News from the wild world of…religion.
• In May 2006, Clara Jean Brown, 62, of Daphne, Alabama, was standing in her kitchen praying for her family’s safety during an intense thunderstorm. Just as she finished the prayer and said “Amen”…the kitchen blew up. A bolt of lightning had hit the ground across the street, traveled the length of an underground water pipe, and blasted a hole through the floor of her kitchen, sending concrete flying around the room and knocking her over. The house was severely damaged; Ms. Brown was okay. (Amen!)
• Early-morning service in a Catholic church in Rennertshofen, Germany, was disrupted on New Year’s Day, 2001, by strange noises. Someone went to investigate—and found a man and woman having sex upstairs in the church’s gallery. The couple fled, but a church employee recognized the man: He was a local police officer. The 26-year-old cop was suspended and faces three years in prison for “disruption of religious practice.”
• In front of the Metro South Church in Trenton, Michigan, a series of strange signs began appearing in 2009—signs that said “Metro South Church sucks” and “Metro South makes me sick.” Who made the signs? Satan. Not really—they were signed “Satan,” but they were actually put up by the church. It was all part of an “edgy” ad campaign meant to attract younger people. “Jesus,” Youth Pastor Adam Dorband said, “wants us to be creative.”
• Reverend Canon David Parrott of London’s St. Lawrence Jewry Church (a 17th-century Anglican church built near what was once a Jewish ghetto), asked his parishioners to bring their electronic communication gadgets—laptops, BlackBerrys, and so on—to church one Sunday in January 2010. Parrott had people pile them up on the altar—and then he blessed them. “By Your blessing,” he intoned, “may these phones and computers, symbols of all the technology and communication in our daily lives, be a reminder to us that You are a God who communicates with us and who speaks by Your word.” People were also asked to hold up their cell phones during the blessing (although they had to be turned off first).
A new scientific field, neurotheology, studies what happens to the brain during a religious experience.
• Officials from the Russian Orthodox Church called police in November 2008 with an unusual complaint: One of their churches had been stolen. A 200-year-old church northeast of Moscow had been abandoned for a few months before a planned reopening. But while the church was closed, local villagers had dismantled it brick by brick and sold the pieces to a local businessman for one ruble each (about four cents U.S.). “Of course, this is blasphemy,’ a church official said. “These people have to realize they committed a grave sin.”
• Reverend Dan Willis of Lighthouse Church of All Nations in Alsip, Illinois, saw attendance at his church grow from about 1,600 to more than 2,500 in just five weeks in 2009. How’d he do it? At the end of each of the church’s three Sunday services, Willis held a lottery—if he drew the number corresponding to your seat number on the pew, you won a prize of $500. (Two runners-up won $250.) Willis said he wanted to help out the congregation during these economically difficult times.
• Nick Wallace, 22, of Oxford, England, was born with muscular dystrophy. He told the nuns at the Douglas House hospice that he wanted to lose his virginity before he died. So Sister Frances Dominica helped Wallace arrange a date with a “sex worker” he found in a magazine ad (she went to his house when his parents weren’t home). Afterward, Wallace admitted, “It was not emotionally fulfilling, but the lady was very pleasant.” Sister Dominica defended setting up the date: “I know that some people will say, ‘You are a Christian foundation—what are you thinking about?’ But we are here for all faiths and none.”
• In November 2009, the Church of God in Christ, one of the largest black churches in the U.S., ordained Johnny Lee Clary, 50, making him a minister. What made the event notable? Clary is not only white—he’s a former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. After converting to Christianity, he left the KKK in 1990 (he had belonged to it since he was 14). Now he travels the world preaching against the evils of racism.
Der Waah! A German study found that within a week, newborn babies begin to cry with an accent.