Happy Election/All Souls Day, citizens and Christians. Ponder this strange conjunction, if you like, as you make the ballot-box pilgrimage to celebrate our most sacred civil sacrament.
On the eve of today’s elections, President Obama met with a group of prominent Christian leaders from the National Council of Churches and Church World Services, who thanked him for health care reform but said too many people are still struggling to find jobs and put food on the table.
Former President Jimmy Carter criticized Republicans’ and Southern Baptists’ “excessive melding of religion and politics.” A white man convicted of burning a black church in Massachussetts hours after Obama was elected in 2008 was sentenced to nine years in prison. A UN court sentenced a Rwandan businessman to 30 years for ordering bulldozers to demolish a church where 2,000 Tutsis had sought shelter.
The gunmen who killed 58 in a Catholic church in Iraq on Sunday ordered the priest to call the Vatican and demand the release of Muslim women they claimed were being held captive by the Coptic Church in Egypt, according to the AP. Egyptian officials beefed up security around a Coptic festival on Tuesday in response.
A former Gitmo prisoner provided the tip that allowed investigators to disable the package-bomb airplane plot last week, according to NPR. Oxford University Press named Yemen its 2010 Place of the Year.
The Internet contributed to the quick radicalization of a Northern Virginia Muslim convert facing 30 years in prison on terrorism charges, WaPo reports. Pope Benedict XVI cautioned young Catholics about love on the InterWebs.
Relations between Israel’s Jewish majority and Arab minority have hit a new low (lower than 1967?), says the AP. Secretary of State Clinton promoted moderate Islam in Malaysia.
Bishop Eddie Long filed court papers on Monday categorically denying luring young men into sexual relationships. Another Georgia megachurch pastor admitted that he’s gay. A British advertising watchdog has pulled an ad showing two male priests about to kiss. A Ugandan court ordered a local magazine called, creatively, Rolling Stone, to stop publishing the names of gay people. Talk about Gonzo journalism.
A federal court in New York approved a settlement that will cost a school district $22,500 for suspending a student who wore rosary beads. A California man arrested for beating up a priest who he says molested him and his brother in 1975 has sued the Vatican. The man accused of abducting Elizabeth Smart was booted from his court room for singing hymns. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball tolerated the singing for about a half-hour.
