Anchorage, Alaska - From Anchorage to Alaska's borders, law enforcement officials are scouring every square inch of our state for Robert Hale, or Papa Pilgrim. Hale’s Web site sheds an interesting light on his family and his life journey. And in light of the serious charges he’s facing, there's one part of that Web site that is particularly chilling. Head to www.pilgrimfamily.com and you'll find pictures and biographies of each Hale family member. Click on a picture and get a detailed account of that person's life, written by Papa Pilgrim (This is changing right now - the site has been taken over by the family, but if you look up Google's cache of the site, you can see some of it). Throughout the site, Hale writes about how God speaks to him and how he's his servant and obeys his will. The Web site also has a link to an Anchorage Daily News article from 2003 . In that interview, Hale, who's now accused of kidnapping, sexual assault and incest, dating ba...

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, – An Alabama Senator wrote that hurricanes Katrina and Rita are God’s judgment being visited upon a sinful nation. “ New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness ,” Sen. Hank Erwin wrote in a column appearing in the Birmingham News Wednesday. “ It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God .” He said that after visiting the Alabama gulf coast, he was “awed” but not surprised at the devastation that occurred. “Warnings year after year by godly evangelists and preachers went unheeded. So why were we surprised when finally the hand of judgment fell?” the Republican senator from Montevallo, situated between Birmingham and Montgomery, wrote. “Sadly, innocents suffered along with the guilty. Sin always brings suffering to good people as well as the bad.” “America has been moving away from God,” he added. “We all need to embrace godliness and churchgoing and good, godly living, and we can g...

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today. According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems. The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society. It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality. Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity ...

Parents sue after alternate to evolution added to science curriculum By Alex Johnson A federal judge in Pennsylvania will hear arguments Monday in a lawsuit that both sides say could set the fundamental ground rules for how American students are taught the origins of life for years to come. At issue is an alternative to the standard theory of evolution called “intelligent design.” Proponents argue that the structure of life on Earth is too complex to have evolved through natural selection, challenging a core principle of the biological theory launched by Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” in 1859. Instead, contend adherents of intelligent design, life is probably the result of intervention by an intelligent agent. Intelligent design has been bubbling up since 1987, when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not teach the biblical account of creation instead of evolution, because doing so would violate the constitutional ban on establishment of an official religion. Cr...

ONTARIO, Calif. -- A 14-year-old student was expelled from a Christian school because her parents are lesbians, the school's superintendent said in a letter. Shay Clark was expelled from Ontario Christian School on Thursday. "Your family does not meet the policies of admission," Superintendent Leonard Stob wrote to Tina Clark, the girl's biological mother. Stob wrote that school policy requires that at least one parent may not engage in practices "immoral or inconsistent with a positive Christian life style, such as cohabitating without marriage or in a homosexual relationship," The Los Angeles Times reported in Friday's edition. Stob could not be reached for comment by the newspaper. Shay and her parents said they won't fight the ruling. School administrators learned of the parents' relationship this week after Shay was reprimanded for talking to the crowd during a football game, Tina Clark said. Clark and her partner have been together 22 years...

After a manhunt that spanned two states, Wilson County sheriff's detectives arrested a pastor of a Wilson church Wednesday night wanted on charges of 19 counts of statutory rape. Sheriff's detectives along with members of the U.S. Marshal's Service's fugitive task force arrested Nathaniel Rasberry, of 9013 U.S. 301 S., Kenly, in connection with repeated sexual assaults on two women who are now 19 and 25 years old. Reports of Rasberry's activities first came to the Sheriff's Office in August. After an investigation by Detective Denise Wilkins, which included an interview with Rasberry, warrants for his arrest were issued. When detectives went to serve the warrants, Rasberry was no where to be found, Farmer said. Rasberry, a pastor of World Vision Outreach Center, had been on the run since August when the Wilson County Sheriff's Office issued warrants for his arrest. Those warrants include charges of child incest, parental sex offense, statutory rape, felony...

Lisa Wall says she will always remember the children, but will never understand what led the parents to such abuses. ABBIE VANSICKLE Published September 16, 2005 INVERNESS - From her first glance at the Dollar children, sheriff's Detective Lisa Wall knew something wasn't right. Several looked tiny. The 14-year-old twins appeared to be only 7 or 8. They weighed 36 and 38 pounds. "When I first saw the children, my first impression was, "Oh my gosh!' " she said Thursday. The kids told her they were tortured, but it wasn't until she saw a cattle prod pulled from a drawer in the Dollars' Pine Ridge home that she began to understand the horrors involved. It was then she realized the case of John and Linda Dollar would be the one case that would keep the seasoned detective awake at night. "It blew me away, honestly," she said. Normally soft spoken and camera shy, Wall sat down with reporters the day after the Dollars pleaded no contest to charges o...

By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — Americans who don't believe in God have decided it's time they had a lobbyist in the nation's capital. Their new advocate describes herself as a "soft, fuzzy atheist." Lori Lipman Brown starts Monday as executive director of the Secular Coalition for America. Her two goals: keep religion out of government and win respect for a stigmatized minority. The magnitude of those challenges is, well, biblical. Think Daniel entering the lion's den, or David taking on Goliath. Christian conservatives wield enormous clout here through a network of advocacy groups and relationships with politicians from President Bush on down. Atheists, humanists and freethinkers, as Brown's constituents call themselves, are usually ignored . Is she scared? "Nah," says Brown, 47, an atheist with a Jewish background. "It feels good to be the first." Brown likens atheists today to gays in the 1970s: people just coming out of t...

OLIVE BRANCH — A Memphis, Tenn., minister has been charged with obtaining money by false pretenses after Olive Branch police said he wrote checks totaling $11,000 on a closed bank account. The Rev. Carlton Kneeland, pastor of Greater Emmanuel Christian Assembly in Memphis, was arrested Friday. He was being held Saturday on $75,000 bond in the DeSoto County jail in Hernando. "We received a complaint from Chex-In, a check-cashing business, that he had been writing checks based on the church's account. But the account (with Bank of America) was closed April 19," said Maj. Don Gammage, chief of detectives for the Olive Branch Police Department. Gammage said police have recovered eight checks totaling $5,450 that were returned because of the closed account. "We believe that he may have written 12 to 15 checks for an additional $6,000 to $7,000," he said. "We know there are other checks out there, but we aren't sure how many he wrote." Kneeland, 46, form...

ATLANTA — A minister is free after serving two years in prison for having children at his church whipped with belts. The Rev. Arthur Allen Jr. was released Wednesday from Central State Prison in Macon, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Peggy Chapman said. Allen's wife, Trina, picked up the minister from the medium security prison, Chapman said. Allen, 73, has been in the prison since 2003 on child cruelty and aggravated assault charges stemming from activities at the House of Prayer church in northwest Atlanta. He was accused of ordering church members to discipline children with whips and belts when they misbehaved. The spankings left welts on two boys. He served a 90-day jail sentence but refused to comply with the condition of his 10-year probation that children in his congregation could only be hand spanked at home by their parents. Allen skipped a probation revocation hearing and was on the run for five months before his capture in Cobb County two years ago. Four other ch...

by Mark Fiore

Hollywood – Pat Robertson on Sunday said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of expressing its anger at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its selection of Ellen Degeneres to host this year’s Emmy Awards. “By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath,” Robertson said on “The 700 Club” on Sunday. “Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?” Robertson also noted that the last time Degeneres hosted the Emmys, in 2001, the September 11 terrorism attacks took place shortly before the ceremony. “This is the second time in a row that God has invoked a disaster shortly before lesbian Ellen Degeneres hosted the Emmy Awards,” Robertson explained to his approximately one million viewers. “America is waiting for her to apologize for the death and destruction that her sexual deviance has brought onto this great nation.” Robertson added that other tragedies of the past several years...

BY JEN GIBSON, Times-Union Staff Writer Mark Allen Johnson, 40, of 2210 E. Market St., Warsaw, was booked into the Kosciusko County Jail around 8:09 p.m. Wednesday evening on one charge of child molesting (a Class C felony) and two counts of sexual misconduct (both Class B felonies). He is being held on $50,000 Bond. Johnson is the pastor at the Pentecostal Church of Refuge on West Lake Street in Warsaw. Officers from the Warsaw Police Department and the Kosciusko County Prosecutor’s Office went to the church to serve a warrant for Johnson’s arrest Wednesday, but Johnson fled the church. Johnson later turned himself in to the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department and was taken to the jail Wednesday night. In the probable cause affidavit, Johnson is accused of fondling a 9-yearold boy in the summer of 1997. The document also says Johnson “did perform deviate sexual conduct” with the same child in both the summer of 2002 and in April 2003. At the time of those incidents, the child was a...

For the full size version, which shows more detail on Jebus' tatoo and necklace, CLICK HERE .

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A federal judge declared Wednesday that the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional, a decision that could potentially put the divisive issue back before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case was brought by the same atheist whose previous battle against the words "under God" was rejected last year by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation "under God" violates school children's right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God." Karlton said he was bound by precedent of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in 2002 ruled in favor of Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools. The Supreme Court dismissed the case last year, saying Newdow lacked standing because he did not have custody of his elementary school daughter he sued o...

By Ashley Powers The Los Angeles Times CABAZON, Calif. -- Dinny the roadside dinosaur has found religion. The 45-foot-high concrete Apatosaurus has towered over I-10 near Palm Springs for nearly three decades as a kitschy prehistoric pit stop for tourists. Now he is the star of a renovated attraction that disputes that dinosaurs died off millions of years before humans first walked the planet. Dinny's new owners, pointing to the Book of Genesis, contend that most dinosaurs arrived on Earth the same day as Adam and Eve, some 6,000 years ago, and later marched two-by-two onto Noah's Ark. The gift shop at the attraction, called the Cabazon Dinosaurs, sells toy dinosaurs whose labels warn, "Don't swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution." The Cabazon Dinosaurs join at least a half-dozen other roadside attractions nationwide that use the giant reptiles' popularity in seeking to win converts to creationism. "We're putting evolutionists on no...

WETUMPKA -- The Elmore County Sheriff's Office arrested an associate pastor Friday afternoon on a charge of sexual abuse. Lonnie Earl Floyd, 50, of 210 Mount Zion Road in Wetumpka remained in the Elmore County Jail on Friday under a bond of $10,000, investigator Jeremy Amerson said. Floyd serves as associate pastor for Wetumpka Church of God, police reports stated. Neither Floyd nor members of the church could not be reached for comment. The alleged victim is a juvenile female, authorities said. "DHR (Department of Human Resources) received an anonymous call, and they contacted us," Amerson said. "We talked with the victim and made the arrest in the midafternoon. The investigation continues, and more charges may be filed if other victims come forward." This marks the second time in less than a year a minister from Elmore County has faced allegations of sexual abuse. In December 2004, Garett Dykes, minister of Calvary Baptist Church in Wetumpka, was charged with ...

ORDWAY — A church pastor has been arrested on suspicion of attempted sexual assault on a child after he allegedly tried to arrange a meeting over the Internet with a detective posing as a 14-year-old girl. Lucky Jerome Ashida, 44, pastor of River of Life Fellowship, was arrested Monday and released the next day on $50,000 bail, Pueblo County sheriff’s spokesman Steve Bryant said. An arrest affidavit says Pueblo police Detective Daniel Anderson posed as a girl while communicating with Ashida in an online chat room. The affidavit says that after a series of increasingly sexual chat room exchanges, Ashida and the person he thought was the young girl agreed to meet at a park on Aug. 30. Police said they secretly videotaped Ashida looking for the girl there. The detective, again posing as a girl, then told Ashida through the chat room she had grown tired of waiting for him and returned to school, police said. They arranged a second meeting at the same park for Monday, and Ashida was arreste...

A confrontation erupted between an East Texas church and an evacuee from New Orleans. It centers around a sign out front of Woodland Hills Baptist Church on Old Jacksonville Road in Tyler, about a mile inside the loop. Some say the message is offensive. "I drove by that sign and was just horrified when I saw that," says Kelly Jackman who now lives in Tyler but used to live in New Orleans. That sign at Woodland Hills Baptist Church reads ,"The big easy is the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah." Kelly along with her sister Robin Lafont, an evacuee from New Orleans, showed up this morning at the church to talk to the man who put it up, Pastor Wiley Bennett. During a heated discussion, Robin asked, "What's the point of the sign out there?" Pastor Bennett replied, "The point of the sign is New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and New York City are some of the most wicked cities in America." Robin, who still has family members unaccounted for in New ...

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) — A disabled woman who says she had sex with a pastor has filed a $1 million lawsuit against the pastor and the church that used to employ him. Barbara Jo Stacey filed the suit in Lane County last week. It names Roger Stevens of Klamath Falls and BBC Ministries. According to the suit, Stacey, at age 18, joined a college group at BBC Ministries, where Stevens was a pastor. A year later, on Nov. 20, 2000, she was involved in a car accident that hurt her physically and mentally. Stacey went to her parents' home in Eastern Oregon before deciding to move into Stevens' home. The pastor handled Stacey's daily care, administering medications and dealing with her financial affairs. The suit says he used that counseling relationship to induce her to into sexual acts that took in the home, at BBC Ministries, and other locations from the summer of 2001 to September 2003. The suit alleges that the church was negligent because it either knew or should have known ...

By CHARITA M. GOSHAY Repository staff writer The Rev. Russell Johnson says he doesn’t want to take over Ohio; he just wants to improve it based on his Christian faith. The way that he’s going about it is making some people nervous. Bolstered by a pivotal role in President Bush’s re-election and passage of a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, some Ohio conservative evangelicals are working to ensure they have an impact in the 2006 elections. Russell’s Ohio Restoration Project has set up a network of “patriot pastors” and “minutemen of prayer” to mobilize like-minded voters, pushing hard to align public policy with its biblically based views. Its Web site warns that “Today’s America allows abortion of unwanted pregnancies, increasingly accepts homosexuality, rejects the teaching of intelligent creation in our schools, and many other issues that are in opposition to biblical truth. We are on a path of destruction, and nothing is going to change if Christian citizens deny...

Woman claims she was threatened with death By CHRIS DOUCETTE, TORONTO SUN A TORONTO pastor is behind bars facing allegations that he forced sex on a young woman and later threatened to kill her and the treasurer of his small church. Frank Seeko Lawrence, 56, founder and current pastor of the Toronto Mount Zion Revival Church of the Apostles, was arrested at his home in the city Saturday afternoon. "The main complainant is a lady that alleges (Lawrence) forced her to have sex with him," Det. Glenn Emond said yesterday of the sordid case, in which Lawrence is charged with one count of sexual assault and two of threatening death. He said the 26-year-old woman claims she was befriended by the pastor in the spring of 2003 and that he allowed her to move into his home for a few months and then forced her to "perform sexual acts," which resulted in her getting pregnant. When Lawrence was served last week with family court documents -- custody and support papers for the now...

By ALAN COOPERMAN Washington Post WASHINGTON - Steve Lefemine, an anti-abortion activist in Columbia, S.C., was looking at a full-color satellite map of Hurricane Katrina when something in the swirls jumped out at him: the image of an 8-week-old fetus. "In my belief, God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion," said Lefemine, who e-mailed the flesh-toned weather map to fellow activists across the country and put a stark message on the answering machine of his organization, Columbia Christians for Life. "Providence punishes national sins by national calamities," it said. "Greater divine judgment is coming upon America unless we repent of the national sin of abortion." Lefemine is far from the only person to see the wrath of God in the awesome damage that Katrina has wreaked on the Gulf Coast. As with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and last year's South Asian tsunami, the hurricane has spawned many competing...

By Frederick Cusick and Michael Currie Schaffer Speaking to a large crowd in South Philadelphia on Wednesday, August 31, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan suggested that the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for the violence America had inflicted on Iraq. "New Orleans is the first of the cities going to tumble down... unless America changes its course," Farrakhan said. "It is the wickedness of the people of America and the government of America that is bringing the wrath of God down," he told several hundred people at Tinsley Temple United Methodist Church. His remarks were enthusiastically received. He was in town as part of a multicity tour designed to drum up support for an Oct. 15 event in Washington designed to build on and commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March he organized in 1995. The new effort is called the Millions More Movement. Farrakhan made similar remarks at a luncheon hosted by District 33 of the A...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As religious and political leaders offered prayers for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, some Christian fundamentalists suggested the storm was the work of an angry God bent on punishing a sinful nation. In news releases and Internet chat rooms, some fundamentalists said the hurricane was sent to punish New Orleans, a city known for Mardi Gras and other raucous festivals. Others said the disaster, which may have killed thousands in Louisiana and Mississippi, was revenge for the United States' support of the removal of Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip. "Whenever this country encourages Israel to give up any part of their rightful God-given land we have suffered the consequences," wrote a discussion-board participant on the Web site of the Christian Broadcasting Network. A Philadelphia group called Repent America said the hurricane was sent by God to prevent an annual gay-pride festival that was due to take place this weekend. "We must not forge...

By DEROY MURDOCK When Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco requested a day of prayer amid Hurricane Katrina's devastation, I wondered, "Why bother?" Other than as a palliative for the thousands in distress, this exercise struck me as futile. I do not believe anyone heard those prayers, nor answered them if he did. God, in my opinion, is not living up to his advertising. In a year that has witnessed the aftermath of the south Asian tsunami (approximately 225,000 deaths), Katrina (118 confirmed dead and rising), and Wednesday's Baghdad bridge stampede (some 953 Shiite religious pilgrims dead), it has become impossible to reconcile current events with the notion of an omnipotent, omniscient, magnanimous deity. "The Almighty" appears to be either an unaware, powerless, and/or misanthropic absentee landlord -- or no one whatsoever. Would an all-powerful God stand by helplessly as Katrina sliced into America's belly like a Florida-sized circular saw? New O...

NEW ORLEANS, September 1, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The popular adage, "there are no atheists in the trenches" sums up the truth that in times of disaster it is natural for people to turn to God, for help and also for an explanation. The devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina has brought that reality home to the United States, particularly in the affected regions. Yesterday Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco called for a state-wide day of prayer. "As we face the devastation wrought by Katrina, as we search for those in need, as we comfort those in pain and as we begin the long task of rebuilding, we turn to God for strength, hope and comfort," she said. Meanwhile, New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas after witnessing the horrors first hand and hearing talk of Sodom and Gomorrah commented, "Maybe God's going to cleanse us." The theme of cleansing or purification has become a frequently discussed topic as the tragedy in the affected states ...