N E W S - Summer, 2000

Randall Terry, formerly of Operation Rescue, has left his wife Cindy after 18 years of marriage. Terry has moved to Vermont to run "Loyal Opposition," an organization he founded to fight gay marriage. Terry is quoted as saying, "Marriage must be protected because it is an institution created by God. It is the holy convenant."

Cindy Terry first picketed an abortion clinic in the early years of the couple's marriage with a sign saying that she would take any babies that the clinic's clients did not want. This gave her then-husband Randall Terry an idea, and the rest is history.

Randall Terry's church, Landmark Church of Binghampton, NY, where he served as an elder, has censured him. The contents of this censure are available on former partner Flip Benham's Operation Save America web site. The censure accuses Terry of a "pattern of repeated sinful relationships and conversations" with married and single women. Terry has dismissed the charges as garbage.

A Landmark spokesman has commented regarding Terry "To go out and speak and challenge people to live and think biblically, you have to begin at home. If you can't do it at home, why go to Vermont? Stay home and get it right and then go out and say what you want."

Source: Washington Post, background from Susan Faludi's Backlash.

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Famed sh*t-disturber and retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, 69, has agreed to write a monthly column on a web site called "The Position," managed by Jack Heidenry, a former Penthouse editor.

The site, at www.theposition.com will launch June 5, 2000.

Spong is famous for the compassionate stance he has taken towards people dispossessed by the church - women, homosexuals, and others. He has written "Living in Sin? : A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality," and "Born of a Woman : A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus," in which he re-examines the role of women in the life Jesus, the early church, and in contemporary religion.

His first column will consider whether the Ten Commandments are biased against women.

Source: AP

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Carlos Catalan, 49, a faith healer with no known religious affiliation, is being held on 15 counts of rape, two counts of sodomy, three counts of lewd acts with a child and one count of child molestation.

Catalan would tell young women that having sex with him would lead to healing for family members. He told one young woman, aged 16, that unless she sacrificed her virginity to a saint channeled through him, that her father would die.

Source: Reuters

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Former Monsignor Patrick O'Shea, 66, of the Catholic Holy Name of Jesus Church is being held on 224 counts of child molestation.

The San Francisco Archdiocese paid $15 million in 1996 to nine men who claimed that O'Shea molested them on church-sponsored trips to Lake Tahoe and Lake Berryessa. O'Shea was defrocked in 1995 when the charges first surfaced.

Due to a six-year statute of limitations on sex crimes O'Shea was going to go free on the other charges. But a change in California law now allows those charges to be reinstated.

O'Shea is also facing a civil suit brought by the San Francisco Archdiocese which accused him of embezzling $250,000 in church funds.

SOURCE: Yahoo!

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Jerry Upton, 45, a close friend of Green Bay Packers Reggie White, has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on cocaine trafficking and gun charges. Upton was a minister and key church official, at Reggie White's Inner City Church in Tennessee. In his autobiography White describes Upton as his pastor and best friend.

Upton ran a multi-million dollar cocaine ring out of one arm of the church, using a white Mercedes owned by the church to make trips to Florida to complete drug deals.

The church burned in a mysterious arson fire four years ago. Over $900,000 in donations and insurance money poured in. Upton claims the money was put to legitimate use, though there is nothing to show for it. Prosecutors are demanding an account of the funds.

The church does not exist today.

A federal prosecutor described Upton at his sentencing as a "dangerous, devious manipulator" who hid behind God.

Reggie White, a minister himself, was unavailable for comment.

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The Southern Baptists will converge at their annual meeting June 13th in Orlando, FL to decide whether or not women will continue to be allowed to be ordained as pastors.

Their proposal reads: "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

There are currently 1600 clergywomen in the SBA, 100 of whom are pastors. These will retain their credentials.

It is presumed that women will continue to be allowed to make coffee, if they do so in silence.

SOURCE: AP

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Mark Boesch, 42, pastor of Grace Chapel of The Desert Church in Hesperia was arrested along with his wife for starving their 5-month son to death.

Mrs. Boesch would only breastfeed the child, and when a doctor commented on his emaciated condition, refused to supplement the child's feeding.

The couple has seven other children between the ages of 2 and 15.

SOURCE: AP

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Reverend John M. Furdek, 47, pastor of St. Alexander's Catholic Church has been jailed on a $60,000 bond for attempted sexual assault. Furdek tried to arrange to meet a state investigator posing as a 14-year-old boy over the Internet. Furdek traveled to Racine from Villa Park for the purpose of having sex with the "child."

SOURCE: AP

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Seeking a temporary extension to their 15 minutes of fame, John and Patsy Ramsey will appear on Texas televangelist James Robison's program, which will air in mid-July.

The parents of murdered JonBenet Ramsey will discuss their daughter's death, and their religion. The child was found strangled to death in the couple's Boulder CO home, on Christmas day in 1996.

SOURCE: AP

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Maturino Resendiz, 40, a Mexican drifter confessed to killing nine people in a two-year killing spree. A defense psychologist told the jury that Resendiz believed himself to be "directed by god to kill evil people. He hated homosexuals and abortionists and may have thought [his] victims had links to those groups."

Resendiz was know as the "railway killer," and brutally beat or stabbed his victims to death. He then sometimes sexually assaulted his dead, or dying, victims.

Reseniz was found guilty and faces either life in prison, or lethal injection.

SOURCE: AP

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The Reverend Joseph Combs of Emmanuel Baptish Church in Bristol TN has been convicted, along with his wife, of kidnapping and abusing a girl they took from an orphanage. The girl was raised as a family servant.

According to Angela K. Brown, an Associated Press Writer, the kidnapped child, Esther, now 22 lives "in another state under a different name, testified that Mrs. Combs beat her with baseball bats, burned her with a curling iron and pulled out chunks of her flesh with pliers - causing more than 400 scars on her body.

"She said she was denied an education, forced to do all the chores and required to wear clothing that covered her scars."

The Combes' had five other children. The couple claims they could not afford to adopt Esther. She was kept from school, and forced to do household chores. Reverend Combs is also charged with rape. The couple faces up to 144 years in prison.

SOURCE: AP

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Ugandan police said they had found another suspected mass grave linked to the "Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God" whose leaders apparently murdered more than 900 of their followers. The latest grave was found in a member's house at Kanungu in southwest Uganda.

Police said they do not have the investigative resources available to exume any more bodies, and are appealing to the international community for help. Instead, they are checking for more gravesites and guarding them until a plan on how to proceed is in place.

The deaths, which now rival in number the death toll of the Jonestown suicides, were originally thought to be part of a mass suicide. Police are now treating the case as a mass murder after discovering new evidence.

Source: Reuters

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Columbian nun Sister Leticia Lopez was charged with murdering a fellow nun in Bogota. Investigators say the victim, Sister Luz Amparo Granado, died from a bullet wound to the head. Her legs were then severed and her body partially burned. The remains were found covered in plastic and cardboard boxes on a highway outside Bogata.

In a seperate incident last year in Tunja two nuns shot an intruder to death, taking turns firing a single .38 Smith and Wesson revolver. They were cleared after a judge ruled they acted in self-defense.

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Rev. Michael Pfleger and his parishioners at St. Sabina Church have devised a plan to pay prostitutes and drug dealers to listen to the Gospel.

"We have to be willing to try radically new ways to reach people. Instead of wasting money going to banquets, let's take that $20 banquet ticket, let's go out and find the prostitutes and drug dealers. Let's say, 'We're going to buy your time. But for this half hour, we want to sit down and talk about God's love for you.'", said Pfleger.

Pfleger said he first mentioned the idea during a Sunday sermon Sunday. His congregation responded immediately with cash donations and volunteers.

SOURCE: AP

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The Rev. Johnny William "Bill" Cabe, 40, and the Rev. Shelton Joel Shirley, 48, each face 16 counts of money laundering and nine counts of wire fraud, accused of taking more than $7 million from their followers in an overseas investment scheme. If convicted, the men could face up to 225 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines, along with repayment of the $7 million.

The pastors, operating under the missionary program Hisway Ministries, took money from investors from January to August 1998, offering returns of up to 500 percent in three months, according to the indictment.

SOURCE: AP

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