A report issued Wednesday says the U.S. needs to pay greater attention to religion in foreign affairs.
WaPo’s David Waters boils it down: American foreign policy is handicapped by a narrow, ill-informed and uncompromising Western secularism that feeds religious extremism, threatens traditional cultures and fails to encourage religious groups that promote peace and human rights, according to a two-year study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Speaking of, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has new leadership, while the ambassador-at-large position for international religious freedom remains vacant.
The nation’s top Catholic bishop went to BYU to cement the growing bond between Catholics and Mormons over conservative social issues: “BYU freshman Katie Bates said she felt `kind of like the Catholic Church was hugging the Mormon Church.'”
The lesbian-turned-evangelical mother who’s on the run in a nasty custody dispute now has a warrant for her arrest after she failed to make another court hearing in Vermont. In Saudi Arabia, women will now be required to show their faces in court to prove their identities; apparently there’s a problem of identity theft with women posing as false heirs in inheritance cases.
A federal judge in South Carolina, meanwhile, has told a predominantly black church that, no, it doesn’t have the right to blare its services over loudspeakers just because it’s a church.
Oregon lawmakers have agreed to end an 87-year ban on public school teachers wearing religious garb (it was originally intended to keep Catholic nuns out of the classroom). Nebraska and Pennsylvania remain the only states with such laws still on the books.
Church of England leaders tell the Times of London that they will lift their opposition to civil partnerships (not marriages) being sanctioned inside religious buildings. And the Dalai Lama now has an official Twitter account.
