Tag: religion

Satanic Temple Claims Abortion Is Part Of Their Religion In Effort To Block Abortion Bans

A satanic group is continuing attempts to overturn abortion bans in pro-life states by filing lawsuits claiming abortion is part of their religion.

The Satanic Temple (TST), a nonprofit based in Salem, Massachusetts, has filed lawsuits in Missouri, Indiana, Texas, and Idaho that so far have been unsuccessful.

That hasn’t stopped the headline-grabbing organization from plaintiff-shopping for new religious freedom lawsuits to stop abortion bans, according to its website.

The group doesn’t shy away from controversy. It made news recently for staging a satanic holiday display featuring a silver goat head atop blood-red robes during Christmas at the Iowa Capitol. The Baphomet statue shared space with a Christmas display until it was decapitated.

Michael Cassidy, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot who ran for office in Mississippi, took credit for tearing it down. The Christian conservative raised $120,000 as of early February for legal fees after being charged with criminal mischief. Recently, prosecutors announced they are charging him with a felony hate crime.

TST created an abortion ritual that it claims will exempt women from their states’ laws. The ritual, along with TST’s new abortion clinic in New Mexico, was featured in November’s Cosmopolitan magazine.

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Freedom Caucus leader wants to limit religious freedom by barring Satanic displays in Arizona

In a bit of irony, the leader of Arizona’s far-right Freedom Caucus has sponsored a bill that clearly infringes on the right to religious freedom. 

Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Queen Creek Republican, wants to ban Satanic displays on public property in Arizona, claiming that Satanism is not a real religion, and therefore not owed protection under the First Amendment. 

Hoffman is the sponsor of Senate Bill 1279, which he’s named the RESPECT Act, short for Reject Escalating Satanism by Preserving Essential Core Traditions. 

“It’s the blatant unconstitutionality of it,” Hemant Mehta, editor of The Friendly Atheist, told the Arizona Mirror. “It just violates every intention of the First Amendment of the Constitution. 

Mehta doesn’t believe that Hoffman actually thinks that this bill will ever become law, with Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs ready and willing to veto it, but that it’s simply sending a message to his followers. 

“It’s so hypocritical,” Mehta said. “This shows you how little Republicans like Hoffman actually care about freedom. He wants freedom for people like him and no freedom for people he disagrees with. It’s ridiculous.”

The bill was the subject of a heated debate during a Senate Government Committee meeting Wednesday, where Hoffman, who chairs the committee, repeatedly interrupted members of the public testifying against the bill. 

He spoke over them to correct them about what he said were their misinterpretation of it and admonished members of the audience for making faces and gestures at him and the other lawmakers on the committee. He also accused a member of The Satanic Temple of being disingenuous in her testimony, something that members of the public would not be allowed to say about Hoffman’s claims without being told they were in violation of the legislature’s rules against impugning the motivations of a lawmaker. 

The bill passed through the committee with a vote of 5-1, with the only Democrat present, Sen. Juan Mendez, of Tempe, voting against. The two other Democratic members of the committee were absent. 

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Daughter of ‘Mormon Manson’ Ervil LeBaron lifts the lid on what it was like to grow up under terrifying control of polygamous cult leader who ordered the MURDERS of multiple people as part of heinous ‘Blood Atonement’ killings to ‘cleanse their sins’

The daughter of polygamous cult leader Ervil LeBaron – who was dubbed the Mormon Manson for orchestrating more than two dozens murders both inside and outside of the sect – has revealed what her life was like growing up.

Celia LeBaron, now 57, was born into the Church of the Lamb of God – a fundamentalist Mormon breakaway group which continued to practice polygamy and even followed the ‘Blood Atonement’ teaching that stated the blood of sinners needed to be shed for them to ascend to heaven.

Her father was ultimately sentenced to life in prison but continued to create hit lists from behind bars for his followers to carry out.

Ervil, who died in a Utah state prison in 1981, is estimated to have had 25 people killed as a result of his orders – with deaths including that of his own pregnant daughter. 

Celia, who is now a mother of three, appeared on an episode of the Cults to Consciousness podcast to unravel her childhood memories.

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Man Who Destroyed Satanic Shrine In Iowa Capitol Charged With ‘Hate Crime’

Michael Cassidy, a Christian veteran who decapitated a Satanic shrine on display in the Iowa State Capitol building, has been charged with a ‘hate crime’.

Yes, really.

If you object to literal Satanic displays in public buildings you are now hateful.

Back in December, Cassidy, beheaded the caped figure placed in the building by The Satanic Temple, and threw the goat skull that was serving as its head in a bin.

Cassidy was quoted as stating that he took the action to “awaken Christians to the anti-Christian acts promoted by our government.”

Instead of simply charging him with misdemeanor damage to property or vandalism, the Des Moines Register reports that Polk County prosecutors charged the veteran with felony third-degree criminal mischief, arguing that the act was “in violation of individual rights” under Iowa’s hate crime statue.

A statement from the Polk County Attorney’s Office claimed that “Evidence shows the defendant made statements to law enforcement and the public indicating he destroyed the property because of the victim’s religion.”

Cassidy is raising money for his legal defense on his GiveSendGo page, which notes “Out of the millions of Christians in this nation, Cassidy was the first to act in bravery and conviction. He was not willing to see God reviled, especially in a building where lawmakers are supposed to honor Jesus Christ as King and look to his law for wisdom as they legislate with justice and righteousness.”

[ZH:] And of course, leftists have been tearing down statues all over the country with impunity.

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Praying to a HIGH-er power! Inside the boom in psychedelic churches where former Republican senators, bankers and Mormons organize shroom and Ayahuasca ceremonies for thousands of Americans to connect with God

SWAT teams and helicopters descended on a ranch in Joshua Tree, California, following reports of a bloodcurdling scream.

When they arrived, the lights were out, smoke was coming out of the door, and a row of bodies lay strewn across the cabin floor, seemingly lifeless.

Agents thought it was the scene of a mass homicide.

To their great relief, it was merely one of America’s rapidly proliferating psychedelic churches, caught in the midst of a particularly intense Ayahuasca ceremony.

‘The officers just looked at us like we were a bunch of hippies stuffing crystals up our asses,’ says Colette Close, co-founder of the church, Hummingbird, who regales the story. 

‘They came in, did a wellness check and took off…Most cops have better things to do.’

Hummingbird is part of a global boom in people turning to hallucinogenic drugs in search of spiritual enlightenment, including NFL star Aaron Rodgers, actor Will Smith and Prince Harry.

Taking these substances – even for therapeutic purposes – remains illegal in most of the US, despite clamor for decriminalization.

But tens of thousands of Americans now say it is a sacrament that brings them closer to God – and that this religious freedom is protected in law.

It is thought anywhere between 200 to 2,000 psychedelic churches now exist across the US, from states with liberal drug laws such as California and Oregon, to resolutely conservative ones including Utah and Alabama.

Most are informal, underground networks, but some have public profiles and charge membership fees in exchange for drugs.

The majority are nomadic, hiring out retreats or Airbnbs in remote areas to avoid scrutiny, but some occupy permanent buildings in the mode of traditional churches.

Psychedelic preachers include a queer ‘Mushroom Pope’ in San Francisco and a former Mormon and Republican senator in Utah, while worshippers range from QAnon conspiracists to west coast hippies.

Some believe in a God, some do not.

But they all have one thing in common: they pray to a higher power.

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Advocates Outraged That Feds Asked Banks To Search Customers’ ‘Religious Texts’ Purchases

Faith leaders and religious liberty advocates are up in arms over news that the federal government encouraged banks and other financial institutions to search customers’ private accounts using the search term “religious texts.”

The “religious texts” search term was among those federal officials asked financial institutions to use following the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, a congressional source with direct knowledge confirmed to The Epoch Times on Jan. 18.

Other terms that banks, credit card companies, and financial firms were asked to use in the searches included “MAGA” and “Trump,” according to the House Judiciary Committee. Federal officials at the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department sought the data from such searches as part of their investigation of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Religious liberty advocates interviewed by The Epoch Times were unanimous in condemning the searches, which were conducted without judicially authorized search warrants.

“This is beyond alarming,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told The Epoch Times. “If we did a word search in history of the type of activities the Biden administration is engaged in, it would return words like ‘KGB,’ ’totalitarian,‘ ’repressive,’ ‘anti-democratic,’ and ‘grave threat to freedom.’”

Family Research Council is a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group that works on behalf of traditional values, including and especially defense of the family and religious freedom.

“The last place you would anticipate this kind of government intrusion into freedom of speech is America and yet it is rife with this administration and with the ‘deep state,’” Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver told The Epoch Times.

“It is a very serious concern and it should be a serious concern, no matter your political beliefs because if this is permitted, then it just depends on who is in power. This is what despotic governments do to suppress people that they don’t agree with,” he said.

Mr. Staver’s organization, Liberty Counsel, is an Orlando, Florida-based nonprofit religious liberty defense foundation.

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Chilling moment cops find missing girls on Doomsday cult compound where kids as young as four were ‘married’ to their fathers and sexually abused

New video has been released of the moment police found missing girls on a remote compound in Utah. 

The incredible footage shows how police rescued two young Utah sisters on a dark December evening in the wilderness of a polygamist compound after being kidnapped by their father.

Dinah Coltharp, who was eight, and Hattie Coltharp, four at the time, were rescued by police in Lund, southwest of Salt Lake City in December 2017 after a highly publicized amber alert search.

The girls were taken by their father, John Coltharp, and had been handed over to his friend Samuel Shaffer who hid them on the compound when the amber alert was issued. It is believed they were to be married off to cult leader Shaffer.

When police raided the site, they also discovered Shaffer’s two young daughters, Lily, seven, and Samantha, then five, who had not been reported missing. 

Samantha and Hattie, the two youngest, were being kept in a 50-gallon blue water barrels to hide them from authorities, where they had been for more than 24 hours in below-freezing temperatures. 

Dramatic images shows two of the girls being rescued. They were barefoot and wearing what looked like thin leggings. 

The two older girls were found in an abandoned trailer. All were dehydrated.

When questioned, Shaffer said the girls were being hidden from police. 

Police fear the men planned to marry Coltharp’s daughters off to Shaffer who was described as the ‘prophet’ of the cult. 

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Nearly ONE HUNDRED churches across Canada have been torched or damaged after activists lied that 200 indigenous children were buried under Catholic schools

Almost 100 Christian churches in Canada have been systematically targeted in apparent revenge attacks following a hoax about mass graves containing Native American children. 

In 2021, a horrific story swept the internet as an indigenous group in Saskatchewan claimed to find 751 unmarked graves under the Marieval Indian Residential School, weeks after 215 children were supposedly discovered under another school in British Columbia. 

The schools were run by Christian churches – largely Catholic – and sought to eliminate their students’ Indigenous culture so they could ‘assimilate’ into Canadian society.

However, excavations carried out last year failed to turn up any evidence of bodies, and most experts concluded that claims of mass graves were exaggerated. 

At the same time the excavations failed for the past two years, at least 96 churches have been burned, vandalized and destroyed, seemingly in retaliation, with phrases smeared on the walls including: ‘Where are the children.’

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A brief history of the Messianic movement that inspired the tunnel under 770 Eastern Parkway

A plaque commemorating the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson hung outside the Chabad headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway for nearly a decade after his 1994 death. 

The plaque was notable less for what it said than what it had said, before vandals chiseled out the phrase: “Of blessed memory.”

It’s a ubiquitous honorific across the Jewish world. But in Chabad ranks, when it came to Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, it was a political statement, as the movement split over whether he was the Messiah, and therefore about to return to Earth — if not still alive. Those who maintain that belief are known as Meshichist — Yiddish for Messianist  — and have long been ostracized by Chabad-Lubavitch leadership. 

The rift is most apparent at 770 Eastern Parkway, which houses both the Chabad administration that disavows Meshichist ideology and a synagogue adorned with a huge banner emblazoned with what’s known as the Yechi, the eight-word Meshichist credo.

That division burst into public view this week with a tumultuous confrontation over a secret tunnel under the headquarters by Meshichist students that led to the arrests of nine men and the temporary shutdown of the iconic 770 building.

Much remains unclear about who built the tunnel and why. Two yeshiva students who said they were involved with the project but spoke on the condition they not be named for fear of arrest said they were taking initiative on a long-deferred synagogue expansion. But some see it as part of a Messianic quest to build a Third Temple — not in Jerusalem but in Brooklyn.

“The Messianic significance of 770 is underscored by the fact that it actually needs to be expanded,” said Ezra Glinter, who is writing a biography of Schneerson. “And not only does it need to be expanded, but in a manner of totally breaking through a barrier.”

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Inside secret tunnel built by ‘extremist Jewish students’ linking historic ‘cleansing bath’ to Brooklyn synagogue that was only discovered when homeowner heard ‘suspicious noises at night’

A new video shows the secret underground tunnel dug by a group of young Orthodox Jewish men that is at the core of a bizarre dispute with religious leaders. 

The tunnel was discovered by rabbis in December, who were horrified that the young men had burrowed it from the Chabad Lubavitch synagogue in Crown Heights. 

Initially, local site Crown Heights Info reported that it led all the way to a women’s mikvah at the end of the street – several houses away. 

However the operators of that women’s mikvah say it does not, and instead connects the synagogue with an out-of-use historic men’s mikvah at 770 Eastern Parkway – the synagogue site. 

The NYPD is yet to confirm exactly where the tunnel leads, what is being used for or what the young men have been charged with.  

After learning about what the young men had done, the Chabad’s rabbis ordered it to be filled, but when construction workers showed up last night to complete the work the young men blocked their way, jumping into the tunnel and sparking a riot that was filmed and broadcast on social media. 

In the end, 12 young men were arrested by the NYPD, who had to be called in. The site has been at the center of a dispute between the rabbis and ‘extremists’ who both stake claim to the property. 

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