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...