A leading advocate of the patriarchal Quiverfull movement groomed a teenage girl as his “personal sex object” and then used the purity culture to shame her into silence, according to a lawsuit filed by his victim.

Douglas Phillips resigned last year from Vision Forum and Vision Forum Ministries over what he described at the time as an extramarital affair.

But the lawsuit, reported by Right Wing Watch, revealed more details about this relationship and the ways that women are treated in the Quiverfull movement – which has been popularized by the prolific Duggar family and their TLC reality show, 19 Kids and Counting.

Attorneys claim Phillips, a close friend to the Duggar family and an associate of actor Kirk Cameron, “methodically groomed” Lourdes Torres since she was 15 years old and led her to believe they would be married.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/15/lawsuit-reveals-teen-was-groomed-as-personal-sex-slave-in-the-duggar-familys-movement/#.U02Y8_uaQdI.facebook

There’s little doubt, outside circles filled with self-delusional reactionaries, that religion is probably the most important force in continuing the oppression of women worldwide. Around the world, various abuses from coerced marriage to domestic violence to restricting reproductive rights are all excused under the banner of religion. More to the point, women’s rights have advanced more quickly in societies that put religion on the backburner, or like the United States, have strict laws separating church and state. But even in the U.S., the main result of the growing power of the religious right is the rollback of reproductive rights and other protections for women’s equality.

Former president Jimmy Carter, who is probably the country’s most prominent liberal Christian, is willing to set aside his enthusiasm for faith to admit this. While doing press promoting his new book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power, Carter told the Guardian that “women are treated more equally in some countries that are atheistic or where governments are strictly separated from religion.”

This isn’t because atheists and secularists have fewer people in their ranks that have ugly and backwards attitudes toward women. It’s because, by never having religion in the discourse about women’s rights in the first place, discourse in secular circles and societies never gets mired in endless, irresolvable debates about what God wants. Instead, secular societies can get straight to the facts and policy debate. When you stop worrying what God wants and start worrying about what people want, it’s much easier to argue that women should have full human rights. After all, women are half the human race. When everyone is talking about what God supposedly wants, it becomes very easy to forget that ultimately, the issue of women’s rights is about ordinary, everyday men and women and what goes on in their lives.

--snip--

Carter, like many liberal Christians, is happy to criticize more conservative religious leaders who want to oppress women. Still, it’s hard not to have doubts that Carter’s own devout Christianity might make him less critical than he should be of the role religion plays in the oppression of women. The sticky point when it comes to advocating for a kind of Christian feminism is that the Bible is undeniably sexist. And it’s not just the Old Testament, where women are told they were created from men and told, repeatedly, that they are basically property to be disposed of as men see fit. The New Testament has plenty of verses that should cause feminist eyebrows to shoot up.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/religion-inherently-oppressive

As the storm raged, the Captain knew his ship was sinking fast.

He called out, "Anyone here know how to pray?"

One man called out, "Aye, Captain, I know how to pray!"

"Good," said the Captain, "you pray while the rest of us put on our life jackets - we're one short."

An unhinged actor Thursday calmly described hacking his beloved mother to death with a sword because he believed a demon had taken hold of her soul. "I didn't kill her. I killed the demon inside her," Michael Brea said in a chilling hourlong interview with the Daily News in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital. When told his mother, Yannick Brea, 55, had died in the grisly assault early Tuesday, Michael was unrepentant. "So be it. It was the work of God," he said.

--snip--

"I didn't want to kill her right away. I wanted to give her time to get right with God," he said. By this point police had arrived outside the apartment, but Brea said he had no doubt he would be able to finish the job.

"I was slashing my mom and I heard the police knocking on the door yelling, 'Michael, open up, Michael, open up,' but I knew they wouldn't open the door and stop me because the spirits were protecting me," he said.

"I just kept cutting her. No one could stop me. I was doing the work of God," he said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/michael-brea-bit-part-ugly-betty-actor-didn-kill-killed-demon-article-1.456954

Two Maryland women, with ties to Philadelphia, were indicted Thursday for the first-degree murders of two small children stabbed during what police say was an exorcism. The women, Zakieya Avery and Monifa Sanford, are accused of killing Avery's 1-year-old and 2-year-old children Jan. 17 in a Germantown townhouse.

The women were indicted Thursday on two counts of attempted first-degree murder for stabbing and wounding Avery's older children, a 5-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy, said Montgomery County, Md. authorities.

Avery and Sanford told investigators that they believed evil spirits jumped between the bodies of the children and that they needed to perform an exorcism to drive the demons out, said Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy.

When being questioned by police, the women told investigators that they tried multiple methods to remove the presence of demons from the children, progressing from attempting to break the neck of the youngest child, to strangulation, to stabbing.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/PHI-COPY-Women-Indicted-in-Exorcism-Stabbings-of-Children-250598271.html

Exorcisms in Indiana Reflect God’s Healing Power

The story of an Indiana family attacked by demons and freed by a Catholic priest through a series of exorcisms has stirred imaginations and curiosity. It also seems to confirm what many Catholics already know — evil is no match against the power that rests in the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

Most media accounts of the story have focused on the power of evil. But according to Father Vincent Lampert, designated exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, such news is highlighting the wrong thing.

--snip--

During three months of training in Rome in 2006, Father Lampert assisted in more than 40 exorcisms with longtime Italian exorcist Father Carmine De Filippis. He worked alongside Father Gary Thomas, whose experiences became the basis of the book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist and inspired the fictionalized movie.

--snip--

Father Lampert said there are around 50 trained exorcists in the United States. He acknowledged that reports of demonic activity seem to be increasing.

In addition to possessions, which he said are rare, there is demonic oppression and infestation. In such cases, the devil does not take control of a person’s body, but harasses them in a number of ways, such as interfering in their lives or causing depression.

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/exorcisms-in-indiana-reflect-gods-healing-power/

Marcell Washington put his 3-year-old son into a cold shower and demanded to know if the young boy worshiped only God.

When Ameen said "no," Washington forced open the boy's eyes so water could fill them.

"I did this because I wanted to kill the Shatan that I believed was in my son," Washington explained later. "I thought by killing a portion of Ameen, it would kill the Shatan in him."

The boy's frantic struggle convinced his father even more that "Shatan," or the devil, remained in him. The exorcism continued. Washington held his son's face under water for about 10 minutes.

"When I was holding him under the water Ameen was still fighting me really hard," Washington said later. "After about a couple of minutes Ameen stopped fighting so hard and he started to collapse. After ten minutes or so Ameen collapsed in my arms and I took him out of the shower."

The father wrapped his son in a white towel and put him in the bedroom. Foam was coming from the little boy's mouth, so Washington left him on his side for the foam to drain. Washington then went to shave his head. Afterward, he checked Ameen's pulse and found none. "I didn't think he was dead because the pulse of the Shatan is very hard to track," Washington said. "I then left Ameen at the house..."

--snip--

Police said Washington was highly upset and cried on multiple occasions before being interrogated. But Washington expressed no regret and told officers he would have done it all over again, according to statements. “He stated that he did not feel he did anything wrong,” one officer wrote. “He also said that his child was better off dead than living with a devil inside of him.”

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2014/03/syracuse_murder_exorcism_marcell_washington.html