Former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. filed a state lawsuit Wednesday against the evangelical school founded by his father, claiming he was wrongly ousted from his leadership post.
...
In a complaint in state court in Lynchburg, Virginia, Falwell's lawyers alleged that Liberty defamed Falwell and breached the former president's contract.
"Mr. Falwell has suffered damage to his reputation, damage to his profession, humiliation, and anguish; lost business opportunities; and suffered other pecuniary damage," according to the plaintiff's complaint.
Liberty University has sued its former president Jerry Falwell Jr, a once influential figure among U.S. evangelical Christians, saying he undermined its moral standards by concealing his wife's affair with a pool attendant who attempted to extort them.
The complaint filed on Thursday in a state court in Lynchburg, Virginia seeks at least $30 million in damages.
It said Falwell, 58, breached his duties by refusing to disclose his and his wife Becki's relationship with the attendant, and negotiating a higher salary and severance package when he knew the affair could damage the school.
Liberty said Falwell improperly mixed his university duties with his personal life despite knowing that "infidelity, immodesty, and acceptance of a loose lifestyle would stand in stark contrast to the conduct expected of leaders at Liberty."
...
In October, Falwell had sued Liberty for defamation, saying it damaged his reputation by lending credence to what he called Granda's "lies." He dropped that lawsuit in December.
The Catholic Church has powerful factions still reacting to the Vatican II reforms. The anti-abortion faction was an outgrowth of its birth control stance in Humane Vitea, based on a minority reactionary report.
There are reform groups that also support same-sex marriage and GLBT rights and married priests. My wife’s uncle (an ex-priest) was a leader in one reform group. The difference is that the leadership keeps choosing conservative priests for Cardinal and Bishop. Often because many non-conservative priests left in the 60s.
Drazzil wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:39 pm
Also I tend to believe myself that bringing someone into the world with downs is immoral. The parents who care for them may die before they do, and then either their siblings would have to take on that enormous burden, or the state would. And the state isn't the best for taking care of people like that right now. Misery all around imo.
Using that same justification, you could say just having children is immoral as parents can, and do, sometimes die before they’re grown, or give up children for adoption, thus leaving the state to raise them in many cases.
Your scenario isn’t an example of immortality, it’s an example of tragedy.
Normal kids can at least be expected to be able to care for themselves. Down's kids? Not so much. They WILL require care, their whole lives.
Ah, yes. The well-known self-sufficiency of children.
[Edited for Godwinizing]
Avoiding the point by nitpicking grammar. Nice.
Um, no. The point is that all children need care. Down's children need more, but it's a matter of degree, not kind.
Where do you draw the line? Is it "immoral" to bring a child into the world with other special needs? Which ones?
But what happens to those kids when they grow up, their parents die and their siblings refuse to take on the burden of what would be, a full time job or more? They default to the care of the state. What is the morality of a couple choosing that their kid will some day be in the care of the state? Why should others be forced to pay for the decisions of a couple who decides to have a kid with serious disabilities? Shouldn't the payers be consulted?
Drazzil wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:39 pm
Also I tend to believe myself that bringing someone into the world with downs is immoral. The parents who care for them may die before they do, and then either their siblings would have to take on that enormous burden, or the state would. And the state isn't the best for taking care of people like that right now. Misery all around imo.
Using that same justification, you could say just having children is immoral as parents can, and do, sometimes die before they’re grown, or give up children for adoption, thus leaving the state to raise them in many cases.
Your scenario isn’t an example of immortality, it’s an example of tragedy.
Normal kids can at least be expected to be able to care for themselves. Down's kids? Not so much. They WILL require care, their whole lives.
Ah, yes. The well-known self-sufficiency of children.
[Edited for Godwinizing]
Avoiding the point by nitpicking grammar. Nice.
Um, no. The point is that all children need care. Down's children need more, but it's a matter of degree, not kind.
Where do you draw the line? Is it "immoral" to bring a child into the world with other special needs? Which ones?
But what happens to those kids when they grow up, their parents die and their siblings refuse to take on the burden of what would be, a full time job or more? They default to the care of the state. What is the morality of a couple choosing that their kid will some day be in the care of the state? Why should others be forced to pay for the decisions of a couple who decides to have a kid with serious disabilities? Shouldn't the payers be consulted?
"Care, pay, and payers." Please, tell us more about your purely economic calculus of who deserves life and who doesn't.
Parents bringing Downs Syndrome children into the world know what they're getting into. Most of them build their future plans around what that means. Obviously, some won't, and the children will need assistance, but that's the case with *many* people who find themselves in circumstances they can't control.
Picking categories of birth disabilities to declare "immoral" is disgusting (and itself immoral) because it doesn't take into account the choices of parents, families, and communities willing to do the work of support.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:49 pm
by Kraken
From his urge to burn the system down and contempt for wards of the state, I infer that Drazzil no longer relies on government programs.
What Aliera Healthcare was peddling was not insurance, but rather connection to a Christian health care cost-sharing ministry, an obscure but growing type of coverage based on the biblical principle that the like-minded should help each other in times of need. Members contribute monthly into an Aliera-administered fund to help pay their future medical bills.
Now featured on Last Week Tonight.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2021 9:41 am
by Skinypupy
So...Evangelicals are having a normal one.
Right-wing pastor Greg Locke used his sermon today to allege that there are child-trafficking "tunnels" under the Capitol and White House and accuse Joe Biden, Oprah Winfrey, and Tom Hanks of being "a bunch of pedophiles."
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:20 am
by Freyland
Tom Hanks?
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2021 11:06 am
by $iljanus
Freyland wrote: ↑Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:20 amTom Hanks?
Well, I don't know what went on during those lonely nights on that island and the volleyball probably couldn't give consent.. .
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2021 12:01 pm
by Freyland
And I suppose the volcano in "Joe and the Volcano" was relatively young, by geological standards.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2021 12:10 pm
by Unagi
Also, it’s a known fact he had sex with a fish.
Talk about your slippery slopes.
What Aliera Healthcare was peddling was not insurance, but rather connection to a Christian health care cost-sharing ministry, an obscure but growing type of coverage based on the biblical principle that the like-minded should help each other in times of need. Members contribute monthly into an Aliera-administered fund to help pay their future medical bills.
Now featured on Last Week Tonight.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2021 6:27 pm
by malchior
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 5:12 pm
by Smoove_B
Two-thirds of American churches delivered overtly political sermons or messages in the run-up to the 2020 election, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of online sermons.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 5:35 pm
by Jaymann
Makes you wonder what historical Jesus, a (probably) dark-skinned Jewish rabbi, would have to say about white supremacy, violent mobs protesting election results, and covid deniers.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:17 pm
by Holman
If we acknowledge "racism" as hatred of denigrated out-groups and "Covid-19" as the healing of illness, we know exactly where Jesus would stand.
These issues are only "political" because so many American "Christians" have embraced race hatred and rejected science.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 9:38 pm
by Isgrimnur
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:53 pm
by Defiant
Defiant wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:16 pm
An article on the hypocrisy of European countries that ban kosher and halal animal slaughtering in the name of "animal rights" while not giving a fig when it comes to fur production and factory farming and protecting recreational hunting and fishing and cultural traditions.
A Fort Collins parole officer and the operator of a Christian transitional program violated a man’s First Amendment rights if, in fact, they forced him to either participate in religious programming or go to jail, the federal appeals court in Denver decided on Friday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit reinstated the lawsuit of Mark Janny, an atheist, who ultimately was subjected to 150 days in custody because he refused to attend morning prayer and Bible studies at Fort Collins Rescue Mission, where his parole officer had directed him to live.
...
The decision comes one week after a separate 10th Circuit panel issued another major religious freedom decision. In 303 Creative v. Elenis, a 2-1 ruling affirmed that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law compelled a Christian graphic designer to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, in contravention of her religious beliefs.
Harvard’s organization of chaplains has elected as its next president an atheist named Greg Epstein, who takes on the job this week.
Mr. Epstein, 44, author of the book “Good Without God,” is a seemingly unusual choice for the role. He will coordinate the activities of more than 40 university chaplains, who lead the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious communities on campus. Yet many Harvard students — some raised in families of faith, others never quite certain how to label their religious identities — attest to the influence that Mr. Epstein has had on their spiritual lives.
“There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life,” said Mr. Epstein, who was raised in a Jewish household and has been Harvard’s humanist chaplain since 2005, teaching students about the progressive movement that centers people’s relationships with one another instead of with God.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2021 4:25 pm
by Holman
I wouldn't trust any clergyperson who didn't see that people can come to disbelief just as honestly as they can come to faith.
Anecdote:
My dad's lifelong best friend (from 1950s junior high through college and into late life) was that rarest of things, a liberal and intellectual Baptist minister. His congregation was in a college town, which is what I guess made it possible for him to have a congregation at all. His name was James, but we all always knew him as "Buddy."
My dad's father died while I was in college and all-but-done with my childhood faith. The funeral was in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and my parents needed to stay behind for a few days and take care of things. Buddy offered me a ride back home to Atlanta. This is a seven-hour drive, and I was aware that my dad (who was deeply troubled about my quitting the church) hoped that Buddy might be able to persuade me back towards the path of belief.
Instead, we had one of the most interesting conversations of my life. We talked about what religion is and what faith means, and we discussed history and philosophy that we'd been reading, and we did our best to understand my dad's feelings about where I was and where I was going. In the end, Buddy told me very plainly that he didn't see how I could remain a believer and still be true to myself. He openly blessed my leaving the faith.
Eight years later he officiated at my (explicitly secular) wedding.
Benet Academy's administration has come under fire following its decision to rescind an employment offer to the new girls lacrosse coach after learning that she is gay.
Jesus wept.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2021 10:41 am
by Unagi
How epic is it that during the protest rally yesterday, a huge rainbow appeared in the sky?
Also, I didn’t know you were once a Lisle guy. Neat.
Benet Academy's administration has come under fire following its decision to rescind an employment offer to the new girls lacrosse coach after learning that she is gay.
Jesus wept.
They reversed their rescinded offer. Under a lot of eyes. I’ll be curious if she feels like taking the re-offer.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:29 pm
by Holman
Unagi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:15 pm
They reversed their rescinded offer. Under a lot of eyes. I’ll be curious if she feels like taking the re-offer.
She's an alum of the school. It probably depends on whether she got support from her potential colleagues on the faculty. (Presumably the initial crisis was provoked by the Board or whatever, with which a faculty member usually has no contact.)
Unagi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:15 pm
They reversed their rescinded offer. Under a lot of eyes. I’ll be curious if she feels like taking the re-offer.
She's an alum of the school. It probably depends on whether she got support from her potential colleagues on the faculty. (Presumably the initial crisis was provoked by the Board or whatever, with which a faculty member usually has no contact.)
I believe she has -a lot- of support, but I can’t speak specially about faculty (I’d bet she has it). I’d like to see her accept. And couldn’t fault her if she didn’t.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2021 7:43 am
by dbt1949
How come when thinking of religion, fun, isn't a word you think of?
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:08 pm
by Defiant
A father and son practising as Orthodox rabbis in America have been accused by anti-missionary investigators of being secret evangelical Christians.
The claims over Michael and Calev Isaacson — who have changed their family name from Dawson — would cause disastrous halachic problems for the Jewish community if true.
Sacred rituals performed by the two men include writing holy scrolls, washing the dead, and conducting weddings, divorces and even conversions.
Investigators allege neither man is Jewish, making any rituals in which they took part invalid.
Katie Wilson went to Provo police six years ago to report that a man had sexually assaulted her. She was a student at Brigham Young University, but she didn’t talk to the school’s police force because it had happened off campus.
So when she recently learned that her case appeared in newly released emails from a BYU police lieutenant to other school officials, she gasped.
Suddenly, Wilson said, her conversations with an associate dean made more sense.
The emails don’t show what information the police lieutenant may have shared after he used a restricted database to access Wilson’s case file in Provo.
But the associate dean, Sarah Westerberg, “knew a lot of details about my sexual assault that I hadn’t shared with them,” Wilson said. And Westerberg used that information, Wilson said, to confront her about whether she had broken the religious school’s rules.
At BYU, which is funded and overseen by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an Honor Code Office enforces strict rules that include bans on immodest clothing and premarital sex.
Westerberg “said I was breaking the Honor Code with what I was wearing,” Wilson said. “She knew I had let him drive me home afterwards, and she didn’t care that I didn’t know where I was, or that he had hurt me so bad that I couldn’t find my way home. She knew he had me touch him on the drive home, which she said sounded like consent to her, instead of me just trying not to die.”
Those details were “all stuff I told the police the night it happened,” Wilson said. “I wasn’t even at a point where I had talked to my friends about it. I talked to police, I talked to the county attorney, and I talked to my therapist, and that was about it.”
That's just disgusting. And, sadly, right on brand for BYU.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2021 2:05 pm
by hepcat
Sounds like they're taking cues from Liberty University.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 6:50 pm
by Holman
It's Christmas Eve, and therefore a good time to remember the story of a refugee child who grew up to preach a radical message of love, acceptance, and critical awareness of one's own selfishness.
Today his followers hate you because you don't reject gays and foreigners enough.
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 7:27 pm
by hepcat
Would this be Norwegian Jesus, or Middle Eastern Jesus?
Re: Religion Randomness
Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2021 12:46 pm
by $iljanus
hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Dec 24, 2021 7:27 pm
Would this be Norwegian Jesus, or Middle Eastern Jesus?
Or California surfer Jesus!
From a NYT newsletter I subscribe to written by a pastor in the Episcopal church she wrote this:
But what Christians claim at Christmas is astonishing. It’s weird. We celebrate that God — the full and actual God — had a body, grew leg hair, cried salty tears, and breathed ordinary air. Not only that but that the full and actual God was a baby, an embryo, lacking all autonomy, utterly dependent and vulnerable.
There are other stories from the ancient world of gods or godlike beings who copulate with mortals and birth a demigod hero. But Christians make the strange claim that the one true Creator became, not only a human and not only a baby, but one in poverty, with no great strength or power, a child born to a lower-class family, an ethnic minority, who lived under an oppressive and violent imperial power. He was marginalized and despised and died the shameful death of a criminal. -Tish Harrison Warren
Powerful in His humility, this is my Jesus. But if the Sea of Galilee had waves and the Apostles surfed instead of being fishermen I’m sure He’d be a really good surfer!