The Bible Outranks Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber on Facebook

According to figures released this week, the Bible page on Facebook has 6.7 million fans making it among the most popular pages on the social networking site outranking Manchester United, Justin Bieber and even Lady Gaga.

Jane Pleace, who manages the page for the United Bible Societies said that approximately one million of the page’s fans regularly wrote messages on the wall and re-posted Bible verses on their own personal page every week.

“With their help, United Bible Societies has shared Scripture over 239 million times on Facebook in the last month alone. It’s wonderful to see people leaving comments saying how they’ve been touched by a particular Bible passage we’ve posted on our page,” said Pleace.

“As many churches grapple how to get people to read the Bible, United Bible Societies is helping nearly seven million people read the Bible daily, using the social networking site Facebook.”

Pleace added that 51% of those fans were under the age of 25-years.

“Young people come to the Bible page with questions about the Christian faith. They ask deeply thoughtful, intelligent and searching questions about the teachings in the Bible,” emphasised Pleace.

“We have the opportunity to address each question individually. We pray for these young people and we’ve been blessed to see some of them come to faith.”

Pleace also said that people of different faith backgrounds also visited the site to debate or discuss issues of faith.

“We love to debate with people who hold different viewpoints,” Pleace said. “We try to demonstrate God’s love for all people in our responses by showing a genuine interest in everyone.

“I’m proud of all the volunteers who respond to provoking questions with good humour and a generous spirit.

“For some people, this is their only contact with Christians, so it’s important that they know we are a loving and accepting community.”

You can visit The Bible page at: www.facebook.com/TheBible

Please note you cannot click on the link in this page but will have to cut and paste it into your browser.

Hell Pizza Offends Christians With Jesus Hot Cross Bun Ad

A New Zealand pizza chain called Hell Pizza has offended Christians with its latest series of adverts. The adverts promote a limited offer of hot cross buns, and the buns are seen complete with an upside-down pentagram inscribed on them, while next to the photo are the words: “For a limited time. A bit like Jesus.”

According to The New Zealand Herald, the Anglican Church through their media officer Lloyd Ashton reacted to the adverts by saying:

“They [Hell Pizza] join a long line of advertising that’s in questionable taste that slings off things that lots of people hold precious.

“It’s disrespectful to what a lot of people hold very dear.”

The Anglican Church received support from an editorial in the same paper which stated that ad is offensive even to non-Christians because it is a “gratuitous, if incoherent, attempt at provocation …”

“[It] is hard not to feel some sympathy for Christians, who are implicitly characterized as humorless if they object to the articles of their faith being ridiculed, or at least exploited, for commercial gains,” read the article.

“The tenets of Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism would not be so abused – quite possibly because the juveniles who design this sort of thing would not know enough about those religions to make fun of them. But the Christian religion is somehow seen as fair game.”

However, the Hell Pizza director Warren Powell reacted impatiently with the protest against his adverts.

“First of all, we’re acknowledging that Jesus Christ may have been on Earth for a limited time,” said Powell. “Again, it’s a debate. I think if people take it that way then they’re being a little bit single-minded.”

Hell Pizza has been in the news on a number of occasions due to their provocative and offensive advertising, the most well known being a commercial in 2008 that depicted Sir Edmund Hillary – a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist – actor Heath Ledger, and Queen Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon of England emerging from their graves to dance to Michael Jackson’s hit song “Thriller.”

This advert was pulled due to the number of complaints received, including from the Hillary family.

7,000 babies stillborn every day, says report

Approximately 7,000 stillbirths happen worldwide every day, with 98% of these occurring in middle and low-income countries, says a report published in The Lancet.

The report also emphasises that improved clinical care and pregnancy/birth monitoring could cut this number drastically, by as much as 50% by 2020.

"Care at birth will give us the biggest return and saves mothers, newborns and children," Dr Joy Lawn of Save the Children informed the BBC in an interview.

"Another really missed opportunity is treating syphilis during pregnancy and particularly in southern Africa, syphilis still kills babies and we estimate that around 136,000 stillbirths could be averted every year and that's at relatively low cost - it's about making your antenatal clinic services work.

"Other critical things would be treating hypertension in pregnancy, identifying diabetes in women who are pregnant and managing that better and then identifying babies that aren't growing well."

Countries such as Columbia, China, Mexico and Argentina have shown the way forward for the rest of the world, as their preventive measures have reduced stillbirth rates by 40% to 50% in recent years.

Secret Church Service Held to Confirm Kate Middleton

A secret church service was recently held to confirm Kate Middleton into the Church of England before her marriage to Prince William.

The ceremony was conducted by the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, who will give the sermon at the actual wedding ceremony at Westminster Abbey on April 29.

Middleton was baptised as a baby but never confirmed as a teenager. The confirmation service marks the point where baptised Christians make a firm commitment to their faith, and it was during her marriage preparation counselling that Middleton decided she would like to be confirmed. Sources close to her have said she made the decision due to a "personal journey" of faith.

A St James's Palace spokesman stated: "Catherine Middleton was confirmed by the Bishop of London at a private service at St James's Palace attended by her family and Prince William.

"Miss Middleton, who was already baptised, decided to be confirmed as part of her marriage preparations."

The service was attended by Kate Middleton’s family and Prince William.

It is understood that Bishop Chartres is a great favourite of all the Royal family and highly regarded for his advice and wisdom. The Bishop confirmed Prince William as a 14-year-old and also officiated at the funeral of William’s mother, Diana.

Scottish Churches Embark On King James Bible Reading Marathon

Two churches based in Fife, Scotland have set their sights on becoming the first in Scotland to read the entire King James Bible in a week.

Largo and Newburn Parish Church and Largo St David’s will embark on a King James Bible reading marathon as part of celebrations taking place this year to mark the 400th anniversary of the completion of the King James Bible.

The reading of all 66 books of the Authorised Version will start on a Wednesday at 7am and will involve around 80 hours of reading through the course of seven days.

The reading gets underway on Wednesday morning at 7am and the Minister of Largo and Newburn Parish Church, the Rev John Murdoch, estimated that it will take around 80 hours of reading to read the Bible cover to cover. 



“This is a massive project and I very much hope that those taking part with us will enjoy reading the Bible from beginning to end," said the Rev John Murdoch, the minister of the two churches.

The reading marathon will be undertaken by readers in groups of four to six who will read for an hour.



"Obviously we wish as many groups as possible to read for as long as possible," Murdoch said, adding that he was very pleased with the public’s response to the marathon.

“We have already had a number of people sign up from all over the country. There’s a good mix of people out with the Church of Scotland, including Scottish Episcopalians, Baptists and Roman Catholics."


The ‘Bible-thon’ will attempt to raise donations in support of the Scottish Bible Society and an appeal fund for street children in Brazil.

Experts Laugh Off Claims that Crucifixion Nails Have Been Found

The Emmy award-winning journalist and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici made the remarkable claim during a press conference in Jerusalem recently that he has found the original nails used to crucify Jesus.

Jacobovici said that the nails were discovered in 1990 during the excavation of a first century Jewish tomb that has links to Jesus.

However, experts and scholars are laughing off Jacobovici’s claims, saying they are nothing more than efforts to drum up publicity for his latest documentary, "The Nails of the Cross." The documentary details the search for the missing crucifixion nails.

The two corroded iron nails were found in what is believed to have been the tomb of the High Priest Caiaphas, who presided over the trial of Jesus. The nails have spent the last two decades in a laboratory in Tel Aviv where forensic anthropologist Israel Hershkowitz had been intensively studying them.

“These are probably, possibly, the nails from that Caiaphas tomb,” Jacobovici said, in a report filed by The Media Line. “So, if you accept that this is the tomb of Caiaphas and, if you accept that these nails came from that tomb, given that Caiaphas is only associated with the crucifixion of Jesus they very well could be those nails.”

Jacobovici’s claims are made all the more bolder because they are based only on empirical data, since it is impossible at this stage to extract DNA from iron.

“I think they have been looked at to see if there is bone residue and none has been found,” said the reporter. “I don’t think you can get blood and flesh.”

The documentary’s guest archaeologist, Gaby Barkay, made the point that iron nails are rarely found in tombs.

“There’s no proof that the nails are connected to any bones or proof from textual data that Caiaphas had the nails for the crucifixion with him after the crucifixion took place and after Jesus was taken down from the cross,” Barkay insisted. “On the other hand, those are possible things.”

Jacobovici believes that Caiaphas may well have kept the nails as a type of talisman offering protection while alive and in the afterlife because he either became a follower or Christ or witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion.

Yet the Israel Antiques Authority has said that the tomb has not yet been proven to belong to Caiaphas; and it could easily have belonged to another family with the same name.

IAA said in a statement, "There is no doubt that the talented director Simcha Jacobovici created an interesting film, at the center of which is a genuine archaeological artifact. However, the interpretation presented in it has no basis in the find or in archaeological research."

(Image depicts the journalist Simcha Jacobovici holding up one of the nails).

Atheist Publishes ‘Secular Bible’

British academic A.C. Grayling says that he has been long been pondering the following possibility: What if those ancient authors and editors who produced Bibles and other religious works over the centuries had instead focussed their efforts on compiling the greatest non-religious wisdom of their cultures?

This question resulted in a “lifetime’s work” for Grayling who recently published this exact kind of book - a book filled with the wisdom of Aristotle and other of civilisation’s great thinkers, reports CNN.com. Grayling has called his publication “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible,” subtitled “A Secular Bible” in the United Kingdom.

The Bible would surely have been “a very different book and may have produced a very different history for mankind,” had it relied upon the thoughts of philosophers and not prophets insists the atheist Grayling, a philosopher and professor at Birkbeck College, University of London.

“Humanist ethics didn’t claim to be derived from a deity," he says. "(They) tended to start from a sympathetic understanding of human nature and accept that there’s a responsibility that each individual has to work out the values they live by and especially to recognize that the best of our good lives revolve around having good relationships with people.”

Humanists and some atheists attempt to find meaning and purpose in life through human reason rather than religious experience.

As part of a concerted attempt to make his work accessible to ordinary folk, Grayling wrote his ‘secular’ Bible much like the original Bible, complete with double columns, chapters (the first is even called Genesis) and short verses.

Furthermore, "The Good Book," opens with a garden scene just as the original Bible does, but instead of featuring Adam and Eve, Grayling’s version includes Isaac Newton, the British scientist who pioneered the study of gravity.

"It was from the fall of fruit from such a tree that new inspiration came for inquiry into the nature of things," states a verse from "The Good Book's" opening chapter.

"When Newton sat in his garden, and saw what no one had seen before: that an apple draws the earth to itself, and the earth the apple," the verse continues, "Through a mutual force of nature that holds all things, from the planets to the stars, in unifying embrace."

The book's last chapter includes a secular humanist version of the Ten Commandments: "Love well, seek the good in all things, harm no others, think for yourself, take responsibility, respect nature, do your utmost, be informed, be kind, be courageous: at least, sincerely try."

Grayling has often been described as the “velvet atheist” or the “acceptable face of atheism,” since his style is so much more gentle than the fiercely anti-religious atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.

While Grayling admits he has written critically of religion in the past, he insists he is not trying to pick a fight with “The Good Book.”

“It’s not part of a quarrel,” Grayling said. “It’s a modest offering… another contribution to the conversation that mankind must have with itself.”

With that in mind, Grayling hopes that everyone will appreciate and read his book, and that includes Bible lovers.

Grayling’s main aim with “The Good Book” is that it will encourage people to “go beyond your teachers, your text” to understand that “we have to respect and relate to one another.”

“The Good Book” is already number 41 on Amazon’s UK bestseller list.