During a live-streamed event last week, a controversial Tennessee pastor burned tens of fantasy books, including Harry Potter and Twilight, in an alleged attempt to fight “demonic influences”.

Pastor Greg Locke of the Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet, near Nashville, began his sermon last Wednesday by telling his congregation that he had received a missive from God to skip Holy Communion and instead organize a good ol’ fashioned book burning. The event, which was live-streamed on Facebook, was organized to denounce “witchcraft,” and involved dozens of copies of books like Harry Potter and Twilight, as well as other “dangerous” objects that Locke claimed symbolized witchcraft.

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MtoP is a parody religion created solely to give followers the chance to refuse things like working overtime simply by invoking “religious reasons”.

Short for “Motohiro to People”, the MtoP religion was created in 2018 by a young man named Motohiro Hisano, who acts as a deity/sage. He does point out that he doesn’t perform miracles and has no superpowers other than that of bestowing the power of “religious reasons” onto his followers. In fact, that is the only purpose of MtoP, as its founder does not wish to be worshipped, nor does he accept any sort of financial contributions. Although the parody religion does have its own doctrine, believers don’t have to abide by strict commandments. All they have to do in order to be considered followers of MtoP is to follow the religion’s official Twitter account.

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James Sakara, the pastor of a Zambian Christian church, was found dead after asking to be buried alive in the ground so he could come back to life in three days’ time, like Jesus…

To say that 22-year-old James Sakara was overconfident in his ability to emulate the resurrection of Jesus Christ would be an understatement. Be that as it may, the pastor of the Zion Church in the Zambian town of Chidiza managed to convince his congregation that he could in fact come back to life after three days, just like the Son of God. He somehow got three members of his Church to assist him by digging a shallow grave, tying up his hands, and burying him alive, only instead of coming back to life after three days, Sakara was found dead by members of the Zion Church curious to see why their leader hadn’t fulfilled his promise.

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An Ohio woman reportedly crashed her car into two other vehicles and a house after taking her hands of the wheel and letting God take control at a speed of 120 mph (190km/h), as a way to test her faith.

Authorities claim that the unnamed 31-year-old was driving a car with her daughter, aged 11, down the streets of Beachwood, Ohio, at around midnight on June 15. Security footage shows her car running a red light and eventually spin out of control, hit a utility pole and two other vehicles before stopping into a house. Luckily, neither the driver nor her child were seriously hurt, and the house they crashed into, which was empty at the time, suffered only minor damage. Upon questioning the driver about the accident, police officers were shocked to hear that she had been going through trials and tribulations lately, and simply decided to “let go and let God take the wheel”.

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Miracle believers all over Mexico have been flocking to the city of Monterrey, where a chalk drawing of the Virgin Mary inexplicably reappeared 13 years after it was drawn.

An outdoor parking lot in Monterrey recently became a pilgrimage spot for Christians, after a detailed drawing of the Virgin Mary appeared on the asphalt. Its origin was unknown at first, but after photos of the mysterious artwork started circulating online, local authorities revealed that it had been drawn during a celebration  called “Bella Vía”. The weird thing is that this particular chalk drawing dates back to the 2007 festival, and no one knows how the artwork lasted for so long, or how it had gone unnoticed for 13 years.

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An artificial intelligence engineer has created an intriguing algorithm that learned human language from reading “the bible and nothing else” and is now churning out ominous prophecies based on the Holy Book.

George Davila Durendal, a childhood coding prodigy and current AI engineer and entrepreneur, recently unveiled his wackies creation yet, an A.I. algorithm trained solely on the King James Bible and dubbed “AI Jesus”. Described by Durendal himself as an “A.I. clone of Jesus”, the software is a Boltzmannian natural-language processing model that “tries to replicate the style of the King James Bible without quite copying it”. Designed to write about 3 different topics – ‘The Plague’, ‘Caesar’ and ‘The End of Days’ – using the language of the Bible, AI Jesus has so far come up with some pretty scary, if somewhat nonsensical, prophecies…

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India is one of the most affected countries by the Covid-19 pandemic, and people are turning to spiritual and divine powers in an attempt to protect themselves from the new coronavirus.

Last month, Indian media reported on a group of women from a village in West Bengal who had decided to fight the coronavirus in their own way – by worshiping Corona Mai, or ‘Corona Goddess’. They set up a small shrine on the banks of Chinnamasta pond, near Asansol city, and started singing songs and mantras, burning incense and bringing offerings like fruits, vegetables, ghee, and jaggery. The women said that they planned to worship and pray to the goddess until she takes away the coronavirus. That may take a while…

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Photos of what many religious people are describing as a detailed representation of Jesus Christ discovered inside the branch of a recently-pruned willow tree have gone viral in Brazil.

Last Thursday, while pruning a willow tree in Itaquiraí, Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul, municipal maintenance workers noticed a strange pattern on the inside of a branch they had just cut with a chainsaw. After examining the pattern, some of them were convinced that it was a natural representation of Jesus Christ. Odimar Souza, a civil servant who was overseeing the pruning operation on Monte Castelo Avenue, in the Monte Castelo neighborhood, was intrigued by the discovery and took a piece of the branch home with him.

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Father Sergei Romanov, a controversial, ultra-conservative Russian priest, has taken control of the Sredneuralsk convent outside the city of Yekaterinburg and challenged authorities to force him out.

Romanov,  a former policeman who reportedly spent 13 years in a prison colony for murder before repenting and dedicating his life to religion, has been very vocal about the social distancing measures taken in Russia in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, accusing church leaders of “working with the forerunners of the Antichrist” by closing churches. Because of his controversial rhetoric, the Russian Orthodox church suspended Romanov and prevented him from preaching, and in May he was forbidden to wear a cross, after he continued to encourage people to disobey public health orders. Last Tuesday, he entered the Sredneuralsk convent, which he helped found in the early 2000’s, and seized control with the help of several armed militiamen.

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Pastor Charles Osazuwa, the general overseer of Rock of Ages Assembly Inc. in Nigeria, called upon his followers to build or buy their own homes, as having a landlord is tantamount to having another Lord but Christ.

During a controversial sermon that has been doing the rounds on social media over the last week, the Nigerian pastor told his congregation that being a tenant is technically a sin. He said that the first advice he always gives someone who has a job is to buy their own house, so they can liberate themselves from their landlord. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate or luxurious place, especially if it’s their first house, but as Christians they should not have two Lords…

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Last weekend, as most parts of the world enforced extreme social distancing measures to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, a crowd of thousands gathered in the Dominican city of Puerto Plata to listen to a popular “pilgrim” prophesize that God will rid the country and the whole world of this pandemic.

In flagrant breach of the social distancing measures imposed by the Dominican Government, a crowd of thousands of people accompanied pilgrim Mildomio Adames to a local square where the self-proclaimed holy man revealed that he had had a divine revelation. Adames told the excited crowd that he had to dump a large wooden crucifix into the sea to make God end the Covid-19 pandemic.

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A 24-year-old Indian man was recently hospitalized after he allegedly cut off his tongue as an offering to the Hindu goddess Kali Mata, to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

From putting quarantine offenders in haunted houses to people locking spouses in the bathroom, we’ve seen people do some pretty extreme things to stop the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Vivek Sharma, a young stone sculptor working in Suigam, India’s Gujarat state, takes the cake. Frustrated about not being able to return to his home town in Madhya Pradesh, because of nationwide lockdowns, Sharma reportedly chopped off his own tongue at a temple, as an offering to Hindu goddess Kali Mata, to stop the spread of the virus. So far his sacrifice has proven to be in vain…

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If you thought America was the only country where a bogus religion like Scientology could thrive, you were wrong. Japan has its own version, it’s called Happy Science, and it apparently offers spiritual Covid-19 cures, for a fee, of course.

Happy Science is the creation of a Wall Street trader turned spiritual leader named Ryuho Okawa, who during the 1990s came to believe that he was in contact with religious figures like Buddha and Jesus. They apparently told Okawa that like them and others throughout human history, he was the reincarnation of a creator god from Venus named El Cantare and had been chosen to save the world from ruin. He wrote a couple of popular books on metaphysical subjects, entitled  “The Terrifying Revelations of Nostradamus” and “The Great Warnings of Allah,” and before he knew it, the former trader had a sizeable following.

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Héctor Aníbal Gimenez, better known as “Pastor Gimenez” in Argentina, was recently accused of trying to profit off of the global coronavirus pandemic by trying to sell “Blessed antibacterial gel” to his followers.

The Argentine evangelical pastor was denounced last Wednesday before prosecutor Matías Michienzi by a lawyer who said that the antibacterial gel was being offered at the Temple of Waves of Love and Peace, located in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Almagro. The complaint mentioned that the bottles of of gel were also sold on the church’s Facebook page where they were being promoted as blessed by Pastor Gimenez to provide protection against the novel coronavirus.

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As medical professional are apparently taking too long to find a cure to the highly contagious Covid-19 virus, a Nigerian pastor has decided to take matter into his own hands – during a recent sermon he has vowed to travel to China to “prophetically destroy” the virus at the root of the epidemic.

Pastor David Elijah of the Glorious Mount of Possibility Church in Lagos recently got a lot of attention on African social media, after a short clip of him preaching to his congregation and promising to travel to China and destroy the new type of coronavirus went viral. In the video, Elijah can be heard saying that he is going to Wuhan “to deal with the coronavirus” that has killed so many people and affected the business and travel plans of millions around the world.

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