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Some undocumented immigrants living in North Texas are getting church-issued identification cards through a local partnership. While they're not official government-issued documents, some law enforcement agencies will recognize them.

Missouri is one of nine states where the government generally prohibits people from carrying firearms in church. As in any question, the government may be neutral, which is the default position in the United States, or it may actively interfere.  According to concealedcarry.com, there are two states that ban concealed carry in churches, Nebraska and Louisiana. Nebraska allows a church to authorize an armed security team if the team members have carry permits and if written notice is given to church members.  Louisiana law is similar, but requires an extra eight hours of training every year. Seven states and...

State police told CNN the attackers were most likely Fulani herdsmen who continued their crusade by burning down 50 homes. “They attacked the venue of a burial ceremony and also attacked the church where the two reverend fathers were holding mass,” police commissioner Fatai Owoseni says. “We were able to recover 16 bodies from the scene of the attack and those of the two priests.” . . . . “President Buhari has done nothing more than issue empty words of condolence as villages have been burned and thousands of religious minorities have been slaughtered. President Buhari’s willful inaction has meant...

After one day of trial, the situation just took a bleak turn for Pastor Andrew. At the conclusion of the first day of his trial – a day filled with video testimony of secret prosecution witnesses whose voices and appearances were disguised – the Turkish judge ordered that Pastor Andrew be returned to the notoriously overcrowded and grim prison, where Pastor Brunson was originally imprisoned. The judge refused to release Pastor Andrew. The judge ordered that the trial not resume until May 7th.

The Oklahoma legislature has overwhelmingly voted to extend the protections homes and businesses have in the laws of defense of self and others to Oklahoma churches. From publicradiotulsa.org: The Senate voted 42–1 on Thursday for House Bill 2632, which makes places used either part- or full-time for religious services covered by the Oklahoma Self-Defense Act. The shooting still must be done because of reasonable fear of harm or death or to prevent a violent felony. "That makes it clear that there has to be some reason that you felt that you were threatened and needed to use that defensive...

And church attendance by Roman Catholics is on the decline again. So, in fact, is the religious affiliation among Americans at large.The drop continues a long trend of declining attendance at mass. In the last three years, an average of only 39 percent of Catholics reported attending church in the past week. That’s down from an average of 45 percent just 10 years ago. And severely off from the mid-1900’s. In 1955, for instance, 75 percent of Catholics reported attending mass during the previous week.On the other side of the aisle, the new Gallup survey found that church attendance...

An updated survey from Gallup, which it has conducted every 10 years since 1955, shows that only 39% of Catholics and 45% of Protestants attend church weekly. Back in 1955, about 75% of Catholics went to Mass every week. For the Protestants, about 42% went to church weekly.

Remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron that he wanted to repair church-state ties caused uproar Tuesday, sparking charges he was tampering with France’s longstanding secular tradition. The Church and the state were for centuries virtually indistinguishable in France, but the 1789 Revolution marked the first step by republicans to exclude religion from government affairs, codified in a 1905 law separating the two. But tensions have persisted, with conservative politicians often accusing officials of denying France’s cultural heritage — as seen in efforts to install nativity scenes at town halls during Christmas. Macron, who prides himself on tackling difficult issues head-on,...

A former bookkeeper was sentenced to two years in prison for stealing about $420,000 from a Peachtree City church, according to the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. . . . “We hope that today’s federal prison sentence will bring some solace to the church and its members, and deter others who might consider stealing from vulnerable victims like churches and charitable organizations,”

Kelly Clemente found out she was pregnant when she was 18. She had just finished her first semester of college, and up until then, described herself as your typical “all-American girl.”She got good grades, was a member of a sorority, and ran on the track team.When she saw that pregnancy test, “My life is over,” she thought.“I was like, it doesn’t even matter. Nothing matters anymore,” Kelly told The Daily Signal.Kelly, unlike most girls her age, was familiar with the implications of an unplanned pregnancy. In high school, she volunteered at HOPE in Northern Virginia, a nonprofit that creates gift...

On Wednesday, 28 March, 2018, the West Maypole Avenue Church of Christ was having a Bible study that started at 7:30 p.m. At 8:09 p.m., the study was interrupted by 27-year-old Kenneth Baines, who announced an armed robbery. A 57-year-old armed church member was seated inside. The church member was legally armed and had a concealed carry permit. It seems likely that he was a member of a voluntary church security team, as later reports refer to him as a “security guard”, but no report mentions that he had a security guard license, or that he was paid as a...

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People are fleeing the institutional church and there should be no question as to why this exodus is happening. The vast majority of people who claim to represent God in the United States have been perpetuating a Biblical misconception that has been leading the church into decline for decades. That erroneous notion is Escapism Theology. Escapism theology is the concept that humanity needs to get away from this mess we call Earth and go "home" to Heaven. I hear this kind of verbiage all of the time from church leaders almost everywhere. They say things like: "Accept Jesus as your...

12 Surefire Methods For Standing Out From The Crowd During Church March 19, 2018 You know what’s the literal worst? Going through all the trouble to put on your best clothes from Hollister, drive all the way to church, and worship the Lord Most High—only to realize later that not a single person even noticed you the whole time you were singing God’s praises and having the Word of God preached to you. Everyone’s eyes were on the worship band or on the pastor.

When a man with a handgun walked into a church service at the Faith City Mission in Amarillo, Texas, most of the crowd of about 100 started to run. But Tony Garces, an ex-con, took his shirt off and confronted the gunman, according to a news release from Amarillo police. After Garces wrestled the gun away from 35-year-old Joshua Len Jones, and helped prevent what could have been another mass shooting on the same day as the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., at least one Amarillo police officer shot Garces. He was hit twice, in...

NEWFOUNDLAND — A multi-day festival to celebrate assault rifles begins in Pike County just one week after one was used to gun down more than 30 people, 17 fatally, in a Parkland, Fla., school. In recent years, the famous Moon family has brought to Pike County both a company that sells assault rifles and a church that puts them at the center of religious observances. The church's pastor and his followers say their devotion to the AR-15, a weapon of war used again and again in the nation's worst mass shootings, is rooted in Christian love. They do not see...

An Alabama representative, Lynn Greer (R), has filed a bill to clarify Alabama law to include churches with dwellings that have protection under the law to use deadly force to protect the people inside from attack.  On 15 February, 2018, the bill was passed with overwhelming support, 40 to 16, in the House.  39 Republicans and 1 Democrat voted for the bill, 2 Republicans and 14 Democrats voted against it. From montgomeryadvertiser.com: The bill, sponsored by Rep. Lynn Greer, R-Rogersville, would add houses of worship to the state’s 2006 law, allowing a person to use physical force against anyone...

The liberal-leaning Church of Sweden is expected to lose over one million members in the next 10 years, insiders have said, and will soon have to start selling property it can no longer support. Börje Holgersson, chairman of the church council of Lima-Transtrand in Västerås, said in an article for SVT, the Swedish national public TV, that the parish "simply can't afford to make ends meet." A translation by Breitbart News on Wednesday noted that fears are that the Lutheran church, which has around six million baptized members in the country, will see a dramatic drop in membership over the...

When I tell people about my childhood church, they will usually insist that I was in a cult. While I strongly suspect that they are correct, I never thought of myself as a cult member. Sure, my church may have shunned the outside world and taught that it alone possessed “the truth” but we never had to swear our undying loyalty to the leaders or live in a compound or drink poison. Should you wish to stop attending the church, you were free to do so, but you had to accept that the members who remained were no longer your...