Wednesday’s Religion News Roundup

After all the fights, all the ink that’s been spilled, all the churches that have been torn in two, the fight over homosexuality in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is more or less over after the church ratified a move to rescind a de facto ban on gay clergy. Our own Dan Burke will have more […]

After all the fights, all the ink that’s been spilled, all the churches that have been torn in two, the fight over homosexuality in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is more or less over after the church ratified a move to rescind a de facto ban on gay clergy. Our own Dan Burke will have more on this later today. A Presby pastor who was tried and acquitted for marrying two lesbians calls it the “moral awakening of mainstream Christianity.”

Navy officials have “suspended until further notice” a plan to allow chaplains to conduct same-sex weddings on Navy bases in states where gay marriage is legal.

A Pennsylvania pastor has confessed that he never was an elite Navy SEAL in Vietnam, as he led many in his congregation to believe. CNN’s Anderson Cooper has more here.


The always-colorful Father Michael Pfleger in Chicago says he’ll preach in other churches if he’s not reinstated in his South Side parish by this weekend.

The Donald is scheduled to meet with a group of evangelical pastors in New York in a meeting brokered by Florida Pastor Paula White who, like Trump, knows a thing or two about the private jet set and unsuccessful marriages.

In New York, they’re fighting over a synagogue’s right (or not) to run what the city calls a “transient hotel.” And yet another Jewish newspaper in Brooklyn has photoshopped Hillary Clinton out of the Situation Room.

Missourians will vote next year on a proposed constitutional amendment that will spell out, in amazing detail, what religious freedom means in the Show-Me State.

So much for Muslimshopes that OBL‘s death would ease anti-Muslim hysteria in the U.S.; HuffPo reports that vandalism at mosques post-OBL seems to be on the rise. The WSJ says POTUS is going to re-up his engagement with the Muslim world.

The blogosphere is abuzz with rumors that Tom Cruise is helping his pal Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, in his popularity-killing suit against the Washington City Paper amid charges that the alt weekly is anti-Semitic.


The Vatican on Monday is set to release new guidelines for bishops conferences worldwide on dealing with sex abuse; no word yet on what the guidelines will or won’t say. Stay tuned. A Vatican panel is already warning about the dangers of climate change.

The Church of England says cathedral attendance (they didn’t have rank-and-file parish numbers) was up 7 percent last year.

— Kevin Eckstrom

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