In a ballroom surrounded by fellow Godbeat pros, our columnist immediately thought this when he learned of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting: There’ll be a religion angle. Why? There always is.
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(ANALYSIS) In India, Muslims and other religious minorities remain under attack. A new report identified credible evidence of widespread and systematic human rights violations in Assam and Uttar Pradesh states — violations which may amount to international offenses, including crimes against humanity.
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A Bradenton County, Florida, jury has thrown the book at a former Southern Baptist pastor for sexually abusing a 2-year-old and recording the abuse on his cellphone. Jonathan Edward Elwing received three consecutive life sentences on April 21, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office announced.
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(REVIEW) Netflix’s new four-part docuseries “Trust Me: The False Prophet” gives viewers never-before-seen access to the inner workings of a high-control religion and cult. It’s a fascinating true story of danger, moral conviction, sacrifice, redemption and justice. Cult psychology expert and former mainstream Mormon, Christine Marie and her filmmaker husband, Tolga Katas, move to the area to support the FLDS community and document their lives.
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The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it has secured an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center for wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.
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A Nigerian federal court convicted nearly 400 individuals on terrorism charges this month in what persecution watchdog International Christian Concern said is one of the largest criminal crackdowns in the nation’s history, but none appeared to face murder charges.
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(ANALYSIS) A French court found a former ISIS member guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in crimes against the Yazidis, an ethno-religious minority. But there is still a long way to go before the international community can hold Islamic terror groups fully accountable for their crimes.
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Christian musician Phillip Vaught is behind bars in Tennessee after being charged with sexual exploitation of a minor.
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Categorizing those who do violence is a messy business. The very individuals who are called heroes, warriors and revolutionaries by some can be categorized as villains, murderers and radicals by others. But when the morality of a violent person is highly controversial or just ambiguous, we have a separate, more fuzzy term – we call them a vigilante.
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(ANALYSIS) In the midst of a civil war, married couple Ernesto and Linda Fuentes fled their home country of El Salvador and headed for Philadelphia, via Mexico, in November 1983. Ernesto was an activist who dispensed food and medicine in Salvadoran refugee camps. Linda was a union organizer for banks and clothing factories.
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Nine police officers were sentenced to death in India over the 2020 deaths in custody of a father and son.
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Protestant pastors overwhelmingly view legal immigration as beneficial and support increasing or maintaining it. Most favor combining stronger border security with a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. While divided on deportation levels, pastors prioritize removing violent offenders and emphasize family unity and human dignity.
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Robert Morris, former pastor of megachurch Gateway Church in the Dallas area, was released from Osage County Jail in Oklahoma after serving his six-month term for sexually abusing Cindy Clemishire in the 1980s.
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(ANALYSIS) Cesar Chavez, revered labor leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers, built a legacy of nonviolent activism rooted in the Catholic faith. New allegations of decades-old sexual abuse now challenge his image, raising questions about power, morality and how society should reassess historical figures and their complicated legacies.
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Kendra Duggar, wife of former “19 Kids and Counting” TV star Joseph Duggar, has been arrested in Arkansas. Both she and her husband are now facing misdemeanor child endangerment and false imprisonment charges.
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A former star of the TLC reality series “19 Kids and Counting” has been arrested on felony child sex abuse charges in Florida.
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(ANALYSIS) In theory, many Christians support pacifism or non-violent resistance, but for Iranian Christians, those theories are challenged by the harsh realities of a hellish regime and an ongoing war. This question of ‘just war’ has a long history, going back to the first centuries of the church.
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What can news consumers learn from this complicated drama? Surely it is a commentary on the age in which we live that many Americans laughed when they read the early New York Times headline about the terrorist attack that fizzled near the New York home of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
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These stories tumbled into public view in a court filing in a lawsuit against Laurie and Harvest. The filing consolidated the 23 lawsuits filed by survivors of alleged childhood sexual abuse by another former Harvest pastor, Paul Havsgaard. As reported previously by The Roys Report, the men and women who grew up in church-funded homes in Romania accuse Laurie and Harvest of covering up years of sexual abuse.
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Until recently, DNA technology was not widely available in most African countries. However, in the past few years, it has not only become widely available but also increasingly affordable for many. At the same time, various social media platforms are abuzz with cases of ‘paternity fraud’, creating increased demand for these tests.
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