Deadly Muslim-Christian riots that left 12 dead have intensified anxiety in Egypt over Islamists who have grown more assertive since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, the AP reports.
A Hasidic newspaper in Brooklyn apologized for airbrushing Secretary of State Clinton from a White House photo that depicted the Situation Room during last week’s raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound. Jezebel had a little fun with the photo at top left.
A Navy plan to allow chaplains to celebrate same-sex marriages in military chapels has some members of Congress promising mutiny. Forty-seven percent of Virginians say gay couples should be allowed to legally wed, according to a new WaPo poll, a striking change in a state that overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage just five years ago. A brouhaha on the left has erupted after Sojourners, the lefty evangelical mag, refused to allow a pro-gay ad on its website and e-mail list.
Add Mitt Romney to the growing list of probable 2012 GOP presidential candidates speaking at a Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom conference in Washington next month. In a classic tale of Washington reinvention, Newt Gingrich is counting on his third wife – an ardent Catholic – for his political redemption as a family man who has found God, the NYT reports. Newt, who announced his candidacy yesterday, will also be at the F&F conference.
A Jesuit will be sworn in as the 60th chaplain of the House of Representatives on May 25, when he will become the first member of his order and second consecutive Catholic priest to serve the House.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad is feuding with the country’s top Muslim clerics, who accuse one of his top allies of being a sorcerer. India’s Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that called for the country’s most disputed religious site to be divided between Muslims and Hindus.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is urging the State Department to raise religious freedom issues during a conference with China. Franklin Graham flew into North Korea on Tuesday and met with its foreign minister, AFP reports. The Old Grey Lady discovered that Southern Baptists, who seem to have an inordinate number of members named Wiley, go on mission trips.
The Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic order in Ireland, says its future is uncertain because of costly settlements in child abuse cases. A Presbyterian church in Virginia acknowledged failures in handling reports of sexual abuse by a youth ministries director, over the objections of its insurer.
A Georgia judge reversed his decision to bar a Muslim from entering the courtroom because the man wore a kufi, the AJC reports.
A California college has become the first in the nation to offer a major in secularism, the NYT reports. The Texas teacher who mocked a Muslim student in wake of OBL’s killing won’t be returning to the classroom, though school officials refuse to say whether teacher was fired.
An Illinois bishop has decreed that a prayer to defeat Satan be recited after every Mass in his diocese. The Archbishop of Canterbury answered a little girl’s letter asking how God got invented. Evangelical leaders gathered recently to pray for the redemption of Hollywood. I’d settle for a decent movie now and then.
Yr hmbl aggregator,
Daniel Burke
