Let’s each raise a glass in honor of the late Peter J. Gomes, famed theologian and pastor of Harvard’s Memorial Church, who died last night at 68. Says the Boston Globe: “The Rev. Gomes also was the only gay, black, Republican, Baptist preacher most people would ever meet.” The full NYT obit is here.
Popular evangelical author Rob Bell is being labeled a heretic in the Twittersphere for his new book, ” Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.” People who know Bell say he’s anything but. Lent, meanwhile, is getting a 21st-century makeover.
A Baptist minister and theologian is traveling across the country to record stories of lynchings as she attempts to compile a “theology of resilience.”
House Speaker John Boehner dismissed the idea of a “truce” on social issues, saying they “are not to be ignored.” Not sure how to say this, so I’ll just let the Times-Picayune do it for me: “The Christian fundamentalist known for his bullhorn protests of the Southern Decadence [gay pride] festival in the French Quarter, was arrested on a charge of masturbating at a Metairie park Friday afternoon.”
Catholic leaders in Maryland — the mother see of the U.S. Catholic Church, after all — launched a last-ditch effort to stop lawmakers from legalizing same-sex marriage. A Christian university in the buckle of the Bible belt (which changed its policy after a lesbian soccer coach was forced to quit) has approved its first gay student group.
Al Mohler asks how gay marriage came to be accepted so quickly, and concludes that “to some extent or another, virtually all of us have embraced the ideas that make such a moral revolution thinkable.”
Up in New Jersey, an appeals court ordered a new trial for a man accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend and who claimed God told him to do it because she wouldn’t embrace his religious beliefs; the appeals court said the jury wasn’t fully briefed on the ins and outs of the man’s insanity defense. A Maryland court ruled that it was kosher for a Jewish plaintiff in a lawsuit to ask for a break in the trial so he could observe Shavuot.
From the Dept. of Things We Already Knew, B16 officially named Jose Gomez as archbishop of Los Angeles on Monday, one day after Cardinal Roger Mahony submitted his mandatory retirement on Sunday at age 75. For what it’s worth, the official Vatican announcement misspelled Mahony’s name. The union fight in Wisconsin has reopened a lingering left-right debate within the Catholic hierarchy.
A British Pentecostal couple in Britain have been told they can’t serve as foster parents because the country’s 2007 Equality Act prevents them from passing on their belief that homosexuality is immoral.
An Indian court has sentenced 11 people to death for a 2002 attack on a train that killed 59 Hindu pilgrims; the attack spawned intense fighting that left 2,500 people — mostly Muslims — dead. Shanghai’s famed Holy Trinity Cathedral — also known as the Red Church — is coming back to life.
Waves of Turks turned out today to mourn former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who in 1996 became the first Islamist elected until he was forced out by the military in 1998 for challenging Turkey’s secular status; current PM Tayyip Erdogan, however, is a protege.
