A city council has blocked its staff from looking at websites about atheism.
Lawyers at the National Secular Society said the move by Birmingham City Council was "discriminatory" and they would consider legal action.
The rules also ban sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity.
The city council declined to comment on the possible legal action, but said the new system helped make it easier for managers to monitor staff web access.
'Very strong case'
The authority's Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".
Under the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, it is unlawful to discriminate against workers because of their religion or belief, which includes atheism.
National Secular Society president Terry Sanderson said the city council's rules also discriminated against people who practise witchcraft, which is also classed as a legitimate belief.
He said the society would initially contact the council and ask for the policy to be changed, and otherwise pursue legal action.

    Church set up as a haven for smokers

    Dutch smokers are flocking to a religious movement known as “The Only and Universal Smokers Church of God” following a ban on tobacco smoking indoors.

    Michiel Eijsbouts, founder and “Smokelighter” of the church he founded in 2001, has insisted that the Dutch smoking ban in place does not apply to members of his church under national and European human rights legislation.

    “We think we have all the marks of a religion,” he said.

    “We will have to find out what the secular powers-that-be think. For us the constitution and European rules say we have the right to express our religion and we express our religion through smoking.”

    Church members receive a card, for a fee of £3, to prove their religious denomination as a “Holy Smoker” to the authorities.

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Courtesy: Religious News Blog

LONDON — Europeans are increasingly lashing out at the construction of mosques in their cities as terrorism fears and continued immigration feed anti-Muslim sentiment across the continent.
The latest dispute is in Switzerland, which is planning a nationwide referendum to ban minarets on mosques. This month, Italy's interior minister vowed to close a controversial mosque in Milan.

Some analysts call the mosque conflicts the manifestation of a growing fear that Muslims aren't assimilating, don't accept Western values and pose a threat to security. "It's a visible symbol of anti-Muslim feelings in Europe," says Danièle Joly, director of the Center for Research in Ethnic Relations at the University of Warwick in England. "It's part of an Islamophobia. Europeans feel threatened."

NANJING, CHINA -- The factory looks like it could be any plant in this export-driven nation. Hundreds of Chinese workers huddle over loud machines churning out large orders for customers at home and abroad.

But what they're making might surprise you: Bibles.

As Tibetan monks grab headlines protesting the lack of religious freedom under Chinese rule, a booming Bible industry is on its way to turning the world's biggest atheist nation into the world's largest producer of the Good Book.

Chairman Mao might have said, "Our God is none other than the masses of the Chinese people," but here at Nanjing Amity Printing Co., China's only state-sanctioned Bible printer, little time is wasted pondering the contradictions of a metaphysical mismatch.

"We are printers," said Li Chunnong, the general manager of the plant, which has about 500 employees. "As long as somebody legitimate sends us an order, we will print them."

PARIS: Forty years after the sexual revolution in France, the country is confronted with a question it thought it would never have to ask again: Can a husband annul a marriage because his new wife is not a virgin?

The discovery last week that a court in the northern city of Lille had annulled the union of two Muslims because the husband said his wife was not the virgin she had claimed to be has set off a highly charged and highly politicized debate in a country where religion is not supposed to interfere with public life.

It has also sharpened the focus on much broader questions that all of Europe is grappling with: How much should European countries adapt their moral and legal codes to their growing Muslim communities, and how much should those communities be expected to conform to Western norms?

A 38-year old American tourist diagnosed as suffering from ‘Jerusalem Syndrome‘ jumped off a 13-feet walkway on Friday night at the Poria Hospital in Tiberias. He broke several ribs, one of which punctured a lung, and also smashed a vertebra in his back. The man was placed in the intensive care unit.

The tourist was evacuated to the hospital along with his wife by the physician accompanying their tourist group. The couple told the medical staff they were devout Christians who had arrived in Israel 10 days earlier to tour various holy sites. Over the past few days the husband began feeling anxious and suffered from insomnia. He roamed the hills surrounding the guest house he was staying at, muttering about Jesus.

Dr. Taufik Abu Nasser, a senior psychiatrist at Poria, said the man underwent a series of tests in the emergency room, including a psychiatric examination and blood tests to determine whether he had used hallucinogenic drugs.

“Then at some point, after he’d calmed down, he suddenly got up and left the ward,” recalled Dr. Abu Nasser. “There’s a walkway connecting the emergency room to the other wards, and he just climbed the wall next to it and jumped from a height of over 13 feet to the ground level.”

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Courtesy Religion News Blog

    GENOA, Italy, May 18 (Reuters) - The pro-abortion mayor of this large northwestern port city suggested to Pope Benedict in a public address on Sunday that the Church could not impose its views on the personal choices of citizens in a lay state.
    Speaking during a visit by the pope to a children's hospital, Mayor Marta Vincenzi told him a democratic state had to "work for the common good so that citizens can orient their lifestyles without impositions or inappropriate limitations".
    Earlier in the week, the Pope had condemned Italy's abortion law, while Vincenzi, a leftist, had attended a pro-abortion rights demonstration in Genoa, one of Italy's biggest cities.
    The election of the new right-wing government led by Silvio Berlusconi has brought abortion, legalised in Italy 30 years ago, to the forefront again.

Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests.

The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. A lack of funds from the collection plate to support the Christian infrastructure, including church upkeep and ministers’ pay and pensions, will force church closures as ageing congregations die.

In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims will have increased from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.

STARY OSKOL, Russia — It was not long after a Methodist church put down roots here that the troubles began.
First came visits from agents of the F.S.B., a successor to the K.G.B., who evidently saw a threat in a few dozen searching souls who liked to huddle in cramped apartments to read the Bible and, perhaps, drink a little tea. Local officials then labeled the church a “sect.” Finally, last month, they shut it down.

There was a time after the fall of Communism when small Protestant congregations blossomed here in southwestern Russia, when a church was almost as easy to set up as a general store. Today, this industrial region has become emblematic of the suppression of religious freedom under President Vladimir V. Putin.

Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin’s surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. They have all but banned proselytizing by Protestants and discouraged Protestant worship through a variety of harassing measures, according to dozens of interviews with government officials and religious leaders across Russia.

For 50 years he was said to have borne the bleeding wounds of Jesus.
His followers said he could see into the future and be in two places at once.
Forty years since his death, Padre Pio, now officially Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, continues to move and inspire millions of followers worldwide.
On Thursday, to mark the anniversary of his death, his body will go on display in a glass coffin at his friary at San Giovanni Rotondo, in Puglia, southern Italy.
Already some 700,000 people have registered to visit the sanctuary. Millions more are expected through the year.
The church says entrance to the crypt is free and no decision has yet been taken on how long the coffin will remain on show.
Padre Pio's body was exhumed in March. The Capuchin friars said it was in "surprisingly good condition".
No special measures were taken to preserve the body when he was buried in 1968. It was injected with formalin, but only to preserve it better during the following days in which the devotees filed past the coffin