Thursday’s Religion News Roundup

If your pastor is pushing cheese pizza for those meatless Friday Lenten gatherings, be careful. From Cathy Grossman over at USAT: “All those pizzas luring young adults to church activities may have unintended consequences. Folks who stay faithful to church life get fat.” It’s kosher, though, if you want to indulge in a cheeseburger tomorrow […]

If your pastor is pushing cheese pizza for those meatless Friday Lenten gatherings, be careful. From Cathy Grossman over at USAT: “All those pizzas luring young adults to church activities may have unintended consequences. Folks who stay faithful to church life get fat.” It’s kosher, though, if you want to indulge in a cheeseburger tomorrow (it won’t keep you from getting fat, however).

The AP catches up on the whole Rob Bell drama, and finds a United Methodist pastor in North Carolina who lost his job after basically saying he agrees with Bell’s controversial notions about hell. Brian McLaren, who’s had his own “baptism in hot water (or worse) that Rob Bell was about to experience,” comes to Bells’ defense.

The 9th Circuit told California same-sex couples that the ban on marriages will have to stay in place, at least while the challenge to Prop 8 works its way through the federal appeals court. The AP surveys the batch of get-tough anti-abortion bills making their way through state legislatures.


More than two-thirds of Americans would be “OK” with a mosque in their neighborhood, according to a new poll sponsored by CNN (we had similar numbers back in August); Muslims in suburban Chicago finally won their long fight to build a mosque (minus the minaret and golden dome).

Somebody alert Terry Jones: In a case that’s near certain to inflame passions around the U.S., a Florida judge says Islamic law can be used to settle a legal dispute over management of a mosque near Tampa.

Prayer can help sooth an angry temper, a new study finds. Those nice folks out at Westboro Baptist Church are going to picket Elizabeth Taylor‘s funeral. Of course they are.

Religion Dispatches tries to make sense of churches offering yoga classes. Tony Campolo doesn’t think people should be throwing stones at the glass house that is the Crystal Cathedral. PETA wants a little more respect for our four-legged and feathered friends in the popular NIV Bible.

If you scored an invite to next month’s royal wedding at Westminster Abbey, please, no Twitter or Facebook updates during the service.

Germany has extended its statute of limitations on clergy abuse cases to 30 years after a victims’ 21st birthday. Fresh off his visit to light a candle at Oscar Romero‘s tomb, U.S. Catholic bishops want POTUS to start paying more attention to Latin American and pass immigration reform already.


The NYT probes the plight of minority Shiite Muslims in Sunni-majority Malaysia. Also in Kuala Lumpur, the government has backed off a move to seize Bibles that used the word “Allah” for God.

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