Dead Celebrity Alert

DALLAS — The creator of the popular religious children’s television show “Davey and Goliath” has died.

A memorial service will be held May 31 at St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas for Richard Towne “Dick” Sutcliffe. He died May 11 in Dallas from complications of a stroke. He was 90.

Sutcliffe created “Davey and Goliath,” a Christian-themed children’s show about a boy and his talking dog that used stop-action animation.

Along with Gumby creators Art Clokey and Ruth Clokey Goodell, Sutcliffe created the Sunday-morning series to spread a religious message without losing younger viewers with overly complicated concepts… Read full obituary

Hindu guru and social activist who worked ceaselessly for the health of Indian villages and the empowerment of women

None of the hundreds of thousands of people who benefited from Pushpa Anand’s charitable work knew her name. Nor, indeed, did many of her disciples. She was known simply as Ma, whose dedication to the poor, especially women, inspired followers from around the world. (She dropped her own name after achieving a state of spiritual flow she called urvashi.)

From the age of 34 she dedicated herself to several years of intense religious study and spiritual practice, and thereafter became known as Param Pujya (Her Holiness). But she always preferred Ma.

Her work stretched from the rural squalor of the northern state of Himachal Pradesh to poor villages in Haryana and the slums of Delhi. She was the spiritual leader of about 80 people of various faiths and nationalities, all of whom live a disciplined life in service to others. Although steeped in Hindu and Jain philosophy, she encouraged her followers to pursue any path they wished in search of God. …

Pushpa Anand, Indian guru and social worker, was born on August 26, 1924. She died on April 16, 2008, aged 83 … Read full obituary

The president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo died on Sunday at the age of 72.

The Colombian cardinal died at a hospital in Rome where he was admitted in March. The funeral Mass will be conducted in the Vatican Basilica on Wednesday… Pope Benedict will preside over the funeral liturgy, pronounce the homily, and administer the burial rites.

Cardinal Trujillo was among the most outspoken Vatican critics of the “culture of death.” He had repeatedly denounced abortion and same-sex marriage, condemned the exploitation of human embryos and the trend toward acceptance of euthanasia, and argued strenuously against the promotion of condom use as a means of curbing the spread of AIDS, Catholic World News reported. … Read full obituary

Anglican minister who pursued his vocation in tandem with a political career in three parties

Lord Beaumont of Whitley became the Green Party’s only member of either House of Parliament in 1999 after spending most of his life and a good deal of his fortune helping the Liberal and then Liberal Democrat Party. In his long career he had alternated between the church and politics. …

Lord Beaumont of Whitley, priest and politician, was born on November 22, 1928. He died on April 8, 2008, aged 79 … Read full obituary

Ruth Stafford Peale, who with her late husband, Norman Vincent Peale, co-founded the global inspirational organization Guideposts, died Wednesday. She was 101.

She died at her home in Pawling, N.Y., about 70 miles north of New York City, Guideposts spokeswoman Kelly Mangold said.

Norman Vincent Peale, one of the 20th century’s foremost preachers and motivational speakers, authored “The Power of Positive Thinking”… Peale, the longtime pastor of Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church, part of the Reformed Church in America, died in 1993.

The couple founded the Guideposts organization in 1945, along with the magazine by that name, which is still a leading publication with an annual readership of about 8 million. … Read full obituary

Not just guru to the Beatles, but to many, many high-profile celebs…

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to Transcendental Meditation, has died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, a spokesman said Tuesday.

He was thought to be 91 years old. …

Once dismissed as hippie mysticism, the Hindu practice of mind control that the Maharishi taught, called transcendental meditation, gradually gained medical respectability. …

[T]he movement really took off after the Beatles visited his ashram in India in 1968, although he had a famous falling out with the rock stars when he discovered them using drugs at his Himalayan retreat. … Read full obituary

ATHENS, Greece: Hundreds of mourners, many sobbing, gathered Monday at Athens’ cathedral to file past the remains of Archbishop Christodoulos, the first leader of Greece’s powerful Orthodox Church to welcome a Catholic pope to Athens in 1,300 years.

The charismatic cleric was often named Greece’s most popular public figure but was also criticized as an ambitious reactionary. He died at his home in Athens on Monday at age 69 of cancer, leaving the race for his succession wide open. …

Greece’s Orthodox Church holds considerable sway among the world’s Orthodox churches. Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I is the spiritual leader of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians. … Read full obituary

According to Utah newspaper Deseret News, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley passed away this evening around 7pm. The initial reports say President Hinckley died of causes incident to age. He was 97 years old. …

President Gordon B. Hinckley, world leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was ordained and set apart as the 15th President of the Church on Sunday, March 12, 1995. …

As a member of the First Presidency, he has had a major role in administering both the ecclesiastical and temporal affairs of the Church, whose more than 10 million members are spread over some 160 nations and territories. … Read full obituary

From September 22:

ATLANTIS, Florida (AP) — The Rev. Rex Humbard, a former itinerant preacher whose televangelism ministry once reached more parts of the globe than any other religious program, died Friday, a family spokeswoman said. He was 88.

Humbard died of natural causes at a South Florida hospital near his Lantana home, family spokeswoman Kathy Scott said. …

As with his contemporaries Billy Graham and Oral Roberts, Humbard’s ministry began to flourish in the post-World War II era. …

By 1970, Humbard’s syndicated program appeared on more TV stations in America than any other program and eventually reached more than 600 stations, according to the 1999 reference work “Religious Leaders of America.” …

His ministry suffered from internal disputes and extensive borrowing. In the 1970s, federal and state regulators complained that millions of dollars in notes that he had issued to followers over the years violated securities laws.

Humbard eventually left in 1982 and the congregation dwindled, sometimes with as few as 75 people showing up. … Read full obituary

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Rev. D. James Kennedy, a pioneering megachurch pastor who became one of the nation’s most prominent Christian broadcasters and a key figure in the rise of the religious right, died Wednesday, a church spokesman said. He was 76.

Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church spokesman John Aman said Kennedy died at about 2:15 a.m. at his home in Fort Lauderdale. He had suffered a heart attack in December and announced his retirement last month.

Kennedy took the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale from a congregation of 45 in 1959 to a megachurch of nearly 10,000 members today.

He also founded the Center for Christian Statesmanship in Washington, organizing Capitol Hill Bible studies and other events that attracted top government officials and encouraged them “to embrace God’s providential purpose for this nation.” …

Kennedy was also a close colleague of the Rev. Pat Robertson, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and other religious broadcasters and was an early board member of the Moral Majority, which Falwell formed in 1979. But Kennedy wasn’t nearly as well-known as other conservative Christian activists, preferring a behind-the-scenes role that helped maintain his independence, said John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum for Religion & Public Life. … Read full obituary

Related:
Jerry Falwell dead
Jerry Falwell: Full obit

(CNN) — Tammy Faye Messner, the former televangelist and Christian singer who battled drug addiction and later inoperable cancer, died Friday morning, CNN’s Larry King said Saturday night. He said the family had asked him to make the delayed announcement.

She was 65.

Messner was a guest on “Larry King Live” on Thursday. She told him she couldn’t swallow food, and weighed only 65 pounds.

King said the family postponed the death announcement for a day so family members could gather. Messner was cremated and interred in a remote part of Kansas at the Kansas-Oklahoma state line, King said. …

“She died peacefully. Anyone who saw her on our show this week knew that she didn’t have long.”

King asked her Thursday if she were “a little scared.”

She responded, “A little bit,” adding that she mainly worried about her family. … Read full obituary

Ruth Graham, who surrendered dreams of missionary work in Tibet to marry a suitor who became the world’s most renowned evangelist, died Thursday. She was 87. Graham died at 5:05 p.m. at her home at Little Piney Cove, surrounded by her husband and all five of their children, said a statement released by Larry Ross, Billy Graham’s spokesman.

“Ruth was my life partner, and we were called by God as a team,” Billy Graham said in a statement. “No one else could have borne the load that she carried. She was a vital and integral part of our ministry, and my work through the years would have been impossible without her encouragement and support. …

Ruth Graham had been bedridden for months with degenerative osteoarthritis of the back and neck — the result of a serious fall from a tree in 1974 while fixing a swing for grandchildren -—and underwent treatment for pneumonia two weeks ago. At her request, and in consultation with her family, she had stopped receiving nutrients through a feeding tube for the last few days, Ross said. … Read full obituary

William Silver, who unsuccessfully sought to be ordained by the Presbyterian Church in 1975, died at 59 of AIDS complications on May 26, the New York Times reported. He graduated from the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan in 1969 and came out in 1973. When he applied to work as an assistant pastor at the Central Presbyterian Church on Park Avenue, “he shocked committee members interviewing him by saying he was gay,” the newspaper reported. They sought guidance from the national Church and in 1978 its general assembly banned “unrepentant” gays from ministry. … Read full obituary

LYNCHBURG, Va. (AP) — The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university’s executive vice president, said Falwell was found unresponsive late Tuesday morning and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later. …

Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell’s physician, said the evangelist had a heart rhythm abnormality. He said Falwell was found without a pulse and never regained consciousness. …

Falwell had survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then was hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest. Later that year, doctors found a 70 percent blockage in an artery, which they opened with stents. …

Falwell credited his Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered, electing Ronald Reagan and giving Republicans Senate control in 1980.

“I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved,” Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987. … Read full obituary

Obit to come.