Monthly Archives: January 2010
Relief groups mourn their losses in Haiti
By Tracy Gordon — January 20, 2010
(RNS) As religious relief organizations and missionaries work to help the living and cope with the dying in Haiti, some faith groups are mourning the deaths of their own members in last week’s earthquake. Two United Methodist Church executives, a Lutheran seminarian, and three missionaries of the Free Methodist Church, all died as a result […]
A miracle for Haitian orphans
By Tracy Gordon — January 20, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — In a place desperately in need of miracles, here’s one: Scores of children about to enter the dining room of a church were spared when dinner was late. Other kids were saved when Seker Dorval, 17, one of the oldest boys in the Reformation Hope orphanage, thought it his responsibility to chase […]
All in the Family
By Daniel Burke — January 20, 2010
Uganda’s Sunday Monitor is reporting that David Bahati (pictured at left), the legislator who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda’s parliament, is expected to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington next month (Feb. 4). The annual event is run by The Family (aka The Fellowship), the secretive U.S.-based evangelical group that has been linked […]
Tuesday’s roundup
By Daniel Burke — January 19, 2010
As Haitians continue to struggle free from the earthquake’s destruction, people are turning to God for an explanation of the disaster, and religious differences among the Catholics, Protestants, and followers of Voodoo are breaking down, according to the Washington Post. One quibble about that article: the writer says Haiti is made up of “devout Christians […]
COMMENTARY: Where Jesus served, we must, too
By Tom Ehrich — January 19, 2010
ALOFT ON AMERICAN AIRLINES (RNS) On an airplane bound for a family visit, I fly over Manhattan and New Jersey, where the financial geniuses who brought us the Great Recession are planning how to handle vast fortunes being heaped on them in year-end bonuses. In a slight nod to public opinion, bonuses averaging nearly $600,000 […]
Religion in America: the statistics
By Mark Silk — January 19, 2010
Ed Stetzer, who runs the numbers for the Southern Baptist Convention, has an interesting essay up on the Christianity Today website, in which he answers the burning question: Why do evangelicals lie about how religion is doing in America? His answer, which includes a useful review of the actual data, is that in order to […]
A tribute to Deborah
By Daniel Burke — January 18, 2010
Jacqui Banaszynski, who worked with Deborah Howell at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, was one of three people who offered moving tributes to Deborah at a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral last week. Banaszynski, who won a Pulitzer in 1988 while at the Pioneer Press and now teaches at the Missouri School of Journalism, […]
Guess Who’s Coming to Breakfast?
By Mark Silk — January 18, 2010
The National Prayer Breakfast February 4, that is, and it’s David Bahati, the mover of the notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan parliament. Bahati is connected to the Family, the secretive Jesus organization that sponsors the breakfast, and has himself helped organized a Uganda version of it. As Box Turtle Bulletin’s Jim Burroway sums up […]
Obama tells church faith `keeps me calm’
By Tracy Gordon — January 18, 2010
WASHINGTON (RNS) President Obama addressed how his faith guides him and the importance of hard work as he marked the birthday of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at a Washington church on Sunday (Jan. 17). “Folks ask me sometimes why I look so calm,” he said at Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, a historic […]
Papal Saints
By Mark Silk — January 17, 2010
David Gibson has a nice piece in the NYT Week in Review today on the Vatican’s new determination to make just about every recent pope a saint. As he notes, a bunch of early popes are saints, mostly by virtue of their having been martyred. But the canonization of Pius X (by Pius XII in […]
Happy Religious Freedom Day!
By Mark Silk — January 16, 2010
Including freedom from religion! Or, as the president puts it in his proclamation, “the freedom to practice none at all.” Can I have the day off?
Pope defends outreach to Anglicans
By Tracy Gordon — January 16, 2010
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI defended his plan to make it easier for Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, saying that it served the “ultimate purpose” of dialogue between the two denominations. The pope spoke on Friday (Jan. 15), at a special plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catholic […]
Court says Ky. courthouse can keep 10 Commandments
By Tracy Gordon — January 16, 2010
(RNS) A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday (Jan. 14) that a Kentucky county courthouse can keep its Ten Commandments display, overturning a lower court ruling. The “Foundations of American Law and Government Display,” at a Grayson County, Ky., courthouse included the biblical laws along with eight other historical documents. It was challenged by two […]
University can reject Christian courses, Calif. court rules
By Tracy Gordon — January 16, 2010
(RNS) The University of California has the right to reject courses taught at Christian high schools, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday (Jan. 12). Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, Calif., and the Association of Christian Schools International claimed the university’s review policy was unconstitutional because it refused to certify courses that taught creationism and […]
Friday’s roundup
By Daniel Burke — January 15, 2010
As Haiti continues to dig through the earthquake’s destruction, it seems as if every major church/relief group is searching for news of their local agents, or mourning their death. Catholic News Service has an obit on Haitian Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, who died Tuesday. Catholic Charities and other organizations say they plan to airlift thousands […]
