Republican leaders say they were just joking when suggesting that President Obama is part of the 20 percent of Americans who believe POTUS is a Muslim; WaPo’s Howard Kurtz wonders if any of this is the media’s fault. Two top Democratic strategists who specialize in religion blame “a widespread and constant misinformation campaign by Fox News and right wing bloggers and radio hosts.”
A new poll finds that Americans don’t necessarily think Islam encourages violence, but their views of Islam have worsened in the past five years. The ACLU and others have filed suit against the FBI over allegations of surveillance of Muslims.
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave another impassioned defenseof Park51, the Islamic center near Ground Zero, saying American cannot “compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.” New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan is worried about the tenor of the debate in Gotham. The NYT says the area near Park51 was once known as Little Syria. Up in the Bronx, the trial of four men accused of plotting to blow up synagogues in 2009 got underway yesterday.
An amred Christian militia (does anyone else get the irony here?) says it will stand guard outside a church in Gainesville, Fla., that plans to burn Qurans on 9/11. Other Gainesville faith leaders are planning a counter-demonstration. A Muslim member of the 101st Airborne is seeking conscientious objector status so he won’t be forced to fight other Muslims in Afghanistan.
Theclass on gay marriage at (Catholic) Seton Hall University that got the local archbishop all riled up is set to go on as scheduled, the professor says. The White House says it will appeal a judge’s ruling that put a halt to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research; the NIH says some current research will continue.
Looks like the Washington Times (owned by leaders of the Unification Church) is being sold to a company affiliated with the Unification Church. Right-wing bomb thrower Ann Coulter blasted the “fake Christians” who disinvited her from a conservative convention after she agreed to speak to gay conservatives.
Accusations of child abuse in a New Jersey Jewish enclave have the rabbis upsetafter the boy’s father went to police instead of the rabbis first. Eventhough a federal judge has ruled South Carolina‘s state-issued “I Believe” license plates unconstitutional, the state attorney general hasgreen-lighted similar plates that are sponsored by a private group. A federal appeals court has resurrected a defamation suitagainst ABC’s 20/20 program for selective editing that made a California prosperity gospel preacher sound richer than he really was.
Scottish songstress Susan Boyle will singfor Pope Benedict XVI in Glasgow next month (singing a decidedly Protestant (and Swedish) favorite, “How Great Thou Art.”) Meanwhile, craftsmen are busy making the ambo (pulpit) and chair for B16’s Mass.
Speaking of the Brits, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was toldby Anglican bishops in Africa that “homosexuality is incompatible” withthe Bible. And, in case anyone needed further proof of the ginormous cultural gap between Western and Global South Anglicans, Gallup says 55 percent of sub-Saharan Africans believe in witchcraft.
New DNA testson Adolf Hitler‘s surviving relatives indicate the Butcher of Berlin had Jewish and even African branches in his family tree. In France, there are serious signs of friction between President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Catholic Church over the mass deportation of about 200 Gypsies. Pakistan says it will clamp down on extremist groups trying to provide aid to the millions of people displaced by flood waters.
The Wall Street Journal posts an architectural critique of the iconic chapel at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (not entirely sure what the news peg is here).
