Pastor John MacArthur recently addressed his highly criticized comment that “there’s no such thing as mental illness.”

MacArthur made the remark during a panel discussion at the For the Valley Bible Conference when he was asked to share why he wrote his latest book, “The War on Children: Providing Refuge for Your Children in a Hostile World.”

MacArthur said he believes that children are being misdiagnosed with mental health issues and wrongly prescribed medication. “In regard to children, [medication] is the most deadly thing that’s been unleashed on children,” he said.

“We are trying to make clear to parents that behavior is essentially the result of choices that kids make. And if you parent them properly, they’ll make right choices,” MacArthur told the panel.

RELATED: John MacArthur Claims Mental Illness Is a ‘Noble Lie,’ Medicating Children Creates ‘Potential Drug Addicts’

MacArthur then claimed that by blaming a child’s behavior on “something other than their choices” and prescribing them medication, parents are “literally turning your child not only into a potential drug addict but maybe a potential criminal, because they never learned how to negotiate and navigate life in a socially acceptable way.”

During his sermon on Sunday, May 5, MacArthur told his congregation,

I was told within a matter of a few hours that [what I said] blew up the internet. And one of the headlines was, ‘A Doctor and a Woman Preacher Take Issue With John MacArthur.’ I don’t know about the doctor, but I’m happy to take issue with a woman preacher. That’s fine.

MacArthur said he recently received a phone call from a person who represents the “leading psychologists in this country” and who also manages the “largest facility for juveniles who commit adult crimes.” MacArthur said the individual told him, “I’m calling the church to let Pastor MacArthur know that everything he said is exactly true.”

“And he went on to say,” MacArthur added, “if [I want] to write a book, [he’ll help] supply all the data.”

MacArthur reiterated, “There’s no such thing as mental illness.”

The pastor then shared research he gathered from psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who wrote the book “The Myth of Mental Illness.”

Angela White, who became famous under her persona “Blac Chyna,” joined Christian hip hop artist Lecrae on his podcast Thursday to talk about her spiritual journey out of lifestyle that included stripping and performing on OnlyFans. White countered the idea that her financial success has made it easy for her to give up that way of life to follow God. 

“This is a lifestyle,” she said on “The Deep End With Lecrae.” “You need more money to make more money, if that makes sense.” When Lecrae asked if there were ever a point where she felt as though she had “made it” in her career, White said she still does not feel that way. 

“It’s just always rollin,’” she said. “For a long time, I would just hustle, hustle, hustle, just grind, grind, grind. Stay up for days…just working, trying to just get stuff done.”

When Lecrae asked how much she had been making when she was on OnlyFans, White said, “I made millions from offa there.”

He observed, “For you to say, ‘I’m done doing that,’ something genuinely had to change in your life.” Lecrae added that some people think her new commitment to Jesus is a publicity stunt.

“Nobody needs publicity when you already Blac Chyna,” she replied. “You just walk outside.”

Angela White’s Unfolding Story

Angela White is an actor, entrepreneur, rapper, television personality, model and mother of two. As a teenager, she started performing in strip clubs under the stage name “Blac Chyna,” which was a persona that eventually “overspilled.” White was a popular stripper and rose to fame after Drake name-dropped her in a song and she was cast as a body double for Nicki Minaj in a Kanye West music video.

White said she joined OnlyFans in 2020 while in the middle of a costly court case, likely referring to her defamation suit against the Kardashians. During that time, she was in need of money.

RELATED: ‘I Am Giving It All Up for Christ’—OnlyFans Star Nala Ray Declares Faith in Jesus

In March 2023, White publicly revealed that she had been baptized on May 11, 2022, which was her birthday. At the end of 2022, she deactivated her OnlyFans account with no “backup plan” for how to pay her bills.

Before White deactivated her account, she called her bishop, who praised God at the news and was on the phone with her when she took the momentous step. White told Lecrae that she needed faith to trust she would be ok and that in the year-and-a-half since, “We’ve been rollin’ by faith this whole time.”

Former Nickelodeon star Kel Mitchell discussed an experience he had with exorcism during a recent episode of Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast. 

Perhaps best known for his 1990s performances in “All That,” “Kenan and Kel,” and “Good Burger,” Mitchell is an actor, producer, and comedian. He has also served as youth pastor for Spirit Food Christian Center in Winnetka, California, since 2019. 

In 2021, he published a devotional titled, “Blessed Mode: 90 Days to Level Up Your Faith.” 

The “Club Shay Shay” episode kicked off with a performance by award-winning gospel artist Tye Tribbett, who sang “Be Alright.”

Following the artist’s performance, Sharpe asked Tribbett, “I’m listening to the words of the song and thinking about everything that’s transpired over the last five years—how do we convince people to lean on the Word of God and their spirituality and their religion, that everything is going to be alright?”

RELATED: How God Saved Nickelodeon Star Kel Mitchell From Suicide To Become a Youth Pastor

“Well, we just stay consistent, I believe,” Tribbett replied. “If we just stay consistent, keep encouraging people, keep speaking the Word, they’re going to hit a point in their life where all they have is that hope, and all they have is that faith.”

“If we just remain consistent—God is the way, Jesus is the way, he can help you—and our testimonies help people,” Tribbett continued. “It’s not even about convincing people. It’s about being a witness.” 

Later, Sharpe sat down with Mitchell for a wide-ranging conversation about Mitchell’s life growing up on the South Side of Chicago and becoming a television star as a teenager. Of his success as a young actor and comedian, Mitchell said, “That’s God.” 

Sharpe asked Mitchell, “Of all the things that you’ve done thus far, what’s your favorite?”

“Being me and doing what God wants me to do,” Mitchell replied. “I really feel like enjoying a journey. It’s been a journey.”

“You get one life here, then you live again in heaven. But it’s just having this one life, and where it can take, you know, those different steps in learning from everything. That’s been the beauty in it,” Mitchell went on to say.

Speaking to the struggles of navigating his acting career as a young man, Mitchell said, “What got me through was definitely the Lord. That’s what got me through.”

“And then what got me through too is, you know, staying the course,” he added. 

RELATED: Comedian Chris Distefano Recommends ‘The Case for Christ’ to Joe Rogan, Argues Jesus Rose From the Dead

Later in the conversation, Mitchell shared about the mental health challenges he endured in the early 2000s amid an ongoing dispute with Dan Schneider, who produced “Kenan and Kel,” as well as troubles in his marriage. Also during this time, Mitchell said that his relationship with Kenan Thompson began to break down. To that point, the two had been a successful comedy duo and close friends. 

Newly baptized actor and podcaster Russell Brand posted a video Friday (May 17) about taking holy communion for the first time. In it, the 48-year-old discussed rituals in a society based on rationalism and quoted late theologian Timothy Keller.

“I took my first holy communion. That means I drank the blood of Christ and ate the body of Christ,” Brand began his video, which had almost 100,000 views by midday. In the caption, he wrote, “(Oh yeah that stuff round my gob ain’t Our Lord’s blood. Just protein shake!!!).”

“How do you make sense of participation in a ritual like that, when you are familiar only with rationalism and materialism and logic?” Brand asked viewers. “How do you deal with the intersection of the supernatural and the material and the rational? How do you deal with the idea that there is a spiritual dimension that we can interact with and indeed commune with?”

I did my FIRST HOLY COMMUNION AND… (Oh yeah that stuff round my gob ain’t Our Lord’s blood. Just protein shake!!!) pic.twitter.com/hCg3efPzV4

— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) May 17, 2024

Russell Brand References Timothy Keller on Faith

Russell Brand, who got baptized last month in the River Thames, explored the contrasts between spirituality and secularism. Believing in an “ever-present” Christ figure these days seems “almost ludicrous and ridiculous,” he said, “particularly when there are countermeasures continually in place to tell you that only the rational and material world makes sense.”

RELATED: ‘It Was Pretty Incredible’—Russell Brand Thanks Bear Grylls for Standing With Him During Recent Baptism

When a society based on rationalism “precludes a belief in the supernatural and [favors] the political over the religious,” Brand said, we end up excluding “so many things that are actually, I believe, impossible to live without.”

Then the actor referenced Keller’s mention of a joke about a drunk man searching for his car keys under a streetlamp. When a passerby asked, “Is that where you dropped them?” the man replied, “No, I dropped them over there, by them bushes, but the light’s much better here.”

“Timothy Keller points out that using the modes of the sense and the modalities of the sciences, we cannot search that which is ethereal, by its very nature,” Brand explained. “The idea that the material world can answer all of our questions seems increasingly preposterous, just on a practical level as the world falls apart.”

Jesus Was a ‘Great Rebel,’ Says Russell Brand

For him, Russell Brand said, becoming a Christian is a political act but isn’t about joining a conservative institution where you leave things as they are. “I have become a Christian because I have surrendered to a figure that was a great radical and a great rebel,” he said. “[Who] believed that God’s kingdom would come to earth—that indeed it did come to earth—in his figure.”

Becoming a Christian has provided a “glorious new education,” Brand concluded. And despite his “enthusiasm,” he’s approaching the faith journey “with great trepidation and vulnerability because it is very, very new to me. But a new power has come to me. A new glory seems accessible to me.”

(RNS) — An Episcopal priest may lose his credentials in the denomination after observing a “Eucharistic fast” in the name of racial justice. A panel charged with overseeing the case in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia concluded on May 8 that the Rev. Cayce Ramey violated his ordination vows and should be “deprived of the right to exercise the gifts and spiritual authority of God’s word and sacraments conferred at ordinations to Priesthood and Diaconate,” according to a news release.

Ramey, an activist against white supremacy who previously served as rector of All Saints Episcopal Church Sharon Chapel in Alexandria, Virginia, has refused to preside over the Eucharist or to receive it personally since 2022. His fast, he reportedly said, would last until he saw “clear proof of repentance and amendment of life in the Episcopal Church regarding white supremacy and racial injustice,” according to a pretrial document filed by a church attorney.

RELATED: Parishioners Confront Teen With Rifle Outside of Communion Service for 60 Children

“I see racial justice as central to the Gospel and the only means of addressing the original sin of white supremacy in the United States and the Episcopal Church,” Ramey wrote in a pretrial brief. “I was ordained into a part of God’s church built on the wealth, power, and privilege gained from the enslavement and ongoing oppression and exploitation of Black people. … How then can I administer the sacraments at the whites-only lunch-counter-altar built on top of the bodies and blood of people our theology enslaved?”

In March, a church trial took place at the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia’s headquarters in Richmond, The Living Church reported. Several witnesses testified during the trial, including two Black bishops who testified against Ramey, who is white. Bishop Gayle Harris, assistant bishop in Virginia, said at the hearing that while she acknowledged Ramey’s genuine passion for racial justice, she was insulted that the pain of her people had become “a platform for someone to deny the Eucharist.”

In a statement, Bishop Mark Stevenson of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia called confronting racism “mission critical” for him and the diocese, and he commended Ramey’s leadership in that area. However, Stevenson added, the church proceedings were about whether Ramey violated his ordination vows, not about his racial justice efforts. “It is my firm belief that Episcopal priests can and must work to make our faith a living reality by providing the sacraments to their people, as well as work to secure justice and human dignity,” he said.

The news release states that Stevenson and Bishop Susan Goff, who at one point was acting bishop of the Diocese of Virginia, spent months in dialogue with Ramey seeking a pastoral resolution before Goff initiated an official church investigation in 2022.

The panel’s order indicated that Ramey violated several church bylaws, including engaging in “habitual neglect of … the Holy Communion,” failing to “abide by the promises and vows made when ordained” and engaging in conduct unbecoming of a clergy member. The panel recommended Ramey be deposed, meaning he would no longer be recognized as an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church.

The press release states that Stevenson must now decide whether to uphold the panel’s decision. Per church canons, he must pronounce an official sentence after 20 days, but before 40 days. If Ramey appeals the panel’s decision, then the Court of Review, an elected body made of laypeople, bishops and other clergy, must issue a final order before the bishop imposes a sentence.

This article originally appeared here.

(RNS) — The Rev. Jerome V. Harris, a retired general officer of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, died in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 8. At his death, Harris was involved in a lawsuit with the denomination over alleged mishandling the church’s retirement pension funds.

John Thomas III, a general officer of the church and the editor of The Christian Recorder, the AME’s official publication, said that Harris had died of a heart attack.

Harris, who was ordained itinerant elder of the AME Church in 1981, served as senior pastor and presiding elder of various churches in Alabama. In 1990, he was appointed lead pastor of St. Paul AME Church, where the civil rights figure Rosa Parks attended. His most recent post as senior pastor was at the historic Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama. While at the chapel he secured National Historic Landmark status for the now-116-year-old building.

In July 2000, he was made a general officer of the AME Church and appointed the seventh executive director of the church’s retirement services department. For 21 years, Harris managed the retirement pensions sponsored by the worldwide church.

Upon his resignation in 2021, AME Church officials accused Harris of embezzling nearly $100 million from the church’s pension funds after being alerted of discrepancies in the retirement plan’s accounting.

As a result of the accounting anomalies, the AME Church faced three federal class-action lawsuits filed by retired AME pastors, accusing the church of mishandling the pension funds.

According to the church, an independent investigation in 2021 revealed that Harris and other defendants had used the retirement plan funds for personal purposes. The church alleged that the defendants used the money for personal loans and high-risk investments, among other things. They were also accused of creating third-party entities into which they funneled the money.

The AME Church wrote in its court filing that Harris “engaged in a conspiracy with several individuals and/or entities to embezzle funds and defraud AMEC by, among other things, providing AMEC with deceptive, false, and grossly inflated financial statements for the African Methodist Episcopal Church Ministerial Retirement Annuity Plan.”

When the fund opened in 2001, it was valued at $49.5 million. According to a final report issued by Harris, the plan was worth $128 million at the end of his tenure, a baseless estimation according to the AME Church.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Harris graduated from Alabama State University and Louisiana State University. He had a three-decade career in banking at the First National Bank of Montgomery.

Harris was also a veteran of the U.S. Army, serving during the Vietnam War. In 1969, he received a Medal of Commendation for his service.

Harris’ funeral was held Wednesday (May 15) at the St. John AME Church in Montgomery. He will be buried at the Alabama Heritage Cemetery.

Harris is survived by his wife, Sandra Elaine Anderson; son; and three grandchildren.

This article originally appeared here. 

(RNS) — Every Sunday, in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York, a group of followers of Veronica Lueken, a Catholic housewife who said she saw visions of Mary starting in 1968, gather around a statue of Mary placed on a park bench and pray the rosary. A rival group, which split after Lueken’s 1995 death, gathers on a nearby traffic island.

During her life, Lueken said she received messages that challenged the post-Second Vatican Council Catholic Church and warned people to repent.

While alleged Marian apparitions are plentiful, most, like Lueken’s, go without official recognition by the Catholic Church. Only 25% of apparitions have been recognized by the local bishop in the church’s 2,000-year history. Of those, the Vatican has only recognized 16.

This Friday (May 17), the Vatican will release a document with new norms for discerning Marian apparitions and other supernatural phenomena, the first time those norms have been updated since 1978.

RELATED: Priests Prepare To Bring Synodality From the Vatican to Parishes Around the World

In explaining the importance of Marian shrines, Robert Orsi, who holds the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University, cites a gas station attendant in Knock, Ireland, the site of an officially recognized Marian shrine, who told Orsi, “Here the transcendent broke into time.”

Robert Orsi. (Photo by Tony Rinaldo)

The sites are so beloved that people replicate them around the world. The tourism website for Lourdes, another site of a well-known and officially recognized apparition, says there are more than 765 replica sites in France and another 321 in the rest of the world.

At the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto in the Bronx, near where Orsi grew up, people know the water they’re collecting to take back to their sick relatives or placing on their own bodies is from the city reservoir, but they also believe the water is holy and has some of the power of the water in Lourdes, Orsi said.

“These places are always at once both local and universal,” said Orsi, explaining that Marian apparitions often speak in the regional language, but that Marian devotions are all-inclusive.

Initially, Orsi said, the sites of the apparitions “capture the world’s attention because of their drama.”

But after the apparitions are over and the shrines are built, “they become places for friendship, for travel, for families, for support, for encouragement, for hoping, for dealing with despair and disappointment. They’re really rich sites of relationships,” Orsi said, explaining that the sites can also have political, nationalist and medical meanings.

While the sites of Marian apparitions “help inculcate a Catholic consciousness or a Catholic imaginary” and “increase piety and devotion,” Orsi said they can prove “complicated” for ecclesiastical authorities because “there’s a power to these sites” that can go beyond their control.

Joseph Laycock, an assistant professor of religious studies at Texas State University, agrees the sites pose a particular conundrum for the institutional church. “Private revelation is always a threat to the authority of the magisterium and the authority of the church,” said Laycock, who has studied Lueken in depth. “On the other hand, it’s also very precious to Catholic tradition.”

Pilgrims gather outside the Basilica of Guadalupe on her feast day in Mexico City, Dec. 12, 2023. Devotees of Our Lady of Guadalupe gather for one of the world’s largest religious pilgrimages on the anniversary of one of several apparitions of the Virgin Mary witnessed by an Indigenous Mexican man named Juan Diego in 1531. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

After the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965 and led to a host of reforms in the church, “there was kind of a spike of interest in Marian apparitions because a lot of traditionalist Catholics felt the church had kind of turned its back on tradition,” said Laycock. “That’s why in 1978, the church had to finally make some more specific guidelines.”