This weekend marked yet another protest on Westheimer by a nationwide anti-Scientology group. Once again, the group, who call themselves Anonymous, gathered outside the Houston branch of the Church of Scientology (which happens to be the oldest Scientology mission in the United States), located at Fondren and Westheimer, on the evening of July 12th to protest against what they perceive as a "dangerous cult" with a non-legitimate tax exempt status. Wearing their traditional Guy Fawkes......

Houston makes it into the national news with the expected frequency of the fourth-largest city in the United States. Too often it's for terrible things -- like a mother drowning her children or a spurned wife running down her husband in a hotel parking lot or a man shooting burglars at his neighbor's house -- but sometimes it's for downright silly things, too. In the category of "silly things" comes news from Grace Community Church,......

::HOME: The Aramco Brat's Story:: Tonight, River Oaks Theatre hosts the Houston screening of the feature length documentary, HOME: Aramco Brat's Story, a film depicting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as seen through the eyes of the Western expatriate children who grew up there between 1933 and present day. With all the attention given to the Middle East today, it is important that the Western public receives a complete picture in order that their......

The Axiom nightclub was only open for a short 5 years. But in that short time (from 1987 – 1992), many then-unknown rock bands performed at the venue, only to be headliners on large tours later. Of course, Nirvana is probably the most notable to make a stop at The Axiom in their early years, playing for a small crowd. Other bands that played at the club include Bad Religion, Dinosaur Jr., The Flaming Lips,......

Wine + Art at the Tasting Room Tonight, the Tasting Room River Oaks joins two of our favortie things: art and wine. Not a novel concept, but a welcomed one on a rainy week in H-town. The Tasting Room - River Oaks is proud to welcome winemaker Matt Steel from Green Point winery in Victoria, Australia and artist Robert Glick. The Tasting Room is very happy to be displaying a number of Robert’s works......

Good morning, Houston. It's August, and that means hurricane season is starting to get heavy. The country's got fins to the left and fins to the right, so to speak. As of last night, Tropical Storm Dean was crossing the open Atlantic with winds at 50 mph, while Tropical Depression #5 had put part of the Texas coast under a tropical storm watch. And over in the Pacific, Hawaii's dealing with Hurricane Flossie. Time......

As Spring teenager David Ritcheson's family heads to Mexico today to claim Ritcheson's body, a few details are emerging about when he jumped from a Carnival cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday morning. Witnesses said Rtcheson climbed up a tower near the bow of the Ecstasy about 6:15 a.m., and moments later, ship crew members showed up and began trying to negotiate with him. Friends joined in — "What the [expletive] are......

Jung Center Lecture Series: America and the Religion of No Religion In this lecture series, drawn from his new history of the Esalen Institute, Rice University professor Jeffrey J. Kripal (pictured) explores how the human potential movement reflects a vital, enduring, and often hidden vein of American religious experience. Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is the......

Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. I am confused about all the controversy surrounding the big chocolate Jesus. It seems to be a logical way to combine at least a couple of the disparate elements of the holiday that have always been particularly confusing to me (a giant egg-laying rabbit who bestows chocolate eggs to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus). So what's the deal? There are many questions regarding......

In one of the strangest stories to come along in a while, a Humble man is accused of having beaten a Russian traveler to death at a New Jersey Turnpike service plaza yesterday — apparently a random attack that police say might have been motivated by religion. The basics are these: Shortly before 12:45 a.m. Thursday, Michail J. Makarenko, a 75-year-old Russian who emigrated to the U.S. 25 years ago, pulled over with his interpreter......

Big news in Houston this weekend: the Blessed Virgin Mary, that holy trickster known for showing up in all sorts of unexpected places, chose to make an appearance on a pizza pan in a local elementary school kitchen. It happened on Ash Wednesday when Guadalupe Rodriguez, a cafeteria worker at Pugh Elementary, was washing the pizza pan in question and noticed a stubborn stain. "On the third rinse I started watching it, trying to discover......

In honor of the opening of the Imperial Rome exhibit on Friday, here's one of our favorite Rome-themed jokes: Cicero was at a party talking to some insufferable braggart who was going on about how if he were a general, he'd be Alexander, and if he were a philosopher, he'd be Aristotle, and so on. Snitty Cicero replied, "And if you were a sewer, you'd be the Cloaca Maxima." Ba-da-dum. If you got that joke,......

True Religion is ready to make fashion-conscious Houstonians (with well-lined pockets) truly happy. The clothing retailer will be opening a store in the Galleria this summer. The new store will carry True Religion's full line of merchandise for men and women, including T-shirts, pants, skirts, sweatshirts, and their trademark $200+ jeans. The original True Religion store was opened in 2002 in Los Angeles, CA, by husband-and-wife design team Jeffrey and Kym Lubell. They began a......

Houstonist has gotten all manner of Christmas cards this year: cards with cartoon characters, cards with poinsettias, cards with manger scenes and kittens and robots and sledding Victorians and lots of gold foil. But so far, we haven't received a card depicting Santa as a Nazi. But maybe we should just sit tight and see what happens: According to KTRK, someone's sending out such cards and pretending that they're coming from local universities. The cards......

A decade ago, the Houston band Caedmon’s Call was attracting thousands of young people to their weekly show Monday nights at Houston’s First Baptist Church. A few years later, the band would go on to become one of the most popular bands in Contemporary Christian music. Derek Webb was the songwriting force behind the band for their first few albums. Several years ago, he decided to leave the band to focus on writing songs the......

Incumbent candidate Rick Perry, in a last-ditch effort to boost his already immense popularity, decreed that morality is something that should be included in legislation. The Chronicle reported that Perry announced this not to the general public, but in a closed meeting at the Houston Grand Plaza hotel on Kirby across from Reliant Park. The majority of attendees were African American ministers. From the Chronicle:Gov. Rick Perry in a closed meeting Thursday told African-American......

A police union has put up billboards critical of HPD to let people know "Houston is not a safe city" And today, HPD Chief Harold Hurtt defended the department's revised chase policy before City Council In the gubernatorial race, religion a common theme among the candidates — though everyone seems to have different views Looks like there's a common thread among the gubernatorial candidates ... and it's God Now in the baby world: ultrasound images......

City Council voted today to expand the city's "civility ordinance" to more neighborhoods, including Montrose and the Sixth Ward Clara Harris, the woman accused of running over her husband in a hotel parking lot, has filed an appeal and hired a new lawyer Ralph Sampson, a former Houston Rocket, has agreed to plead guilty to mail fraud related to a vehicle purchase; he will spend two months in jail in Atlanta In a campaign stop......

Looks like it may be the end of the line for the Bible in the previously forgotten William Mosher memorial in front of the old Harris County Courthouse: A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Bible must be removed from the monument because a district judge made it a religious monument when he restored it 10 years ago. We talked about the Mosher monument in December; if you haven't seen it, it's a block......

Now that the constitutional amendment has failed to pass proposing the prohibition of the desecration of the United States flag, should we be watchful for an onslaught of flag maculation and incineration? We hadn't noticed much of it before, unless you consider the countless number shirts, handkerchiefs, or faded stickers of Old Glory that defy flag etiquette. The amendment, sponsored by Utah's Orrin Hatch (R), was rejected by one vote - the vote needed......

In Katy, a judge barred the school district from preventing religious-themed valentines in classroom parties today, ensuring Americans the hard-earned right to commemorate a pagan fertility festival with messages about God. "Kids are being told they can't mention God," said Kelly Shackelford, chief legal counsel for the Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute, a legal organization specializing in religious freedom and First Amendment cases that is representing the families in the lawsuit. Shackelford said that the lawsuit......

If you've watched cable TV in Houston lately, you've probably seen the commercials for the "theology of the iPod" sermons at Metropolitan Baptist Church. The series, which started last week, already attracted the attention of the AP, which carried an article today — and we're still trying to figure it all out. "The reason the outside of the iPod is so simple to use and so beautiful to look at is because of the way......

Today's Chronicle notes the return of Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk to the Rothko Chapel's reflecting pool. The metal sculpture has been undergoing an 18-month restoration because it corroded faster than expected, but the interesting part of the story is how the piece got where it is. In the late 1960s, the federal government offered grants to Houston, Philadelphia, Grand Rapids and Seattle for monumental public works of contemporary art. In 1969, John and Dominique de......

You never know what you're going to hear when a U.S. appeals court tackles the case of a once-obscure monument once located in Courthouse Square: "If everyone in Harris County ... accepted Christ as their savior, we would be better than if they were all Hindus." That gem came from previous testimony of former Star of Hope President Carloss Morris, who supports retaining the monument to local businessman and Star of Hope supporter William S.......