Damned Christians

[Fake Messiah]

Conservative Christian summit in Chino to draw protests

A two-day conservative Christian event — which opponents are calling a “white supremacist gathering” — is coming to the Inland Empire.

Sponsored by the conservative think tank Family Research Council and community partners, the summit will address topics such as transgender and LGBTQ+ identity, AI technology, political engagement, pro-life health, evangelizing and exercising one’s faith in public, organizers said on the event’s website.

Since 2010, the Family Research Council has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that tracks hate groups and activities.

Other guest speakers include pro-life activist Lila Rose, Larry Elder of the “Larry Elder Show,” Chino Valley Unified School District board President Sonja Shaw, Family Research Council President and Chairman of its advocacy arm, Tony Perkins, BibleThinker founder Mike Winger, Real Impact Executive Director Gina Gleason, Tim Barton of WallBuilders and Maine state legislator Laurel Libby.

Perkins said in an email that “we gather at a truly pivotal and consequential moment in our nation’s history.”

“This is a moment we have prayed for, worked for and voted for,” Perkins wrote. “We will not be intimidated by the Left’s threats or their violence. We will not retreat into silence or fear. We are resolved to pray, to vote, and to stand — and that is why we gather.”

Shaw, who has pushed conservative policies on the Chino Valley school board and is running for California State Superintendent of Schools in 2026, is set to speak at a Saturday session titled “Taking Back California.” The seminar, she said, will address education issues such as transgender athletes in sports and gender ideology.

Shaw said Calvary Chapel has “long stood for biblical truth, civic responsibility, and the right of people of faith to live out their convictions.” She applauded the event for “bringing together faith leaders, parents, and community members to focus on protecting children, strengthening families and defending freedom of faith.”

Meanwhile, a coalition of 12 local, pro-LGBTQ/pro-immigrant, advocacy and faith grassroots organizations plans to protest both days at the intersection of Pipeline and Eucalyptus avenues near Calvary Chapel.

Some coalition leaders are calling the event a “white supremacist gathering.” In a Monday, Oct. 13, news release, leaders said their demonstration, called “Expose, Unite, Resist” is a response to the “major Christian Nationalist Summit” that they said has the goal of “integrating religious extremism into the U.S. government and policy. The stakes are high: they want to restrict our freedoms and control our future.”

“Together we plan to EXPOSE the hate and hypocrisy, UNITE against fascism and oppression, And RESIST Christian nationalism and all it stands for,” coalition leaders said in the release issued by Kanan Durham, a spokesperson from one of the member organizations, Pride at the Pier.

Coalition leaders also decried the event’s scheduled speakers, many of whom they say “have long track records of actions that openly target marginalized communities in pursuit of a Christian Nationalist model of government” and called it an “alt-right summit.”

“They are flying in some of the most dangerous forces in Christian nationalism, U.S. far-right politics, Eugenics, and Zionist propaganda,” the organizers said on Instagram, while accusing the council of pushing abortion bans, Christian “supremacy” and immigration fearmongering.

Chino is “no sanctuary for hate,” they said. The summit “platforms Christian nationalists who defend genocide and push anti-queer laws.”

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, also accused the council of having an “extremist agenda,” listing on its website “grievances” exposing the council’s “most extreme anti-LGBT positions and actions,” and citing what it called racist or anti-LGBTQ+ claims made by council leaders or through its programs and initiatives, including its past summits.

https://www.dailybulletin.com/2025/10/15...-protests/

[Fake Messiah]

Church of Norway says sorry to LGBTQ+ people for ‘shame, great harm and pain’

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, said on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I apologise today.”

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church since 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to make amends for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...m-and-pain

[Paraselene]

Pastor who called Heartstopper a ‘health risk’ to kids charged with child sexual abuse

Pink

[Fake Messiah]

How Evangelicals Justify Economic Inequality

“Conservative evangelical Protestantism… is associated with attitudes that favor the status quo of inequality,” writes Dawson P. R. Vosburg, a PhD candidate in sociology at the Ohio State University.

These attitudes manifest in a variety of ways. Evangelical televangelists enrich themselves through donations from their faithful then splurge on houses, cars, and private jets. Congregations erect gaudy megachurches replete with fancy sound systems, multicamera projectors, and professional musical entertainment. Evangelicals themselves voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, who adorns his abodes in gold while championing policies that transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.

Evangelicals hold the Bible as the ultimate, inspired, and authoritative revelation from God and, when “born-again,” devote themselves to following Jesus for the rest of their lives. How then do these folks reconcile worshipping wealth with the Bible’s egalitarian message?

To find out, Vosburg extensively analyzed ten year’s worth of sermons at a large and growing Midwestern evangelical megachurch, which he anonymized as “New River.”

New River’s pastors sold this seemingly un-Christ-like point of view through four key themes: preaching against “rich shaming”; minimizing inequality within the U.S. by proclaiming that America’s impoverished aren’t really “poor”; interpreting the Bible as castigating “spiritual” poverty rather than material wealth; and arguing that God owns everything and thus decides who gets to be wealthy and who doesn’t.

In railing against rich shaming, New River’s head pastor, Pastor Tray, said in one sermon, “What other blessing does God give some people in the church that makes the person receiving the blessing almost feel like they’ve got to shrink back into the shadows and apologize for what God has given them, or even be embarrassed because of what God has given them?”

In another sermon, he said of wealth, “[God] wants you to enjoy it. He wants you to appreciate it. He loves to see His children blessed. Just like this dad of two loves to see my kids blessed …. God loves to see his kids blessed.”

Many passages in the Bible encourage helping the poor, but New River’s pastor frequently interpreted “poor” in the spiritual sense rather than the material. God wants his followers to help and guide those poor in spirit, who lack faith, not necessarily those lacking material resources.

But Vosburg noted that New River’s preachers didn’t always take a spiritual interpretation of economic matters. Parishioners were regularly reminded to give at least 10 percent of their income to the church as a tithe.

“According to Pastor Tray, ‘you become the most insulated and protected person on the planet by God when you tithe.’” Vosburg described.

Lastly, Vosburg noticed New River’s pastors rationalizing inequality by arguing that God owns everything and thus dictates the allocation of material riches.

“What you have was given to you by God, which means that ultimately inequality is the result of God’s direct action and is thus not unjust,” he paraphrased. “Questioning both the distribution of resources and what the rich do with their resources is condemned on the basis that God is the one who owns and distributed the resources.”

https://www.splinter.com/how-evangelical...inequality

[Fireball]

^ Pastor Tray. Pass the tray. 

[Fake Messiah]

Tucker Carlson Is Resurrecting Christianity's Ugly Tradition of Antisemitism

Tucker Carlson’s platforming of antisemitic social influencer Nick Fuentes, who proclaims “Christ is King,” evinces the reemergence of antisemitism in American Christianity. For the last 85 years, World War II and the Holocaust have made antisemitism publicly unacceptable in American Christianity, prior to which it was often acceptable.

For example, at the 1924 Methodist governing General Conference, the church’s prominent Prohibition chief, Clarence True Wilson, blamed the “filth” of films and theater on Jewish “degenerates, all of one race but of no religion, who have corrupted everything their filthy hands have touched for 2,000 years.” He warned: “No nation that has let them control its finances but has had to vomit them up, sometimes with bitter persecutions, to get the poison out of their system.” Wilson faulted German Jews for their “controlling interest in our liquor traffic.”

The audience for Wilson’s remarks included hundreds of Methodist leaders plus the church’s bishops. Yet there’s no record that his speech was controversial. Wilson continued as head of the denomination’s Washington, D.C. office on Capitol Hill for another 11 years. Methodism was then America’s biggest Protestant denomination. And its political influence was such that it was the main force responsible for persuading America to adopt Prohibition, with Wilson its chief advocate. So his anti-Jewish speech did not come from a marginal figure and likely represented the views of millions of Protestants, many of whom joined in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan resurgence, which made Jews, along with Catholics and Blacks, its chief targets.

Further adding to the openly unfriendly stances towards Jews is the crumbling of institutional Christianity, with its transgenerational teachings and gatekeepers. American Christianity is now individualized and online. It no longer necessarily entails church participation. And while a local pastor may seem dull and phlegmatic, online zealots like Fuentes can seem boldly electrifying. The local pastor might be accountable to a denomination or at least a congregation. Online “Christian” firebrands are accountable to nobody except their online fans, whose stimulation demands constant outrage. These online “preachers” don’t require repentance or self-denial, just rage against enemies, which is easier and more appealing.

Across centuries, Jews naturally are the historically favorite target of conspiracy theories. They are few in number, the conspiracists allege, but powerful and controlling through their cunning. They are so devious that they can deceive and manipulate whole nations. It’s no accident that postliberal zealots often obsess over World War II revisionism: Churchill and Roosevelt were the real villains; Hitler did not want war; the Holocaust was not as bad as portrayed, and so on.

The postliberal perspective that dabbles in if not fully embracing antisemitism often claims to be Christian. “Christ is King!” “The enemies of Christ must be defeated!” Under this perspective, Christ’s reign must be enacted by the bold and the strong who will not weakly extend mercy to Christ’s ostensible foes.

To be sure, antisemitism has always been present in Christianity. In the second century, Marcion rejected the Old Testament and insisted the God of Christianity was distinct from the Hebrew deity, for which Marcion was denounced as a heretic. But Marcionism has persisted among Christians who want to reject or minimize Christianity’s Hebrew origins. In 387, John Chrysostom as Bishop of Antioch wrote his infamous eight sermons “Against the Jews.” Martin Luther’s fierce denunciations of Jews late in his life arguably were a preamble to later German crimes. In the 1930s, radio preacher and Catholic priest Charles Coughlin denounced Jews, and made excuses for Hitler, to his U.S. audience of millions.

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/tucker-c...istianitys

[Fake Messiah]

Pastor removed after reporting that Bishop and wife embezzled $173,000

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – A pastor was removed from his leadership position at a Meeker Pentecostal church after reporting that the former pastor, now Bishop, and his wife, embezzled thousands of dollars.

Michael Hall, who was appointed as the Bishop of the Oklahoma District Pentecostal Church of God last October, and his wife, Vickie Hall, are accused of taking funds from the Living Waters Pentecostal Church.

After Beeson became the pastor, he noticed problems with how the two were handling finances. For the six years that the Halls were heads of the Living Waters church, they allegedly grabbed tithes from the church. Alleged to have used money meant for the church on their own personal expenses.

The affidavit alleged that the church had a member at one point donate $47,000 for the church parking lot, but half went to the Halls. Another example was a member who donated $23,000 to go to the church’s women’s bathroom, and half of that allegedly went to the Halls.

The two also reportedly used the church debit cards to spend money at Hobby Lobby,
Walmart and Lowe’s.

Many of the expenditures came to their personal property, a home in northern Shawnee.

There was also alleged misuse of church funds and expenditures that the board and members of the Oklahoma Pentecostal Church Group didn’t approve of.

A check dated September 26, 2024, for $50,000. A check dated June 11th, 202,4, for $19,811 to Brad Perry Construction. Two other checks with similar amounts were written to Brad Perry Construction, totaling nearly $60,000.

The records allege that a metal building was built on Bishop Hall’s property without the church’s knowledge after he was told the church would not build him a new building.

Vehicles were bought, one of which was allegedly purchased for Hall’s children.

When you go to their home, you can see the multiple possible expenses incurred there. There is a big metal building, which looks to be a new driveway, and more.

Neighbors said they’ve seen many home improvements just within the last year or so.

https://kfor.com/news/local/pastor-remov...73000/amp/

[Paraselene]

Christian youth pastor who shared anti-LGBTQ+ post arrested on child sexual abuse charges

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/11/04/y...e-charges/