CultNEWS101 Articles: 11/14/2024 (Gloriavale, Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, Legal, UK, New Zealand, International Cult Awareness Day)

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The New Zealand Herald: Gloriavale's banned children's books: Senior leader's email lays out rules

" ... Lord of the Rings, stories about Christmas and Easter, and nearly all books containing pictures of animals wearing clothes are on the list of reading material considered too "worldly" for Gloriavale's children.

An email leaked from the West Coast Christian community and sent to politicians has laid out the vast amount of book categories senior leadership disapproved of for members who were homeschooling their kids.

Labour MP Duncan Webb, who has spoken against Gloriavale in the past, warns while some of the banned books might seem funny, the reality of the censorship was "deeply troubling" and children were being denied stories that served as a "window to the outside world".

The leaked email, sent from senior leader Peter Righteous' email address last month, noted he was "disappointed to find books celebrating Christmas on our shelves, and others that were simply worldly".

Righteous refers in his email to "rules" put in place by founding brethren, which forbid books in the following categories:

• Fairy tales and fantasies

• Science fiction

• Anything promoting Christmas, Easter and the like

• Supernatural or occult themes

• Myths and legends presented as truth

• Anything promoting evolution

• Books presenting wrong as right, or the idea the end justifies the means"

London News Online: Concerns raised over relationship between 'cult' church and Lewisham council

"Concerns have been raised over the relationship between Lewisham council and a church which allegedly showed teenagers a video of a dead body to scare them from leaving, according to former members.

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) is a Christian denomination with five chapters in South London – Brixton, Peckham, Croydon, Woolwich and Catford.

The UCKG has been described as a "cult" by former members after allegations of preying on vulnerable people, brainwashing them, performing exorcisms and making them pay 10 per cent of their income to the church.

Two weeks ago the Diocese of Southwark – responsible for more than 100 Anglican churches in South London and east Surrey – apologised for including the Catford branch of the UCKG in an annual interfaith peace walk through Lewisham in September.

Rachael Reign, 30, the director of Surviving Universal UK, a support group for ex-members, said the inclusion of the UCKG on the interfaith walk caused "considerable upset and distress" among ex-members of the church."

November 18th is recognized as International Cult Awareness Day

1991 - Wikipedia: Synanon

Synanon is a US-founded social organization created by Charles E. "Chuck" Dederich Sr. in 1958 in Santa Monica, California, United States. It is currently active in Germany.

Originally established as a drug rehabilitation program, by the early 1960s, Synanon became an alternative community centered on group truth-telling sessions that came to be known as the "Synanon Game," a form of attack therapy.  The group ultimately became a cult called the Church of Synanon in the 1970s.

Synanon disbanded in 1991 due to members being convicted of criminal activities (including attempted murder) and retroactive loss of its tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) due to financial misdeeds, destruction of evidence, and terrorism  It has been called one of the "most dangerous and violent cults America had ever seen.

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Silence is Compliance

Here’s the details of Rachael Reign's Surviving Universal UK upcoming protest.

The theme is: Silence is Compliance

• 13th February 2024 at 12pm
• UK Charity Commission
• 102 Petty France, London SW1H 9AJ
• Nearest Station: St. James’ Park

"Surviving Universal UK will be demanding that the charity commission take urgent action against the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) and launch a statutory Inquiry without undue delay."

Surviving Universal UK is an organization that supports survivors of spiritual and cult abuse. The organization's founder, Rachael Reign, has said that she is helping other survivors of the UCKG evangelical church's practices.

Rachael Reign
Surviving Universal UK

https://linktr.ee/survivinguniversaluk

UCKG: Church pastor tells boy 'evil spirit' hides in him

Katie Mark

BBC Panorama

December 11, 2023

A UK branch of a Christian church has been secretly filmed trying to cast out evil spirits from a 16-year-old.

A Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) pastor was seen reciting what looked like so-called "strong prayers" to rid the boy of a demon.

BBC Panorama was also told by a gay ex-member he was given "strong prayers" at 13 to try to make him straight.

The UCKG says under-18s are not allowed into "strong prayers" services and it does not perform "conversion therapy".

A BBC Panorama investigation has found:

The church tells its congregations it can help with mental health conditions by casting out evil spirits

The leader of the church in the UK describes epilepsy as a "spiritual problem"

The UCKG has branches around the world, including 35 in the UK, where it is registered as a charity. It says it has more than 10,000 members across the country and describes itself as a Christian Pentecostal church.

Prayers to cast out evil spirits are not unusual in the Christian world. Some churches call them deliverance or exorcisms - although the latter is not a term the UCKG uses.

Dr Joe Aldred, a Pentecostal bishop who works to bring together different Christian traditions, says: "The Church of England has exorcists in pretty much every diocese. The question is how it is done."

"Strong prayers" in the UCKG usually involve a pastor laying hands on a member of the congregation and demanding an evil spirit leaves their body. The church says it conducts the prayers at so-called "spiritual cleansing" services each week to "remove the root cause of problems".

The UCKG came under scrutiny following the murder of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie, who was murdered by her great-aunt and the woman's boyfriend.

In the week before her death in 2000, the couple had taken Victoria - who was showing signs of abuse - to a branch of the church.

A pastor said he thought she could be possessed and initially suggested she be taken to a service where "strong prayers" were performed. Later, before the service took place, the pastor told the great-aunt to take Victoria to hospital.

A Charity Commission report highlighted that "the seriousness of Victoria's condition was not fully realised or reported to the relevant authorities" in the days before she died. It said it was "concerned" the church did not have a formal child protection policy.

Following this criticism, the church introduced a safeguarding policy. Now, it promises not to perform strong prayers on anyone under 18 - or in their presence.

BBC Panorama visited a UCKG youth group service in Brixton, south London, attended by young adults and teenagers.

A service led by Bishop Edir Macedo, the founder of the UCKG

The undercover filming shows the pastor splitting up the group according to age.

A boy, who told the undercover reporter he was 16 at the time, is seen receiving what looks like "strong prayers" from the pastor. "My God, let your fire burn the evil spirit that hides," the pastor says.

The boy's head is held by the pastor, who then prays for the evil spirit that has entered the boy to leave.

The BBC showed the filming to Jahnine Davis, who sits on an independent government child safeguarding review panel.

She says: "Given that the death of Victoria Climbie occurred over two decades ago, based on the footage you've shared, UCKG may want to ask themselves how much have they learnt.

"Safeguarding policies are one thing but they mean nothing if they're not being implemented. They're meaningless."

In a statement, the UCKG said: "Strong prayers… are mainly performed at deliverance specific services" and "anyone under the age of 18 is not allowed" in. It said it strongly rejects the suggestion it has breached its safeguarding policy.

With more than 30 branches in the UK, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God claims to transform lives.

BBC Panorama spoke to 40 former UCKG members - some of them left years ago, others in the past few months. Sharon joined the London Stratford branch when she was 19.

She says she told a pastor about her clinical depression and says he never advised her to seek professional help. She was subjected to "strong prayers", she says - contrary to the UCKG's safeguarding policy, which says they should not be performed on people with mental health problems. "It got to the point where I was very scared of going to those services because I was one of the targets all the time," Sharon says.

The church says "strong prayers" are not intended to be frightening or harmful and no-one should feel targeted. It also says if it is aware that "mental health concerns are involved", its "safeguarding team helps with referrals".

The BBC has also spoken to a former UCKG member, "Mark", who asked to remain anonymous because he was concerned about how the church might react. He says "strong prayers" were performed on him from the age of 13 to try to make him straight.

"When they found out I was gay, they started telling me that it was a demon causing it, that I needed to attend the Friday services where they would perform exorcisms," he says.

Mark says the prayers were performed every week for more than four years and that he tried to convince himself he was attracted to women. "I would cry myself to sleep," he says. "And it was a really hard time because the amount of self-hate was huge."

The UCKG told the BBC it does not perform "conversion therapy" and that "strong prayers are not given for matters of sexuality or gender alignment". It adds that it "welcomes people from all sexual preferences".

At a healing service secretly recorded by the BBC where "strong prayers" were conducted, Bishop James Marques - the leader of the UCKG in the UK - tells the congregation some sickness is a spiritual problem and mental health problems are linked to evil spirits.

He told an undercover reporter: "Depression is a spiritual problem. Behind depression there is an evil spirit."

He also said, "We know that epilepsy is a medical condition but in the Bible the Lord Jesus casts out an evil spirit that was causing epilepsy. So we can understand that epilepsy in reality is a spiritual problem that has a physical, visible manifestation."

In a statement, the UCKG said "strong prayers" are never "promoted as a replacement for medical or... professional help".

Many former members spoken to by the BBC say they found leaving the church incredibly difficult.

Rachael, who left the church and now leads a campaign against the UCKG, warning of the dangers she says it poses to other young people.

"They say, 'Do you remember that assistant who was sitting here? Well, they left the church and now they are getting a divorce. Now they have cancer.'"

Sharon says she was shown a graphic video about a former member who was in a motorcycle incident that showed "all their organs out".

She adds: "They said this is what happens when you leave the church, the devil will come and take your soul."

At an event secretly filmed by the BBC, Alvaro Lima - one of the UCKG's bishops - tells followers that straight after leaving the church, "my mother became very sick, cancer in the lungs".

However, he said, she later came back to the church "and now the cancer is shrinking and she's getting better and better".

The UCKG told the BBC it "does not employ scare tactics", is "based on (voluntary) devotions" and "does not have any interest in coercion".

The church says its many current members appreciate it and the good work it does.

But many of the former members the BBC spoke to say they would not go back.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-67592961

A Brazilian Writer Saw a Tweet as Tame Satire. Then Came the Lawsuits

J.P. Cuenca, a Brazillian novelist and journalist, is among the latest targets of a type of legal crusade that pastors and politicians in Brazil are increasingly waging against journalists and critics.

Ernesto Londoño

NY Times 

November 22, 2020

RIO DE JANEIRO — The acerbic tweet came naturally to the Brazilian novelist and journalist J.P. Cuenca, who was several months into a quarantine doom-scrolling routine.

One June afternoon, he read an article about the millions of dollars President Jair Bolsonaro’s government had spent advertising on radio and television stations owned by its evangelical Christian allies, particularly the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a Protestant denomination that has helped propel Brazil’s political shift rightward.

“Brazilians will only be free when the last Bolsonaro is strangled with the entrails of the last pastor from the Universal Church,” Mr. Cuenca wrote on Twitter, riffing on an oft-cited 18th century quote about the fates that should befall kings and priests.

He put his phone down, made coffee and carried on with his day, oblivious that the missive would soon cost him his job with a German news outlet, prompt death threats and spark a cascade of litigation. At least 130 Universal Church pastors, claiming “moral injury,” have sued him in remote courthouses around the vast country.

Mr. Cuenca is among the latest targets of a type of legal crusade that pastors and politicians in Brazil are increasingly waging against journalists and critics in a bitterly polarized nation. Defendants or their lawyers must then show up in person for each suit, leading them in a mad rush around the country.

“Their strategy is to sue me in different parts of the country so I have to defend myself in all these corners of Brazil, a continent-size nation,” he said. “They want to instill fear in future critical voices and to drive me to ruin or madness. It’s Kafka in the tropics.”

Press freedom advocates say the sheer number of suits against Mr. Cuenca is unusual, but the type of campaign he faces no longer is.

Leticia Kleim, a legal expert at the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalists, said, “We’re seeing the justice system become a means to censure and impede the work of journalists.”

She said the number of lawsuits against journalists and news organizations seeking the removal of content or damages for critical coverage has increased notably during the presidency of Mr. Bolsonaro, who often berates and insults journalists.

“The stigmatizing rhetoric has incentivized this practice,” she said. “Politicians portray journalists as the enemy and their base of supporters act the same way.”

Mr. Cuenca said he didn’t deem his tweet particularly offensive given the state of political discourse in Brazil.

After all, the country is governed by a president who supports torture, once told a female lawmaker she was too ugly to rape, said he would rather his son die in an accident than be gay, and in 2018 was criminally charged with inciting hatred against Black people, women and Indigenous people.

Earlier this year, Mr. Bolsonaro lashed out at two reporters who asked about a corruption case against one of his sons. He told one he had a “terribly homosexual face” and said to another that he was tempted to smash his face in.

Mr. Cuenca saw his criticism as comparatively high-minded. He said he disdains the Universal Church, which has grown into a transnational behemoth since its founding in the 1970s, because he believes it fueled Mr. Bolsonaro’s rise to the presidency, enabling ecological destruction, reckless handling of the coronavirus pandemic and institutional chaos.

“I was totally bored, distracted, procrastinating and angry over politics,” Mr. Cuenca said. “What I wrote was satire.”

The first sign of trouble was the wave of attacks that poured in on his social media accounts. Then came a one-line email from his editor at the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, where he wrote a regular column. “Cuenca, did you really tweet that?” she asked.

He offered to write a column explaining the history of the quote — versions of which have been attributed to the French priest Jean Meslier and later to Diderot and Voltaire — and offering examples of modern-day intellectuals using variations on the line to comment on Brazilian problems.

But the editor called the tweet “abominable” and told Mr. Cuenca his column was being canceled. Deutsche Welle issued a statement about its decision, saying it repudiates “any type of hate speech or incitement to violence.”

Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal lawmaker and one of the president’s sons, celebrated Deutsche Welle’s decision in a message on Twitter and said he intended to sue Mr. Cuenca.

In August, Mr. Cuenca was startled to learn the tweet had led to a referral for criminal prosecution. But Frederico de Carvalho Paiva, the prosecutor who handled the referral, declined to charge Mr. Cuenca, writing in a decision that the journalist had a constitutional right to criticize the president, even in “rude and offensive” terms.

“That’s freedom of expression, which can’t be throttled by ignorant people who are unable to grasp hyperbole,” the prosecutor wrote.

Mr. Cuenca searched his name in a database of legal cases and found the first of dozens of strikingly similar lawsuits by pastors from the Universal Church, seeking monetary damages for the distress they said the tweet had caused them. They were filed under a legal mechanism that requires the defendant or a legal representative to appear in person to mount a defense.

Some pastors have found receptive judges, including one who ordered that Mr. Cuenca delete his entire Twitter account as a form of reparations. But another judge found the action meritless and called it in a ruling “almost an abuse of the legal process.”

In a statement, the Universal Church said it had played no role in the torrent of litigation. “Brazil’s Constitution guarantees everyone — including evangelical pastors — the right to seek justice,” the church said. “Whoever feels they have been offended or disrespected can seek reparations before the courts, which get to decide who is right.”

The statement said that the right to freedom of speech in Brazil is “not absolute,” and that satire is not a defense for religious prejudice. “It must be remembered that the assertion by the writer João Paulo Cuenca provoked repudiation among many Christians on social media.”

Taís Gasparian, a lawyer in São Paulo who has defended several people who faced similar bursts of almost-identical, simultaneous lawsuits, said plaintiffs like the Universal Church abuse a legal mechanism that was created in the 1990s to make the justice system accessible and affordable to ordinary people.

The type of action filed against Mr. Cuenca doesn’t require that a plaintiff hire a lawyer, but defendants who don’t show up in person or send a lawyer often lose by default. Universal Church pastors began a similar wave of suits against the journalist Elvira Lobato after she published an article in December 2007 documenting links between the church and companies based in tax havens.

The timing and the striking similarities among the lawsuits filed against Ms. Lobato and Mr. Cuenca make it clear they were copy-paste jobs, Ms. Gasparian said.

“It’s enormously cruel,” she said. “It’s an intimidation tactic in a country where the traditional media is facing big challenges.”

Paulo José Avelino da Silva, one of the pastors who sued Mr. Cuenca, said he took the action on his own initiative because the tweet offended him.

“As a Brazilian it made me feel like I was being excluded from my own country,” said the pastor, who lives in Maragogi, a beach town in the northeastern state of Alagoas. “If he had retracted what he wrote, I would not have sued.”

Mr. Cuenca said he hoped the ordeal would lead to changes in the justice system that prevent similar legal barrages. And perhaps the whole thing will become the subject of his next creative project.

“I’m thinking of making a film,” he said. He envisions traveling to remote towns to meet the pastors who sued him and see what happens if they just sit face to face and exchange views in good faith. “I’d like to talk to them and find what we have in common.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/world/americas/brazil-lawsuits-Cuenca-Bolsonaro.html

CultNEWS101 Articles: 10/21/2020

QAnon, Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), NXIVM, Faith Healing

Washington Post: QAnon is tearing families apart

"Q.

There was a time not long ago when the letter held no special meaning for Jacob, a 24-year-old in Croatia. The 17th letter of the alphabet, usually followed by "u" in English words. What else was there to know? He certainly never expected it to end the tight knit relationship he shared with his mother.

But Jacob, who grew up in the United States, told The Washington Post that he has cut all contact with his mother now that she's become an ardent believer of the QAnon conspiracy theories.

Though they long held different political beliefs, they had "a really, really strong relationship," he said. "We were inseparable." He had no reason to think anything had changed. But during the holidays in 2019, "our relationship just completely tanked."

QAnon can be traced back to a series of 2017 posts on 4chan, the online message board known for its mixture of trolls and alt-right followers. The poster was someone named "Q," who claimed to be a government insider with Q security clearance, the highest level in the Department of Energy. QAnon's origin matters less than what it's become, an umbrella term for a loose set of conspiracy theories ranging from the false claim that vaccines cause illness and are a method of controlling the masses to the bogus assertion that many pop stars and Democratic leaders are pedophiles."

The New Republic: How a Demon-Slaying Pentecostal Billionaire Is Ushering in a Post-Catholic Brazil

"The headquarters of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God does not resemble your typical megachurch. Its eighteen stories dwarf the big-boxes of the Texas and Missouri exurbs. Behind pillared walls of imported granite and marble, a 10,000-seat sanctuary features neither crosses nor organs, but a menorah motif running from entrance to pulpit. Men in shawls and skullcaps that look a lot like Jewish tallits and yalmukahs conduct ceremonies next to Hebrew-inscribed Tablets of Stone and a gilded Ark of the Covenant. The building is meant to be a supersized reproduction of the biblical Temple of Solomon, but by way of Caesar's Palace.

This is São Paulo, not Vegas or Jerusalem, and the men onstage are Pentecostal pastors, not rabbis. To be more precise, they are Neo-Pentecostal pastors, practicing a syncretic stew of the prosperity gospel, millenarianism, miracle healing, demon invocation, and exorcism, while boasting a level of Judeophilia weird even by the generous standards of Christian Zionism. Once a spiritual outlier, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) stands at the forefront of Brazil's rapid transformation into a Catholic-minority country. Its seven million members constitute Brazil's second-largest Protestant denomination, after the Assemblies of God coalition.

In the UCKG, the Holy Spirit does more than purge demons. It sets believers up for the acquisition of great wealth. The living proof is 74-year-old Edir Macedo, a former street preacher and lottery worker who over the course of four decades has built the UCKG into a billion-dollar church-media juggernaut. This past autumn, he used the levers of this power to help elect Brazil's first Evangelical president. With the ascension of the far-right ex-Army captain Jair Bolsonaro, Macedo cemented his status as a pivotal figure in the future of post-Catholic Brazil."

Deadline: 'Seduced: Inside The NXIVM Cult': Trailer & Premiere Date For Four-Part Starz Docuseries

"It was the kind of story Hollywood might dream up — but not only was it real, it had some ties to the industry. Starz has set Sunday for the premiere of Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, a four-part documentary series that takes a first-person look at the sex cult that was broken open in April 2018. It premieres at 9 p.m. this Sunday, October 16. Watch the trailer above and see the key art below.

Hailing from the filmmaking team of Cecilia Peck and Inbal B. Lessner (Brave Miss World), Seduced follows the harrowing journey of India Oxenberg, the daughter of former Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg and a descendant of European royalty — who was seduced into the modern-day sex-slave cult NXIVM. More than 17,000 people, including India, enrolled in its "Executive Success Programs," a front for the cult and a hunting ground for its leader, master predator Keith Raniere — who was convicted on seven counts in July 2019. Women in DOS, a secret master-slave society within NXIVM, were sex-trafficked and branded with a cauterizing iron. Both about a mother trying to save her daughter and recovery from trauma, the series follows India's seduction, indoctrination, enslavement, escape and role as "co-conspirator" in assisting the U.S. government with bringing down Raniere and his criminal enterprise."

The Sacramento Bee: COVID-19 outbreak at faith-healing school alarms conservative Northern California town

"They come to Redding from all over the world for instruction in faith healing and raising the dead. They often approach strangers in local parking lots, businesses and hospitals offering prayers.

Now, state and church officials are asking the student body of more than 1,600 people at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in Shasta County to lock down at their homes and apartments after 137 students and staff members tested positive for COVID-19. The cases represent 10 percent of Shasta County's total infections so far.

Bethel Church and local health officials say the Redding megachurch is taking steps to limit the outbreak from spreading. But health officials worry the dozens of new cases could set off a wave of infections in this conservative community where a group of activists has angrily pushed back against COVID-19 restrictions and the local health officer has received threats for enforcing state mask mandates and business closures.

In a statement on its website last week, Bethel Church said it had asked students to arrive early before classes started in early September to quarantine for 14 days, and students were required to have a negative COVID-19 test result prior to attending school.

But that didn't stop an outbreak from spreading."

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

CultEducationEvents.com

CultMediation.com   

Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.

CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.

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Please forward articles that you think we should add to CultNEWS101.com.

CultNEWS101 Articles: 8/29-30/2020

Online Event, Satanic Temple, Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, Brazil, Sexual Abuse, Meditation Research, Panama Religious Sect

UNITING CONTINENTS | SUPPORT FOR THE PACIFIC RIM

An ONLINE EVENT for Families, Former Members and Friends Affected by CULTIC Groups and Relationships.

PACIFIC RIM | EUROPE - SEPTEMBER 12-13, 2020

NORTH AMERICA - SEPTEMBER 11-12, 2020

https://pacificrimeventcultmediation.lpages.co/usa/

CULT RECOVERY: WHAT HELPS FORMER MEMBERS RECOVER?

Dr Gillie Jenkinson will be doing a 50 minute talk at our 'up and coming' online event.

Many former cult members struggle to recover, and some take years before they are able to move on from their experiences. In this session she will share some key insights for former members and their therapists, and practical issues for facing the recovery process.

Early Registration Discount ends soon.

REGISTER HERE: https://pacificrimeventcultmediation.lpages.co/usa/

Rolling Stone: How the Satanic Temple Could Bring Abortion Rights to the Supreme Court

" ... In a series of three cases, the Court ruled that religion has a particularly special place in American law. So special, in fact, that religious entities can be exempt from generally applicable anti-discrimination laws, can refuse to follow Obamacare mandates about coverage of preventive medical care, and can force the state to send them public funds for students at their religious schools. This has been a trend for the John Roberts Supreme Court — religious entities have won claims of religious liberty in 12 of the 13 cases to come before the Court since 2012.
Not surprisingly, in each of the cases decided this year, it was the dominant Christian religion that won in its claims of religious liberty. So it's reasonable to ask whether the Supreme Court (or any court) would feel the same way about religious liberty claims brought on behalf of minority religions.
Enter The Satanic Temple. The Satanic Temple is a religion that believes in benevolence and empathy among all people, rejects tyrannical authority, and advocates for common sense and justice. For years now, The Satanic Temple has fought to expand religious liberty notions that the conservative Supreme Court has applied to Christians to apply to its members as well.
Particularly, The Satanic Temple has fought this battle over abortion. The third tenet of the religion is "One's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone." Thus, The Satanic Temple claims that the obstacle course of abortion restrictions that states impose on the procedure should not apply to its members because doing so violates their sincerely-held religious beliefs. As the church's reproductive rights spokeswoman puts it, "No Christian would tolerate a law that insists state counseling is necessary before someone can be baptized. Our members are justly entitled to religious liberty in order to practice our rituals as well."
The Satanic Temple has made these claims in multiple state and federal court cases on behalf of members who were pregnant and sought an abortion at the time the lawsuits were filed. So far, it has been unsuccessful. It lost in 2019 before the Missouri Supreme Court, which ruled that the challenged Missouri abortion law does not require any patient to actually have an ultrasound (though one must be offered) or read the state pamphlet (though it must be provided). In June this year, the federal appeals court that covers Missouri ruled that the Satanists cannot be exempt from generally applicable and neutral state laws just because their religious beliefs disagree with the law.
The Satanic Temple, who may wind up appealing this to the Supreme Court, isn't backing down, and it issued a press release earlier this month again claiming that it is exempt from state abortion restrictions. The church is clearly reading the tea leaves about how the Supreme Court is treating religious liberty. It's also counting on the Court ultimately being evenhanded with its religious liberty jurisprudence — if it benefits the country's dominant religion, it should benefit all religions. There's reason to doubt whether the Court will apply these principles neutrally, but if it does, The Satanic Temple may eventually win.
At issue is a 1990 Supreme Court precedent that says that a "neutral" and "generally applicable" law does not infringe on religious liberty when applied to someone who has a contrary religious belief. In that case, a state law against peyote smoking could be applied to a Native American who said that doing so was important to his religion. The Court said that because the law was not written particularly to harm Native Americans (neutral) and applied to everyone (generally applicable), the claim of religious freedom lost.
This case has been the subject of attack from the day it was decided. The left claimed that it allowed the state to persecute religious minorities. The right claimed that it allowed the state to persecute Christians. As a result, there has been a concerted effort to overturn this precedent at the Supreme Court. There has also been a movement to pass state laws that would protect religious liberty claims. In 2014, the Supreme Court applied the federal version of this religious liberty law (which only applies to other federal laws) to allow Hobby Lobby to refuse to provide contraceptive coverage to its employees, even though the federal Affordable Care Act mandated doing so.
The Satanic Temple is trying to use these laws and this movement to exempt its members from abortion laws. The argument is the same as Hobby Lobby's, though it's about state abortion laws rather than federal insurance laws. The church also hopes that the Supreme Court's precedent about "neutral" and "generally applicable" will be overturned. That precedent has been chipped away and called into question, but so far it remains good law. A case the Supreme Court will hear this coming term could change that. In that case, a Catholic foster care agency wants the freedom to discriminate against gay parents, contrary to Philadelphia's anti-discrimination laws.
In other words, The Satanic Temple is taking the Christian right's crusade for religious liberty seriously and saying that if it's good for Christianity, it has to be good for everyone. It's only a matter of time before the Supreme Court answers the question whether they actually believe in religious liberty for all."

BBC: Angola orders Brazil evangelical churches to close

"Prosecutors in Angola have ordered the closure of places of worship belonging to one of Brazil's biggest churches, accusing it of corruption.

"At least seven buildings belonging to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) have been seized in the capital, Luanda.

Prosecutors said the evangelical church had been involved in tax fraud and other fiscal crimes.

UCKG officials have previously strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Last year about 300 Angolan UCKG bishops broke away from the Brazilian leadership, accusing it of mismanagement and not being African enough. UCKG officials described the accusations as "defamatory".

The UCKG claims to have about eight million members in Brazil and branches in several African countries. It promotes "prosperity theology", whereby believers are told their faith and donations to the Church will lead to material wealth.

The row started last year when Angolan bishops broke away from the Brazilian Church, accusing it of "fiscal evasion" and of practices contrary to the "African and Angolan reality"."

Folio: Researchers reveal patterns of sexual abuse in religious settings

"A recent literature review by a University of Alberta cult expert and his former graduate student paints a startling and consistent picture of institutional secrecy and widespread protection of those who abuse children in religious institutions "in ways that often differ from forms of manipulation in secular settings."

It's the first comprehensive study exposing patterns of sexual abuse in religious settings.

"A predator may spend weeks, months, even years grooming a child in order to violate them sexually," said Susan Raine, a MacEwan University sociologist and co-author of the study with University of Alberta sociologist Stephen Kent.

Perpetrators are also difficult to identify, the researchers said, because they rarely conform to a single set of personality or other traits.

The findings demonstrate the need to "spend less time focusing on 'stranger danger,' and more time thinking about our immediate community involvement, or extended environment, and the potential there for grooming," said Raine.

Raine and Kent examined the research on abuse in a number of religious denominations around the world to show "how some religious institutions and leadership figures in them can slowly cultivate children and their caregivers into harmful and illegal sexual activity."

Those institutions include various branches of Christianity as well as cults and sectarian movements including the Children of God, the Branch Davidians, the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints as well as a Hindu ashram and the Devadasis.

"Because of religion's institutional standing, religious grooming frequently takes place in a context of unquestioned faith placed in sex offenders by children, parents and staff," they found.

The two researchers began their study after Kent was asked to provide expert testimony for a lawsuit in Vancouver accusing Bollywood choreographer and sect leader Shiamak Davar of sexually abusing two of his dance students in 2015.

Kent realized that although some scholars had written about sexual abuse in religion, "They had not identified the grooming process and the distinctive features of it." After the lawsuit was settled out of court, he approached Raine to take on the project.

"The two of us had worked on projects before (including the successful book Scientology in Popular Culture) and I knew that she wrote fluently and quickly," said Kent. "I provided her with initial ideas and suggestions, and she did most of the writing."

The result is "the first of its kind to provide a theoretical framework for analyzing and discussing religiously based child and teen sexual grooming," he said.

One of the best-known cases of such grooming in the Catholic Church was uncovered by the Boston Globe in 2002 and dramatized in the 2015 film Spotlight. The Globe revealed that John J. Geoghan, a former priest, had fondled or raped at least 130 children over three decades in some half-dozen Greater Boston parishes.

Eventually a widespread pattern of abuse in the church was exposed in Europe, Australia, Chile, Canada and the United States.

More shocking than the abuses themselves, said Raine, was the systemic cover-up that reached all the way up to the Vatican.

"And the relocation of priests to other churches, I think that was devastating for Catholics—a major breach of trust," she said."

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Expica: 3 children are rescued from a religious sect in Panama

"The authorities of Panama they rescued to three children held by an alleged religious sect in a community in the indigenous Ngäbe Buglé region, in the province of Veraguas, the only one in the country with coasts on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, according to official sources and local media.

In the rescue of the minors participated agents of the National Aeronaval Service of Panama (Senan), as a result of the fact that his situation was reported by a journalist to the authorities, reported the Minister of Public Security, Juan Pino.

Pino pointed out that the children, who had been held together with three teenagers, are in good health, and that one person has fled.

He added that one of the people who was detained managed to escape to ask for help, and explained that according to the reports received, an alleged religious sect would be involved in the events."

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