Monday’s Religion News Roundup

Early Friday evening, as most journalists were hurrying home for a nice weekend with their adoring families, President Obama announced 15 new members to the faith-based office’s advisory council. The timing of the announcment seems to be part of a pattern for the White House, which regularly buries news about the controversial office. I’ll let […]

Early Friday evening, as most journalists were hurrying home for a nice weekend with their adoring families, President Obama announced 15 new members to the faith-based office’s advisory council. The timing of the announcment seems to be part of a pattern for the White House, which regularly buries news about the controversial office. I’ll let you all speculate about the reasons.

The list is heavy on Protestants — with the head of the NAE and presiding bishops of the ELCA and TEC in tow, but light on Muslims and other minority religions. Sorry Buddhists, still no soup for you, although there are still 10 slots to fill, I believe.

In other news, the Pittsburgh Steelers lost last night, despite the prayers of the faithful, but John 3:16 won, getting its ad on air right before the fourth quarter. A Hail Mary, you might say, after Fox had reportedly refused to run the commercial. There was another ad that seemed at first to be about preserving Tibet’s Buddhist culture, but then it morphed into Timothy Hutton talking about Groupon. May all involved be reincarnated as pack animals.


Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman held talks Sunday with opposition groups, including the controversial Muslim Brotherhood, and agreed to set up a committee to study constitutional reforms, NPR reports. Iran’s supreme leader said that the political upheaval in the Arab world was part of an “Islamic awakening” in the Middle East, to which almost everyone, including the Muslim Brotherhood, said, Nah. The Catholic Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria urged Egyptian protesters to return to their homes and jobs.

In Indonesia, a thousand Muslims surrounded a house to prevent the Ahmadiya movement from holding worship services. Three members of the Ahmadiya were killed and four seriously injured, according to reports. A Florida man has been accused of stabbing another man in the neck after learning he was Muslim. About 1,500 protesters marched in the British city of Luton on Saturday to rally against “militant Islam.”

The Muslim scholar recently named as the senior imam at the Islamic center being built near Ground Zero has already resigned. Shaykh Abdallah Adhami had been under fire for saying homosexuality is the result of childhood trauma.

Pope Benedict XVI said the process of marriage annulment must be simple and speedy. More than 140 Catholic theologians from Austria, Germany and Switzerland called for the Church to end priestly celibacy, ordain women and allow lay people to help select bishops. The new Missal is sexist, archaic, elitist and obscure, said Ireland’s Association of Catholic Priests. An American liturgy expert doesn’t much like it either.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia is collecting donations to pay for the burial of fetal remains found in the clinic of a doctor who is accused of killing newborn babies during illegal abortions.

A new study says that Catholic flagellators are right. Pain does assuage guilt. A popular Jesuit has become the first Catholic priest to write for Rupert Murdoch’s new digital newspaper. Oh, pensive friend, o’er book and scroll…


A bill introduced in Utah would define marriage in state law as ordained by God and existing between one man and one woman.

Israeli police arrested four men for stealing religious items worth more than $1 million from a synagogue in Italy. A Pennsylvania man dialed 911 on Friday and asked police to send “two or three priests to do an exorcism on my girlfriend.

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