Christian Clergy Welcomes Islam in Church, Then Bows to It; Liberal churches are dying...more

Liberal churches are dying. But conservative churches are thriving Mainline Protestant churches are in trouble: A 2015 report by the Pew Research Center found that these congregations, once a mainstay of American religion, are now shrinking by about 1 million members annually. Fewer members not only means fewer souls saved, a frightening thought for some clergy members, but also less income for churches, further ensuring their decline.

Faced with this troubling development, clergy members have made various efforts to revive church attendance. It was almost 20 years ago that John Shelby Spong, a U.S. bishop in the Episcopalian Church, published his book “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” It was presented as an antidote to the crisis of decline in mainline churches. Spong, a theological liberal, said congregations would grow if they abandoned their literal interpretation of the Bible and transformed along with changing times...

Christian Clergy Welcomes Islam in Church, Then Bows to It 
There is a disturbing and growing trend in Italy and Europe.

For the first time in more than 700 years, Islamic songs resonated in Florence's Cathedral, the Church Santa Maria del Fiore. Under the famous Dome of Brunelleschi, Islamic melodies accompanied Christian ones. The "interfaith initiative" was promoted a week after the barbaric massacre by Islamist terrorists in Paris at the magazine Charlie Hebdo, and included "Koran is Justice" and other such "hymns".

A priest in the south of Italy then enraged parishioners by dressing the Virgin Mary in a Muslim burqa for his church's Christmas nativity scene. The pastor of the parish of Saints Joachim and Anne in Potenza, Father Franco Corbo, said that he had the special crèche constructed "in the name of dialogue among religions". These interfaith initiatives are based on the gradual elimination of the Western-Christian heritage in favor of Islam...

1 of the last remaining Shakers dies at 89, leaving just 2  Sister Frances Carr, one of the last remaining members of a nearly extinct religious society called the Shakers, has died. She was 89.

Carr died Monday surrounded by family and friends in the dwelling house at the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester after a brief battle with cancer, said Brother Arnold Hadd, one of the group's two remaining members.

"She had a death with dignity and love," Hadd said Tuesday. "She was surrounded by love, tears and a lot of Shaker songs."

Their community at Sabbathday Lake was settled in 1783 and was one of more than a dozen such communities created in the New World by the Shakers, formally known as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearance...