Evangelist Franklin Graham tells CNN that President Obama isn’t a Muslim now (1 in 4 Americans seem to think so) but he was born one. The White House is in damage control overdrive on those numbers, or denial mode, according to the Washington Times.
Presidential prayer counselor Joel Hunter says Obama’s silence on his faith is a problem: “You know what happens with a vacuum?” he said. “It gets filled.” Just like the birther rumors, Obama has a way of attracting mistruths that stick, WaPo says.
The so-called Ground Zero mosque continues to generate opposition, and so does one outside Nashville, but not a Methodist church-turned-mosque upstate in Utica, where it’s been welcomed with open arms. WaPo looks at how you view the center depends on what you call it — is it a mosque? A community center? A secret madrassa? The AP reminds editors that it’s not a “Ground Zero mosque,” and not to describe it as such.
NPR asks why imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the guy behind the Cordoba House or Park51 or whatever it’s called today, has more or less gone underground (he’s on a State Dept. junket overseas, saying that extremism at home and abroad is dangerous.). Some NYC Muslims are more than a little ambivalent about the project, and some New Yorkers are tired of all the controversy. The center has also become an issue in a hotly contested Missouri Senate race. And from the Dept. of What’s Old is New Again, you’ll find bigotry, this time aimed at Muslims.
Sarah Palin tweeted that Dr. Laura was forced off the radio not because of her use of the n-word but because her First Amendment rights “ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence” her. Muslims’ First Amendment rights to freedom of religion, meanwhile, are a “stab in the heart,” Palin has said.
U.S. bishops are in a spat with the Catholic Biblical Association over royalties from Bible sales. A South Dakota seminary is looking to be the new training ground for conservative Lutherans in the new North American Lutheran Church. A town in suburban Boston sent a tax bill to a shuttered Baptist church that’s on the market but hasn’t attracted any bids.
Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet has a sit-down interview before he heads to Rome to take over the Congregation for Bishops.
The eight U.S. imams who made a pilgrimage to Holocaust sites in Europe have issued a joint statement: “We condemn anti-Semitism in any form. No creation of Almighty God should face discrimination based on his or her faith or religious conviction.”