said no to the app, saying it "contains objectionable material," according to Wired.

"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users," the iPhone SDK agreement states.

Apple may be tightening its restrictions on its iPhone App Store after it approved an iPhone app called Baby Shaker, a game whose objective was to shake a baby to death. Amid parental outrage, Apple subsequently removed the app, saying its approval was a mistake.

Me So Holy iPhone App from Benjamin Margolis on Vimeo.

Think the churches in your neighborhood don't get along? Then, this should put things in perspective: The pastor of Rubaga Miracle Centre in Kampala, Uganda, has accused the pastor of Omega Healing Centre of trying to destroy his reputation by 1) kidnapping and torturing his personal aide and 2) bribing the aide to accuse him of sexually abusing boys.

Omega Healing Centre's pastor, Michael Kyazze, denies he was involved in kidnapping:

I have never been engaged in as nefarious and criminal an act of kidnapping. My struggle has been and will continue to be the fight for the increasing number of victims of sodomy in our society. If it has been interpreted as an effort to discredit Pastor Kayanja, then it is both unfortunate and a dangerous insinuation.

This comes soon after an assistant pastor of Omega Healing Centre was arrested while trespassing at Rubaga Miracle Centre, allegedly while trying to investigate Kayanja .

The aide is currently recovering in a Kampala hospital.

Uganda’s New Vision reported the story and says it highlights growing tension among competing Pentecostal churches. The Daily Monitor says "Cases of alleged homosexuality in churches have now become common." New Vision says rival pastors also accuse each other of witchcraft.

Perhaps as part of trying to find common ground, Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh’s Jesus is as blonde as anyone’s, but the ideas behind his film pretty much undercut the Jesus of the Bible, who insisted on his deity, authority, death, and resurrection.

Jesus, the Spirit of God won an award at the 2007 Religion Today Film Festival in Italy.

Scientists have discovered that sharks can reproduce asexually. "Scientists began their investigation after a female hammerhead shark was mysteriously born at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo in December 2001, in a tank that held three adult, female hammerheads but no males," reports the Washington Post. "Yes, indeed this is a virgin birth," said one of the scientists who studied the birth.

Ted Olsen interjects:

If you want to read the actual study from Biology Letters, it's available for free. I'll also just note that we're talking about bonnetheads rather than great hammerheads, though bonnetheads are considered a type of hammerhead shark.

Parthenogenesis isn't all that rare. Birds do it. Bees do it. But there is an important question here, as the Biology Letters article puts it, regarding "possible negative effects of this form of asexual reproduction on the genetic diversity in small natural or captive populations." Bonnetheads are an abundant species, but if this further research indicates that other, more endangered sharks also reproduce asexually, then there could be consequences for human-aided conservation efforts.

That's one "Green Christian" angle on this. But let's not dismiss the "virgin birth" angle of this as just a joke. Earlier generations of Christians saw in the animal world many echoes of theological reality. They didn't always (or often) get their animal behavior right, but that's no reason that actual animal behavior can't serve as reminders of biblical truth.

But then some of the differences between the Virgin Birth and its "echo" in parthenogenesis is fascinating to me, too. In parthenogenesis, you're basically talking about natural cloning. In the case of Christ's Virgin Birth, you're clearing talking about something radically different. Jesus, after all, was not Mary's genetic equivalent. (For starters, consider the chromosomes.) And any time I start thinking about Jesus' DNA, I marvel at how much mystery there really is in the Incarnation.

The Nation's Max Blumenthal, in a Huffington Post entry, hotlinked an image over at the Family Research Council's site. FRC responded by changing the image to call Blumenthal an "image thief, fabulist, and kitten poisoner," complete with dead kitty image. Something to do while waiting for the hate crimes bill vote, I guess.

'Unisex toilets to tackle bullies' is the headline of a BBC story today. And, when you think of it, really, what could be more embarrassing for a bully than to be tackled by a toilet — and a unisex one at that.

Actually, the proposal is that England's rebuilt and refurbished schools should use unisex bathrooms (ah, let's call them loos like they do, since that's much cooler) with blurred glass walls, central sinks, and no urinals.

The Department for Education and Skills report explains,

Most anti-social behaviour occurs when pupils socialise and hang around in the toilets. To discourage this, along with provision elsewhere in the school for indoor social areas, the space within the toilet facility needs to be kept to a minimum, and hand-washing facilities should be made visible and potentially unisex by being moved out of the cubicle area as a direct extension to the circulation space. This also allows for passive supervision of the common areas from the circulation space, so that pupils can feel safe when using the toilets.

The report urges schools to lose loos' urinals because "research has shown that at puberty, boys’ use of urinals is problematic. The trough type in particular can contribute to a medical condition know as ‘shy bladder syndrome’." Elsewhere, the report notes that since urinals are cheaper than toilets, urinals may be preferred in some cases. (Some alternative floor plans include urinals.)

So anyway, I just thought the article (which I found on the BBC's religion & ethics news page) was interesting. I'm sure that some of the culture-warrior readers (those who use terms like "war against boys," "forced androgyny," and "feminization") will be interested. But since this is supposed to be a specifically Christian blog, I'd like to make some direct connection to Christian life, theology, or mission.

So here's the tangentially related question for you: Several verses in the Old Testament refers to those who "urinate against the wall" (or, to use the King James English, "pisseth against the wall" -- surely one of the favorite references for any grade-school boy in a KJV-friendly Sunday school class or old-school Awana program).

Most translations, even formal equivalent ones, have updated this as "men." But there are other Hebrew words for "men," and these cases the Hebrew really says "urinate against the wall." In each case, those who urinate against the wall are not in God's favor. It almost always looks something like this: "And it came to pass, when [Zimri] began to reign, as soon as he sat on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not one that pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his friends. Thus did Zimri destroy all the house of Baasha, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake against Baasha by Jehu the prophet."

So what's the deal? Urinating against the wall seems to besomething that both Israelites and other nations did, so it's apparently not just a cultural thing. But if the Bible identifies you as someone who pees on a wall, you're in deep trouble. Does God prefer squatting? Will England urinal-free loos be more biblical? Help me, Old Testament scholars!