All posts tagged: Bible

Watch: British Cops Grill Street-Preacher After Someone Takes ‘Offense’ At Bible Passages

Watch: British Cops Grill Street-Preacher After Someone Takes ‘Offense’ At Bible Passages

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News, Britain’s latest public-order farce is not a machete fight, a rape gang or a phone-snatch. It is a man on a high street with a Bible. Footage circulating Friday shows three female officers surrounding a Christian street preacher in a busy shopping precinct. One of them looks like she should still be sitting exams at school. The other two hover, phones out, expressions tight, as if they have been sent to defuse a bomb. In the UK they now have children policing the streets. pic.twitter.com/MsvD2QBFzT — HJB News (@HJB_News__) September 18, 2026 The clip is eight minutes of modern Britain in micro. A member of the public reports being “offended” by words. Officers arrive and the preacher is treated as the problem. The all inclusive term ‘hate speech’ is waved around and ‘intimidation’ is offered as the hook for an investigation. The man citing Scripture is expected to justify himself to people who appear unfamiliar with the very statutes they are leaning on. The Strong Arm Of The …

The Bible Belongs in the Classroom

The Bible Belongs in the Classroom

Published by Sam Flores

This summer, the Texas State Board of Education approved a new required-reading list for public schools, mandating what the state’s 5.4 million students will read in every grade from kindergarten to 12th. If you were a student in the past 20 years, or raised one, you’ll recognize most of the titles: picture books such as The Cat in the Hat and The Snowy Day, parables such as The Giver and Fahrenheit 451. What made the Texas list controversial is the inclusion not of a new book, but of a very old one: the Bible. Students will be assigned short excerpts and adaptations from the Old and New Testaments, starting with vivid tales (Jonah and the whale, David and Goliath) and building to more complex and morally challenging passages, such as Job’s complaint against God. Texas’s decision to start teaching Bible stories—like its requirement to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, which the state legislature approved last year—is clearly meant to send a political message. But regardless of your political or religious beliefs, there are good …

Nisha Katona on curry, Indian food and her new book The Curry Bible

Nisha Katona on curry, Indian food and her new book The Curry Bible

Published by Daniella Wilson

There was once a time when TV chef and restaurateur Nisha Katona was “ashamed” of curry. Born to Indian parents who arrived in the UK in the Sixties, Katona remembers being were “pretty much the only Indians” in Ormskirk, Lancashire. “Everything about you was so other and so unfathomable, and so probably unwelcome, really, including the way your food smelt and tasted,” says the chef, who owns the restaurant chain Mowgli Street Food. “So as you were, as a child, very ashamed of curry, and still, it’s ridiculous, I’m 54 and I still get embarrassed if I think my clothes smell of curry, or the outside of my restaurant smells of curry – when in fact, it’s the most delicious smell ever.” As a child, it was perhaps indicative of the “tempestuous relationship I had with being Indian at all”, she says. “It was only when I got into my 30s that I really fell in love with curry and started teaching people how to cook it. “I’ve got two daughters and when they were …

Women in the Bible – OpentheWord.org

Women in the Bible – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

By Chuck Missler The Apostle Paul has gotten a lot of flak over the years for his statement that women should be silent in the churches. He’s also had plenty of women irritated at him for saying they should submit to their husbands. Yet, while the Bible has been accused of promoting ancient patriarchal social structures or even downright misogyny, the Bible actually promotes women and provides excellent examples of women who were honored. The Bible was written, just like all books, in a male-dominated society. Yet, even in a time before the 19th Amendment and Title IX, the Bible does a great deal to promote the cause of women. Women are treated with respect in its pages, and not as scapegoats or the property of men as in certain other religions. Even though Eve is credited with taking the first bite of that fruit, she’s not faulted with the fall of humanity; Adam is (1 Cor 15:21-22).   It’s important for us to look at the treatment of women throughout the Bible. Old Testament: In …

We Goofed | Jo Livingstone

We Goofed | Jo Livingstone

Published by José Betancourt

Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven, Connecticut, is a temple. Although the Beinecke is cuboid it has the atmosphere of a pyramid, flanked in faintly translucent marble slabs that suck light into the building and radiate it outward at the same time. A new literary exhibition, “‘Beauties of My Style’: Errata and the Printed Mistake,” is not at the Beinecke; it is ninety feet away in the Hanke Gallery of the Sterling Memorial Library. This other Yale library is hideous in every way that the Beinecke shines. “Gothic revival” is the generous term. In a scathing 1930 critique later published in The Nation, a Yale undergraduate, William Harlan Hale, condemned SML’s combination of ecclesiastical decor and godless floorplan as a “cathedral orgy.” “How can students be educated to artistic appreciation,” he wondered, “under the eaves of an architecture that puts water tanks into church towers, and lavatories into oriels?” Past SML’s narthex, in a gloomy, wood-paneled corner of its nave, is a small, sarcastic show. It celebrates a loaded little …

How the Bible became bingeable

How the Bible became bingeable

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Seven years since first airing, the mega-hit biographical Jesus drama “The Chosen” is a full-fledged franchise. The evidence? An annual multi-day convention (Chosen Con), merch (hoodies, coloring books, jewelry), the fandom (over 308 million viewers) and now, a spinoff show (“Joseph of Egypt,” expected in 2027), even as the original series is about to go into its sixth season. Available on its app as well as streaming, “The Chosen” is a Bible show designed to be viewed on demand. Created by evangelical Christians, it’s also upfront about its agenda to point viewers to Christ. But the impact of “The Chosen” is perhaps best encapsulated in its catchphrase: “Binge Jesus.” “‘The Chosen’ really set the standard for what it means to make a biblical TV series,” said Michael Iskander, star of “House of David,” a show about the king of ancient Israel and Judea whose second season comes to Prime Video March 27. “It’s the first of its kind, completely crowdfunded … and to see the fandom that it has built, it’s only things …

The apocrypha, Christianity’s ‘hidden’ texts, may not be in the Bible – but they have shaped tradition for centuries

The apocrypha, Christianity’s ‘hidden’ texts, may not be in the Bible – but they have shaped tradition for centuries

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — Of Jesus’ 12 disciples, Saint Peter is one of the most important. In the Book of Matthew, Jesus declares that Peter is the “rock” on which “I will build my church,” and Catholic tradition considers him the first pope. Martyred in Rome in the first century, Peter asked to be crucified upside down so that he would not die in the same way as Christ. However, that famous story is not in the Bible. It appears in a text called “Acts of Peter,” an “apocryphal” writing. In ancient Greek, “apocrypha” means “hidden.” The word is used for texts that are not part of an approved set of religious books, especially Christian texts outside the official biblical canon. Yet these books are not so hidden. Some of them, like Acts of Peter, have shaped Christian tradition for centuries and are read by many people today. These stories are not only fun to read, but also provide valuable information about ideas that interested early Christians. In my research as a scholar of early Christianity, …

Science and the Bible, or science in the Bible?

Science and the Bible, or science in the Bible?

Published by Sam Flores

I have a hobby, and sometimes it surprises me. I am writing as a Christian, and I like to read the Bible, one chapter a day. There are 1,189 chapters in that book, and a few are quite large and I have to break them up, and a few are very small, so it takes me almost three and a half years to read the entire book.  I have added one wrinkle to the process; I like languages, so I read in other languages. Never mind which ones, I recommend my hobby to anyone who wants to know the Bible, and to do more than argue about their own religious ideas. Some things are bigger than us.  This is also a good way to learn or to reinforce knowledge of other languages, for free. Did you know that a Bible APP for a phone or computer is free, and language versions are almost unlimited? Ok, I will admit something. A Brazilian Portuguese version of the Bible is available, for free, and it is in a …