ORLANDO, Fla. — Do you tweet during church? Isn’t it rude? David Loveless doesn’t think so. Loveless is lead pastor of Discovery Church, a nondenominational congregation that draws some 4,000 on Sundays to three locations in Orlando. The congregation has always thrived on the cutting edge, becoming among the first to embrace contemporary music and […]

(UNDATED) Former psychotherapist Alysa Stanton, 45, will become the first female African-American rabbi when she is ordained June 6 at the Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati, Ohio. After receiving her master’s degree from the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, she and her teenaged daughter will move to Greenville, N.C., where Stanton will […]

(UNDATED) Seen any good movies lately? On a transatlantic flight the other day, I saw Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet reunited in “Revolutionary Road”, and Sean Penn portraying San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk in “Milk.” I’ll be the first to admit that even at 39,000 feet, neither film is all that riveting. What, with […]

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Before our eyes, America’s robust tradition of religious free exercise is opening the door to same-sex marriage. Prior to this year, the “defense of marriage” forces based their case on purely secular claims about the harm that SSM would do to children, families, and civilization as we have come to know it. Empirical data was […]

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Pentagon included Bible verses on the covers of confidential reports at the start of the Iraq war, featuring photos of soldiers and quotes about “the full armor of God” and seeking divine help, GQ magazine reported. The magazine’s Web site features images of covers of the “Worldwide Intelligence Update” from 2003. One […]

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Family Research Council, the conservative Christian group that’s best known for its efforts to shape public policy, is spearheading a call for churches to pray for the nation on the day after Independence Day. “I think increasingly there’s an awareness that there is a problem in America that is not political at […]

WASHINGTON (RNS) A new Gallup Poll shows that Republicans have lost support across every major demographic group with one exception: regular churchgoers. Since the beginning of the Bush administration in 2001, the GOP has lost self-identified Republicans across the board. Only regular churchgoers, followed closely by self-identified conservatives and older Americans, have remained with the […]

(UNDATED) In a forthcoming memoir, former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland reveals his sexual awakening as a gay man and his struggle to remain a prominent — and celibate — leader in a church that calls homosexuality “intrinsically disordered.” The progressive Catholic also opens up about leading the worldwide Benedictine Order, presiding at the funeral Mass […]

(UNDATED) The camera follows Steve Jones as he walks along an alley in Grand Rapids, Mich., just as he did one early December morning singing “O Holy Night.” He came upon a man sleeping in the snow that morning, Jones tells his interviewer. But he kept on walking, like the two travelers Jesus spoke of […]

(UNDATED) The Taliban seemed vanquished not long ago. Now they control major swaths of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Republican Party lost badly in November elections. The GOP immediately began to obstruct Congress, vowing to block even the most benign appointments and legislation. Ah yes, the power of the minority to stymie. Whether they use terror […]

Woody Allen has reportedly settled his suit with American Apparel, which used an image of the famed director dressed as a Hasidic rabbi in an ad. The image was take from “Annie Hall,” one of Woody’s best, IMHO. The Woodster gets $5 million, according to the NYT, and he didn’t even have to use his […]

Things are not looking good for Bishop-elect of Northern Michigan Kevin Thew-Forrester to get the consents he needs from a majority of U.S. bishops and dioceses to become a bishop. The Pittsburgh standing committee is one of the latest to vote against him. The tally, which was 8-0, is all the more significant since conservatives […]

GQ magazine has got a hold of former Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld’s top-secret Iraq War briefings for President Bush, in which Bible quotations are superimposed above images of U.S. troops waging war. For example, the March 31, 2003, briefing contained a slide showing a U.S. tank in the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore […]

When President Obama named Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. as his choice for U.S. ambassador to China on Saturday, he noted that the Republican governor is “fluent in Mandarin Chinese” and has lived in Asia three times. The Deseret News noted that Huntsman learned Mandarin for his service as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan. A […]