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At least a dozen Christians lynched in Nigerian mob hysteria
Some stories Weblog takes note of are practically reruns. For example, if you've read one story about the ACLU suing over a posting of the Ten Commandments, you've read them all. But Weblog hasn't ever seen a story quite like this one before. Hundreds of members of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, a charismatic Christian sect that's apparently quite big in Nigeria, met for their annual convention in the western Nigerian town of Ilesa, Osun. During the convention, many went evangelizing door-to-door. Suddenly, one man came running out of his home, shouting that the evangelists had used black magic to make his genitals disappear. Apparently that claim, as outrageous as it sounds, really shook up the neighborhood. The community immediately turned into an angry mob, destroying the evangelists' vehicles and burning eight of the church members to death. Sadly, even though this story seems like a freak instance, the BBC reports that it's not uncommon: "The Osun state police commissioner Ganiu Dawodu, who dismissed claims of organ disappearance, told the BBC that the mob killings started two weeks ago and has swept though six main towns in the state including the university town of Ife and the state capital of Osogbo."In midst of hostility to public religion, a resurgent interest
Robert L. Bartley, editor of The Wall Street Journal, used his weekly column this week to discuss the importance of religion in America's history. "Religious impulses, to recall the obvious, were implanted at the very founding of the American colonies," he writes. "From time to time these impulses have surged to lay a moral basis for later political developments." In his short amount of ...
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