Religion and Cult News, Saturday (original) (raw)

Saturday December 31, 2016 RNB's Religion News Blog

• The sentences of three German men found guilty for their leadership roles at the infamous Colonia Dignidad cult in Chile have been increased.
  The cult’s founder, former Nazi Paul Schaefer, was sentenced in July 2008 for torturing children.[wpipa id=”36637″]
  Schaefer — whose followers thought he was “God on earth” — preached an unnamed religion that said harsh discipline would draw them closer to the supreme being.
  The cult leader also followed the teachings of American preacher William M. Branham, one of the founders of the “faith healing” movement, and considered a heretic.
  In April 2010 Schaefer died in prison.
• California state parole officials postponed a decision on setting free Patricia Krenwinkel, a follower of Charles Manson and convicted killer, after the woman’s attorney made new claims that she had been abused by the cult leader or another person.
• Emma Donoghue’s novel The Wonder delves into the cult of fasting girls

  Anorexia is not a new disorder. The compulsion to refuse food stretches as far back as Ancient Greece and into the Middle Ages, when Catholic saints such as Catherine of Siena would eschew meals as a symbol of their piety. Unlike contemporary sufferers of anorexia nervosa, those with anorexia mirabilis (the miraculous loss of appetite) were celebrated for their ability to exist without earthly pleasures.

• Top 5 ‘heresies’ of 2016: ‘One God,’ biblical authority and more
  What is heresy?
  What are the essential doctrines of the Christian faith?
  What is a cult of Christianity?
• The hunt for FLDS cult leader Warren Jeffs’ lost child brides: Three girls married off to Warren Jeffs aged 12 and 13 are still missing 12 years later as polygamist father who has 145 children goes on trial for arranging ceremonies
• Seventh-day Adventist Church: 49 of every 100 new members eventually leave.
  Theologically this religious sect is considered a cult of Christianity.
• What if you could become God, with the ability to build a whole new universe?
  That question is skillfully addressed by Zeeya Merali in A Big Bang in a Little Room: The Quest to Create New Universes.
  “This mind-boggling book reveals that we can nurse other worlds in the tiny confines of a lab, raising a daunting prospect: Was our universe, too, brought into existence by a daring creator?”
  Marali is a journalist and author who has written for Scientific American, Nature, New Scientist, and Discover, as well as published two textbooks in collaboration with National Geographic.

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Religion News Blog posted this on Saturday December 31, 2016.
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