Zimbabwean Churches Causing Hundreds To Die By Banning Medications

Apostolic and evangelical Christian churches in Zimbabew are discouraging and even banning their worshippers from taking their medications for HIV/AIDS, and other conditions, and they are dying by the hundreds.  Because Jesus cures AIDS.  Presto!

Except that he doesn’t.

 

Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe

From Zimbabwe NewsDay (emphasis added):

[…]

Apostolic and Pentecostal churches with their origins in West African countries now based in Zimbabwe have been cited as the major culprits.

This sad story came to the fore during the recent burial of Tambudzai Mazvihwa (not real name) of Banga Village in Shurugwi.

According to speakers during her burial, she had stopped taking her anti-retroviral medication and developed complications, which later caused her premature death.

“Parents and relatives, I think you are all aware that our daughter here was taking anti-retroviral drugs, but for the past five months she had stopped her medication on instructions from her church elders who had prescribed holy water instead of the pills. It is the holy water that has caused her death. Had she continued with her treatment, she would be living up to this day,” said an elderly headman during her burial.

Only a few villagers attended the burial and members of her church did not attend for fear of being beaten up for having caused her demise.

As men shovelled red gravel onto her grave, some spoke in low tones condemning the acts of her church.

[…]

There was no cross, no flowers and no name on her grave. Tambudzai is yet another victim of the doctrinaire religious sects that are taking Zimbabwe by storm; she is among hundreds of other worshippers who met a similar fate.

[,,,]

There are also many versions of Christianity, with some churches overtly borrowing from traditional religious practices such as divination, witch hunting and “spiritual” healing.

Oregon To Prohibit Faith-Healing Defense

It’s about fucking time:

Oregon is getting ready to end legal protection to parents who abandon modern medicine in favor of faith healing when treating their children’s illness. House Bill 2721 would eliminate faith healing as a legal defense for parents who rely only on faith healing or other spiritual practices to heal sick children.

The change in law can be understood as a direct response to the Oregon City church, The Followers of Christ. The church is notorious for allowing sick children to suffer and even die rather than seeking medical attention. The church preaches a religion based in faith-healing, a religion that rejects modern medicine in favor of prayer and the anointing of the sick with oil.

[,,,]

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Religion: Oregon to eliminate faith healing as legal defense – Portland Humanist | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/humanist-in-portland/religion-oregon-to-eliminate-faith-healing-as-legal-defense#ixzz1EzmOLq3Y

There is currently no opposition to this bill from any side.

Christian Privilege Saves Child-Murdering Parents From Prison

 

Christian child abusers Herbert and Catherine Schaible

A Pennsylvania fundamentalist Christian couple, Herbert and Catherine Schaible, are spared prison after being found guilty for murdering their child with prayer and they are allowed to keep their seven remaining children to abuse for Jesus.  (That’s what you call “irresponsible procreation”.)  Cases like this make a good argument for regulating and prohibiting certain religious beliefs and practices that are just fucking dangerous.  The law already prohibits some religious practices, such as polygamy and slavery, yet allows parents to murder their children as long as they believe in magic powers.  Hopefully, however, that may be changing — prompted by the long history of child abuse and neglect by the Followers of Christ Church cult, the state of Oregon has just introduced a bill that will ban faith-healing as a defense for killing your kids.

Churches like these overstep the generous bounds of religious freedom granted to them.  Forcing kids, who cannot consent, to suffer needlessly through these ‘faith-healing’ rituals and to die horrible, painful deaths because their brainwashed, idiot parents are told to believe they have magic powers.

Why are these parents spared prison and allowed to keep their other children to experiment on?  They are clearly insane (emphasis mine):

Following the guilty verdict Clark [the father] said: ‘The legal community is trying to force our church group to put them in the hands of this flawed medical system, when they have chosen to put them in the hands of a perfect God, who does not make mistakes.’

About a dozen US children die in faith-healing cases each year, a handful of which spawn criminal charges, according to experts.

It is not the first time the First Century Gospel Church of Philadelphia’s teachings has clashed with the authorities.

And, the authorities admit that it’s going to take a lot of supervision to make sure that these monsters don’t harm their other kids, as they are still under the influence of the cult First Century Gospel Church.

Sick.

via [link] Philly.com and [link] DailyMail UK

More Oregon Faith-Healer Parents Face Charges

Look, I know that the vast majority (OK, I’m assuming it’s the vast majority) of Christians have better goddamned common sense and compassion to know when to not take the Bible completely literally.  But the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City, Oregon take their faith to the point of severe mental illness and criminal child neglect.  Over the decades, they have filled a graveyard full of their own children.

Because the only good home is a devout Christian home.

Now another couple in the same damn church would have added their 7-month-old baby girl to that graveyard had someone not tipped off the authorities.  The baby’s parents let a tumor grow by her eye, until it got so big it bulged her eye out, pushing it to the side.  Getting bigger and more red and purple, the parents would only pray and anoint the helpless child with goddamned fucking holy olive oil.

And, unbelievably, this man lost his last wife to breast cancer in 2006.  She had never sought or received any medical treatment whatsoever, according to the state medical examiner.  Don’t wanna mess with god’s plan, right?  Now this sick bastard gets him a new wifey, makes a baby that I’m sure was conceived totally only after marriage, I’m sure, because that would just be way too sinful in the eyes of their god.  But, after the baby arrives into this world, no god can help her then, she’s left to total neglect — no, not total neglect, because I’m sure they fawned over her day and night, wiping away the  oozing pus from her eye, anointing her with extra-virgin olive oil and pleading and praying to the goddamned air.

Why?  Why has this church been allowed to continue for decades?  Because it has been taboo to question or criticize Christianity — never mind the endless suffering that it brings.  But it is because of this particular church that Oregon passed a law making it a felony offense for religious freaks who cause harm to children.  But they keep on, praise Jeebus!

This is why unquestioning, blind obedience to religious dogma is dangerous.  Religious extremism is fucking dangerous.  These kind of people are getting all up in our government, either in office or running for office, or influencing those in office, and it is fucking dangerous.  Lou Engle and Cindy Jacobs to name just two — they actually believe that they are literally prophets from God (with the capital G) — they actually believe in all this holy oil shit, and demons, and faith healing, and they are part of the machine working to bring a Christian Theocracy to the United States, and they are very vocal about it.

Source: OregonLive

Oregon City Faith-Healer Parents Found Guilty

Followers of Christ Church

Alot of folks around here have been following this story for quite some time.  The Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City, OR (20 miles south of Portland) have a graveyard full of children.  Because of them, Oregon changed the law in 1999 regarding the use of faith-healing as a religious freedom defense.  From the article by Andy Parker of the Oregonian (emphases added):

The last time I wrote about the graveyard, in July, I mentioned that with the burial of 15-month-old Ava Worthington — the Beagley’s granddaughter — a fifth row of child graves had been started.

Jeff and Marci Beagley’s granddaughter, fifteen months old, died on March 2, 2008 at the Christian hands of their daughter and her husband, Carl and Raylene Worthington.  Surrounded by praying adults, she suffered horribly while they anointed her with olive oil and performed the laying on of hands.  Not one tried to help the tiny, under-developed girl and she died.  Suffer, the little children: