Wednesday’s roundup

An 83-year-old nun in Harlem died when a minivan involved in a police chase crashed into a crowd of pedestrians. Nikki Haley, a Sikh-turned-Christian GOP state senator in South Carolina, won her run-off race last night and is poised to become the state’s next governor, despite 11th-hour charges that she’s not really a Christian. In […]

An 83-year-old nun in Harlem died when a minivan involved in a police chase crashed into a crowd of pedestrians.

Nikki Haley, a Sikh-turned-Christian GOP state senator in South Carolina, won her run-off race last night and is poised to become the state’s next governor, despite 11th-hour charges that she’s not really a Christian. In Connecticut, New Haven high school diplomas will no longer contain the words “in the year of our Lord.”

An Indiana judge cleared the way for a state investigation of a homeschooling group on charges of discrimination after group leaders declined to serve a steak dinner to a girl who was allergic to chicken. Or something like that. Next door, in Illinois, State Police officials yanked the accreditation for a Muslim chaplain who was found to have possible ties to terrorist financing.


Gay groups in Minneapolis are in a tangle with an outspoken Christian evangelist who wants to hand out pamphlets at this weekend’s gay-pride festival, and a gay magazine outed an outspoken (anti-gay) closeted gay Lutheran pastor in a journalistic undercover sting. Meanwhile, conservatives (big surprise) didn’t like President Obama‘s nod to gay dads in his fatherhood initiative chat the other day.

A Nebraska judge sided with a state law that keeps Fred Phelps and his Thank-God-for-Dead-Soldiers signs 300 feet from a military funeral. A former Pittsburgh court officer is setting up the first Salvation Army outpost in the United Arab Emirates. Politics Daily says Apple wiz Steve Jobs is the newest hero for the Christian right in his efforts to ban porn from the iPad and other devices (he’s apparently never seen Avenue Q).

The on-again, off-again saga of a German bishop who resigned, and then wanted his job back, after admitting to slapping children might be over; Bishop Walter Mixa now says he was right to resign. In neighboring Austria, the sexual abuse scandal is fueling activism by the church’s outspoken liberal reformist wing. Art historians think Michelangelo included a human brain on the neck of God in the Sistine Chapel, and archaeologists found the oldest known images of Sts. John and Andrew in the catacombs in Rome.

An Indonesian pop star is being held on charges of violating new anti-pornography laws in the world’s most populous Muslim nation after videos circulated of him having sex with his girlfriend and a TV personality. Indians in the western Gujarat state are praying for summer rains to help cut the heat.

Healing evangelist Charles Hunter, the sole surviving member of the “Happy Hunters,” has died at age 89, and Nico Smith, a white South African pastor who challenged apartheid, died at 81.

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