Free Republic

A Kenyan pastor was attacked and killed by outraged villagers after being accused of molesting a young boy. Simon Ndegwa of True Disciple Ministry Church in Majengo, Kenya, was fatally burned by an angry mob for allegedly sexually assaulting a nine-year-old child. Police say that the boy was on an errand to a local shop when he met Ndegwa. The pastor is said to have convinced the child to follow him to his home, where the assault took place, after which the boy was allowed to leave. Upon returning home, the boy disclosed the ordeal to his parents, who informed...

Residents of a small town in Arizona are reeling after a pastor was found murdered April 28 in his home. William Schonemann, 76, was pastor of New River Bible Chapel in New River, Ariz., where he was known as “Pastor Bill,” according to the Arizona Republic. Investigators with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office have not released much information on the case beyond confirming they discovered Schonemann’s body the evening of April 28 after responding to a report of a deceased elderly male. They have not announced any suspects, arrests or motives for the crime. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office...

An American pastor living in South Africa was reportedly kidnapped from his church mid-sermon by a group of masked gunmen who stole from congregants and whisked the cleric away in his own truck. Josh Sullivan, a 45-year-old Tennessee native, was taken away at gunpoint Thursday night when four men broke into the Fellowship Baptist Church in Motherwell while the pastor was preaching to a congregation of roughly 30 people, which included his wife and six children, multiple outlets reported. The alleged kidnappers, who also stole two cell phones from churchgoers, then sped off with the clergyman in his silver Toyota...

A megachurch pastor faces jail for stalking a female congregation member after being caught twice breaking into her home on CCTV. Marie Columna, 43, said she’s “still afraid” of Sergio Guardia, 49, a minister at the renowned Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Guardia was convicted by a jury last week on two counts of burglary and one count of stalking, according to Lynchburg Circuit Court and faces up to ten years in jail. The megachurch in Lynchburg — founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. and affiliated with Liberty University — is one of the most celebrated Baptist churches in...

A religious row has erupted among conservative Christians over President Donald Trump’s decision to re-appoint Paula White-Cain to run the White House Faith Office, with theological fissures erupting within Trump’s Christian coalition as leaders stake out different positions on the Florida pastor. The debate escalated on Tuesday (Feb. 19), when Doug Wilson, an influential Reformed pastor who has emerged as an oft-cited religious thinker in conservative circles, derided White-Cain, a Pentecostal pastor, on his podcast. While responding to others on his show who were critiquing White-Cain, the Idaho pastor referred to her appointment as “a bad pick for all kinds...

The pastor cousin of accused Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann was himself accused of sexually abusing a young girl for seven years. The Rev. Kenneth Heuermann, a pastor at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in upstate Camillus, drugged and sexually abused the girl starting from when she was 8, allegedly using clerical stoles to bind her, the victim claims in a 2019 lawsuit.

Dr. Steve Caudle delivers sermon at Greater Second Missionary Baptist Church (GSMBC) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Feb. 9, 2025. A Baptist church in Tennessee has taken down its website amid calls for its pastor to step down after a video clip surfaced in which he stated that "sometimes violence is necessary" when speaking about the Trump administration's efforts toward fiscal transparency. Dr. Steve Caudle, senior reverend at Greater Second Missionary Baptist Church (GSMBC) in Chattanooga, delivered a sermon on Sunday in which he appeared to threaten the "possibility of violence" over the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and...

Pastor Andrew Brunson kissed the American flag when it was presented to him in Germany. I understand his emotions very well. In 1976, I went to Teheran, Iran to teach history in private school while the Shah Reza Pahlavi was still in power. It was a police state then even though it is a worse police state now. After I arrived, my passport was confiscated. In addition, there was runaway inflation and I had to begin borrowing thousands of dollars from the school in order to meet my basic expenses. My salary was $850 a month, and my rent was...

Trump met Erdogan at a Nato meeting early in June. Their discussions were very friendly, and after they ended, Trump thought they had made a deal: Trump would ask Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to release a Turkish citizen, Ebru Ozkan, arrested because of alleged terrorist links to Hamas, and then Turkey would release pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested in Turkey on October 2016 on charges of espionage, which the US considers are bogus charges. So on July 14, Trump called Netanyahu and requested that Ozkan be released, and she was released the next day. But Brunson was not...

The reverend at the National Cathedral prayer service for the inauguration called on President Trump to have mercy on transgender children and immigrant families in her sermon on Tuesday. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde said to Trump, who was sitting in the first pew, that millions of Americans have “put their trust in you” before making her plea to the president. “I ask you, to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared. There are gay, lesbian, transgender children, Democratic, Republican, independent families — some who fear for their lives,” she said. She added, “The people who pick...

President-elect Donald Trump nominated a Texas megachurch associate pastor to serve as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development in his forthcoming administration.In a statement Friday, Trump announced his selection of Scott Turner, who is listed as an associate pastor at the multi-campus Prestonwood Baptist Church based in Plano, to serve as HUD secretary.Trump credited Turner, who served in the first Trump administration as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, with "helping to lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country's most distressed communities.""Those efforts, working together with former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, were maximized by...

A “lone ranger” thief barged into a Midtown Catholic church Wednesday and stole a $3,000 gold-plated rose from a memorial honoring the lives lost on 9/11 in a brazen “act of desecration,” according to cops and the pastor of the parish. The suspect walked into the Church of St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street near Seventh Avenue around 2:30 p.m. and grabbed the rose – created out of the steel from Ground Zero – a cherished part of the 9/11 Memorial Shrine, according to authorities and the Rev. Brian Jordan. “This was not only a robbery, as far...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (Yonhap) -- The United States will take issue with the kidnapping of a Korean-American pastor by North Korean agents at future six-party talks over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, a South Korean interpreter close to the case said Tuesday. "U.S. State Department officials said they will raise the issue of the abduction of Rev. Kim Dong-shik with the North through various channels, including the six-way talks," said Chang Hak-keun, a South Korean interpreter who assisted Rev. Kim's wife during her visit to the State Department on Tuesday afternoon. Rev. Kim's wife, Chung Young-hwa, met State Department officials...

* Killing reportedly took place in the country's gas-rich province Cabo Delgado * Suspected ISIS-linked extremists ordered the pastor's wife to deliver his head * Police said the widow arrived to the local police headquarters last Wednesday * Cabo Delgado province has been rocked by attacks by ISIS-linked militants since 2017, killing at least 3,340 people and displacing more than 800,000Suspected ISIS-linked extremists have decapitated a Christian pastor before handing his severed head to his wife to show authorities in Mozambique. The killing, reported by local news, took place in the country's gas-rich northern province of Cabo Delgado. Last Wednesday,...

Michael Jennings, a pastor arrested while tending his out-of-town neighbors’ yard, can sue the city of Childersburg, Alabama, and three police officers involved in the case. On Friday (Sept. 27), a three-judge panel of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed a lower-court ruling that had dismissed Jennings’ lawsuit. The officers aren’t protected by qualified immunity, the panel said, because they had no probable cause to arrest Jennings. Jennings, who is Black, was confronted by police in May 2022, after a white woman called 911 to report a “suspicious individual” in a neighboring yard. The pastor, who identified...

A pastor's daughter thought she had escaped a childhood of sexual abuse by moving out and getting married only to see her father break into her house and sodomize her weeks after she had a baby. Bertheophilus 'Judge' Bailey, a respected minister at St Andrew Christian Church in Tulsa began abusing Harmony Oates when she was in sixth grade, court documents claim. He told his daughter he was her 'boyfriend' and that the little girl would unleash a 'total catastrophe to the whole kingdom of God' if she ever revealed what he was doing to her. But he was arrested...

A gunman shot up pro-Trump pastor Greg Locke's home while one of his children was inside. The Nashville pastor and founder of Global Vision Bible Church shared confronting pictures from the aftermath of the incident in the early hours of Wednesday morning. He revealed one of the bullets 'cut through the headboard of our youngest daughter's bed and lodged in her pillow.' Locke and his family pulled into their driveway 'exactly one minute after a madman unloaded an entire magazine of bullets from an automatic weapon into our house, garage and my truck.' The incident was caught on security camera...

A man accused of fatally shooting a New Jersey councilwoman was pictured yawning as he pled not guilty to the brutal murder on Monday. Rashid Ali Bynum, 29, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Eunice Dwumfour, 30, who was gunned down in her car outside her Sayreville home in February. Images obtained by DailyMail.com show a careless Bynum at the Middlesex County Courthouse making faces as the charges against him are read. Wearing all green, he appeared to smirk as he peered behind his hair every time the gun used in the killing was mentioned. Dwumfour's relatives...

Just when you thought the progressive left couldn’t sink any lower in their relentless quest to redefine Christianity, along comes the National Bimbo™’s pastor, Amos Brown. In his latest “sermon”—if you can even call it that—this self-appointed sage of San Francisco rewrites the Bible to convince us that Jesus’ pick for U.S. president is their “dear member,” Kamala Harris. We all know that the fruits of the Spirit, as stated in Galatians 5:22-23, are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But according to Rev. Brown, we need to add “justice” to that list. But we all...

Those who celebrate sexual immorality and defying God claim that I am the reason they're in Ferndale, CA. Okay, well then I'll go preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them... for about a minute and a half. At that point, I was assaulted and my microphone was broken. So how about reasoning with those I brought to town? Yes! Let's do that. video is 36 minutes long