Big news from Broadway: “The Book of Mormon” won nine Tony Awards last night, making the musical Sunday’s runaway winner.
Accepting the award for best musical, Trey Parker, better known as one-half of the “South Park” creative duo, gave a shout out to Mormon founder Joseph Smith, “You did it, Joseph, you got the Tony!”
While “The Book of Mormon” has dominated the Great White Way, a group founded by black Mormons is a living rebuke to the LDS Church’s biased past, according to the NYT.
Doomsday radio preacher Harold Camping has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke at his California home Thursday night.
Newt Gingrich sought to reboot his troubled presidential bid Sunday with a red-meat speech to Jewish Republicans. Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s “day of prayer and fasting” has drawn heavy criticism from church-state watchdogs and gay rights groups, the latter because because the anti-gay American Family Association has been put in charge.
The Washington Post published its first installment of a series on American Muslims searching for a way to reconcile their American and Islamic identities. USA Today compares the anti-Shariah movement to the Red Scare of the 1950s.
Baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, have dipped to their lowest point in 60 years, HuffPo notes.
A new book by investigative journalist Jason Berry alleges that only 20 percent of an annual Catholic collection for the poor taken up in parishes worldwide actually goes to charity. Pope Benedict XVI listened to Gypsies recount their way of life at a first-ever papal audience for them at the Vatican on Saturday.
A review of church guidelines on sexual abuse will top the agenda when the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops meet in Seattle later this week. You can follow RNS’s live coverage of the debate on Twitter at @ReligionNewsNow, and we’ll post daily stories from Seattle on our website.
Liberal Catholics meeting in Detroit accused the church’s hierarchy of ignoring their stances on the role of women, married clergy and homosexuality. Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron was listening, and ordered an investigation of the local priest who led a Mass for the liberal gathering.
The Archdiocese of Boston, in response to criticism it was sanctioning a celebration of Gay Pride month, ordered a South End church to cancel a Mass themed, “All are Welcome.” A North Carolina priest was forced to cancel plans to host a Quran reading from the pulpit during Mass.
Atheists in Arkansas are angry that a city bus line wants them to pay $36,000 to insure against angry Christians attacking the buses. I wonder if the insurance covers acts of God.
Yr hmb aggregator,
Daniel Burke
