Because sometimes gOd’s divine plan for us all needs a little nudge that goes beyond what’s legal, I guess….

Bus Driver Forces Passengers To Pray (WSBTV.com; Nov 6)

ATLANTA: A MARTA bus driver is on suspension following allegations that he forced passengers to pray before allowing them to exit the bus.

Christopher James was one of those passengers. James said, initially, he thought something was wrong when he rang the bell to get off the bus and the door didn’t open.

James said the bus driver asked him and three other passengers to join hands in prayer. James said the driver prayed with the group for about four minutes.

“He got up out of the driver’s seat,” said James.

James, who isn’t against prayer, said he felt compelled to join in although the request confused him.

James’ cousin, who arrived at the bus stop to meet him, said she saw the men standing inside the bus, but didn’t realize they were praying.

“I was like, ‘Why were y’all praying on the bus? He said the man would not let them off the bus,’” said Thembi Cresser.

A MARTA representative told Channel 2 Action News reporter Tom Jones that the transit agency suspended the bus driver, identified as Leroy Matthews, for five days and told him not to proselytize to passengers. Matthews has been with MARTA for six years.

James said Matthews returned to his normal duties after the prayer.

“I don’t want to pray to get off MARTA, you know,” said James.

Drinking, Evangelism Preceded Shooting (The Daily News; Nov 30)

Authorities say a Cathlamet [Washington] man wanted to spread religion in a Skamokawa tavern’s parking lot but ended up shooting a man in the stomach instead.

A Wahkiakum County Superior Court judge ordered last week that Jack Sebade, 73, undergo a mental health evaluation to determine whether he is competent to stand trial for second-degree assault in the Oct. 24 shooting of 34-year-old Darren Hall of Longview.

Hall, who was shot in the stomach, underwent surgery at St. John Medical Center, then left the hospital against doctor’s orders later that morning, according to a Wahkiakum County Sheriff’s Office report.

Sebade told deputies he had been drinking at the tavern around 1 a.m. when he decided to give a religious pamphlet discussing a “plan of salvation” to a woman in the parking lot, the report said. Sebade said he went to his Volkswagen van and tucked the pamphlet as well as a .22 Magnum revolver into his pocket.

Shortly after he began talking to the woman, Sebade said, another woman angrily confronted him, putting her face near his. A man told him to get back into his van and leave, Sebade said.

Sebade took the gun out of his pocket and told the man that he is a “sovereign citizen,” according to the police report. He was struck on the side of his head and fell to the ground. Sebade said he was climbing back to his feet when he fired his weapon at the man.

Deputies said they found Sebade sitting in his van, still in the Duck Inn parking lot, with the engine running and the cocked revolver resting on the passenger seat. Sebade, who had an abrasion on the right side of his head and smelled strongly of alcohol, surrendered peacefully, the report said.

The victim, Hall, rode the 33 miles to St. John Medical Center in Longview with several female passengers, the report said. Hall told deputies he was sleeping in a car next to Sebade’s van when he heard a commotion involving his female friends. He said he confronted Sebade and Sebade shot him in the stomach.

Other witnesses said Hall was in the tavern drinking, not sleeping in the car, when the incident first erupted.

Wahkiakum County sheriff’s spokeswoman Raedyn Grasseth said it is unclear whether Sebade identifies with a particular religion. He is on probation until next year for driving under the influence, authorities said….

Hindu Extremists Set Fire To Church In India (Nirmala Carvalho/AsiaNews; Dec 11)

HYDERABAD, India: Hindu extremists have set fire to an Evangelical church in the village of Metpally, Karimnagar district in Andhra Pradesh, the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) reported. The attack took place in the early hours of last Tuesday.

Local sources said a group of militants from the Hindu nationalist movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to the Jesus Lights Manna Church in Metpally around 2 am. After pouring petrol on the building, they set it on fire.

Most of the structure was damaged. A preliminary report said that the building’s main entrance door, the altar, window panels, church amplifier, service books and Bibles were burnt to ashes.

After being informed around 4 am by some witnesses of what had happened, the church’s pastor, Rev Mengu Elia, filed a first information report or FIR against Hindu radicals. Within 24 hours, the local BJP leader, Gangaram, was arrested along with other individuals involved in the fire….

Sajan K George, national president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), said that his organisation “has documented 21 cases of anti-Christian attacks in the State of Andhra Pradesh.”

Many are against house churches used by non-denominational Christian pastors with a large following among Dalits [i.e., "untouchables"].

These buildings “are routinely torched…. believers thrashed and often detained for hours in the police station, while outside the fundamentalists shout Hindu devotional slogans.”…

Father Jailed For Life For Daughter’s “Honor Killing” (Mark Hughes/The Independent; Dec 17)

A father who murdered his15-year-old daughter because of her “Romeo and Juliet” romance with a man from a different branch of Islam was today found guilty of her ‘honour killing’.

More than a decade after Tulay Goren disappeared from the family home in Woodford Green, London her father Mehmet was convicted following his wife’s dramatic evidence against him in court.

But police were criticised for their early handling of the case when it emerged that officers missed several warning signs that could have prevented the teenager’s death.

The Goren family was spoken to by the police at least six times about violence in the household – including when Tulay told officers she had been assaulted by her father over the relationship, but no-one envisaged that she would be murdered.

Officers insist they were operating in an environment and at a time when the codes and customs of honour-killing were little-known in the UK. Judged by the standards of the day, the original investigation team did all they could, senior detectives say. But standards are different now. It is suggested that about a dozen women are the victims of honour killings in the UK every year.

Tulay, whose body has never been found, was murdered in January 1999 because her father, a part time fish and chip worker, was angry at her choice of boyfriend.

Halil Unal, a 30-year-old Turkish man was not only twice his daughter’s age, he was also a Sunni Muslim. While the Goren’s were also Muslims, and also Turkish, they followed the Alevi sect of the religion and a relationship between Sunnis and Alevis was considered unacceptable.

Tulay had run away to live with him in December 1998 but was dragged back home by her father on January 6, where he beat her and tied her up.

Later that night she tried to escape by jumping out of the bathroom window but she was later made to drink coffee laced with sleeping tablets. The next day Mehmet Goren sent his wife and three other children away from the house. Goren told his eight-year-old son Tuncay to kiss Tulay goodbye as he would never see his sister again.

Jailing him, Mr Justice Bean, said Goren’s attempts to appear a “thoroughly modern and enlightened family man” failed to deceive the jury.

“The reality is that your enigmatic smile conceals a violent and dominating personality,” he said.

“Your wife Hanim has finally had the courage to break free of the domination and reveal what she knew of what you did in January 1999.”

He said Goren planned the murder of his daughter with “considerable care”, even forcing her to write a letter relating a false account of what had happened to her to try to throw police off the scent.

“You did all this simply because you regarded it as unacceptable that she, rather than you, should choose the man she wanted to marry. The term ‘honour killing’ is a convenient shorthand, but it is a grotesque distortion of language. There is nothing honourable about such a hideous practice or the people who carry it out.”

The judge made clear Goren would not be eligible for parole until 2030, when he will be nearly 70….

Rabbis Say Soldiers’ Loyalty To God Trumps Army Orders (Joshua Mitnick/The Christian Science Monitor; Dec 18)

TEL AVIV: In Israel, a standoff is escalating between the Israeli defense establishment and religious nationalists over the possible evacuation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. On Thursday, a group of rabbis published a letter saying a soldiers’ loyalty to the divine takes precedence over their commanders.

The declaration was signed by dozens of teachers in government-affiliated religious seminaries – known as “hesder” yeshivas – after Defense Minister Ehud Barak took the unprecedented step earlier this week of cutting ties with a hesder yeshiva because its dean, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, openly advocates refusing of orders in case of an evacuation.

One of the signatories, hesder yeshiva Rabbi Ariel Bareli, told Israel Radio that faith trumps implementing democratic adopted government policy in the event of a clash.

“You must understand, that the desire of the nation isn’t meaningful for someone who believes in the creator,” he said.

As pressure increases on the government to curtail and eventually remove many West Bank settlements, the dispute highlights the growing political and spiritual dilemma of a split allegiance on the part of religious nationalists, the spearhead of the settlement movement.

Though they have always hewed to a strict interpretation of Jewish religious law, the national religious rabbis taught loyalty to Israel’s secular state because it is considered a precursor of religious redemption.

The hesder yeshiva system harnessed that loyalty by allowing nationalist religious youths to split time between spiritual study and military service. The system has become an important channel for funneling highly motivated soldiers into the military.

But that loyalty to the secular state is being tested by the likelihood that religious soldiers might be forced to violate what they consider a divine prohibition against ceding parts of the biblical land of Israel.

“For decades the national religious never saw a contradiction between the policy of the state and the halacha (Jewish law). The (goals) were identical,” says Yair Ettinger, a reporter for the Haaretz newspaper who covered Israel’s evacuation of Gaza settlements in 2005. “It’s become much harder for the rabbis to square between the state and the (Jewish law). This is a very sensitive moment.”

“Thou Shalt Shoplift” Says Priest (The BBC; Dec 21)

A priest from North Yorkshire has advised his congregation to shoplift if they find themselves in hard times.

The Reverend Tim Jones, the parish priest of St Lawrence and St Hilda in York, said people should steal from big chains rather than small businesses.

He said society’s attitude to those in need “leaves some people little option but crime”.

However the Archdeacon of York said: “The Church of England does not advise anyone to shoplift”.

North Yorkshire Police described the sermon as “highly irresponsible”.

A force spokesman said despite people getting in difficult situations “shoplifting or committing other crimes should never be the solution”.

“To do this would make the downward spiral even more rapid, both on an individual basis and on society as a whole,” he said.

Speaking to his congregation on Sunday, Father Jones said: “My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift. I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither. I would ask that they do not steal from small, family businesses, but from national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices. When people are released from prison, or find themselves suddenly without work or family support, then to leave them for weeks and weeks with inadequate or clumsy social support is monumental, catastrophic folly. We create a situation which leaves some people little option but crime.”

Speaking later on BBC Radio York, Father Jones said his intention had not been to rally people to shoplifting, but to encourage people to give more to charity to avoid those in need from becoming so desperate.

“If one has exhausted every legal opportunity to get money and you’re still in a desperate situation it is a better moral thing to do to take absolutely no more than you need for no longer than you need,” he said.

However the Archdeacon of York, the Venerable Richard Seed, said: “Father Tim Jones is raising important issues about the difficulties people face when benefits are not forthcoming, but shoplifting is not the way to overcome these difficulties.”

Father Jones made the news in May 2008 when he made a protest about Playboy branded stationery being aimed at children. He went into a local stationers and threw the Playboy merchandise on the floor.

Illinois Police Protect Atheist Sign From Conservative Candidate (UPI; Dec 24)

SPRINGFIELD: A conservative candidate for Illinois comptroller was ordered out of the state Capitol for trying to remove a sign placed by an atheist group, officials said.

William J. Kelly calls the sign, placed by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, “hate speech,” saying it mocks the views of believers, CBS2Chicago.com reported. He announced Tuesday he was going to try to remove it and made his attempt Wednesday, only to be detained by police.

“I don’t think the State of Illinois has any business denigrating or mocking any religion, and I think that’s what the verbiage on the sign was doing,” Kelly said.

The foundation has placed similar signs in several state capitol buildings. It was on display in the Illinois Capitol last year.

The group’s message reads: “At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

The Illinois holiday display includes a Christmas tree and nativity scene and a message from the American Civil Liberties Union that it supports freedom of religion. A Jewish menorah was removed at the end of the Hanukkah festival.