Thursday's Religion News Roundup: God gap; Neverland; "angry queers"

The Gallup poll released yesterday suggests that Mitt Romney still has an “evangelical problem,” argues our own Mark Silk.  

But Sarah Posner notes that “non-religious” voters comprise 1/3 of the electorate.

What's a candidate to do? I, for one, would like to see this poll Slow Jammed.

Jewish Americans like Mormons and Muslims more than they like the “Christian right,” according to Public Religion Research Institute's recent Jewish values survey. 

In a poll surveying which fantasy world American Christians would want to live in, evangelicals chose Narnia, Catholics preferred Wonderland and mainline Protestants were split between Hogwarts, Neverland and Narnia.

That could be The Poll that Launches a Thousand Graduate Theses. 

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has ordered military schools to make sure they are not including anti-Islamic themes in training courses, the NYT reports. Gen. Martin Dempsey said that military instructors and guest lecturers appeared to be “advocating ideas, beliefs and actions that are contrary to our national policy, inconsistent with the values of our profession and disrespectful of the Islamic religion.”

The campaign to abolish the death penalty has been reinvigorated, according to USA Today.

The Dalai Lama says he loves George W. Bush “as a human being.”  As a president? What's the Tibetan word for “meh”?

Catholic officials have written to every state-funded Catholic secondary school in England and Wales asking them to encourage pupils to sign a petition against gay marriage, the Guardian reports. 

A Catholic school teacher in Indiana is suing after she was fired for using in vitro fertilization, the AP reports. 

Meet the tough-minded Cleveland woman who stood up to her bishop over parish closings, took her case to the Vatican, and, improbably, won. 

LGBT activists are hoping this is the year the United Methodist Church finally lifts its bans on gay clergy and same-sex marriage. But others say the numbers don't look good.  

A group of self-described “Angry Queers” vandalized Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill satellite church in Portlandia. 

Muslims in Philly are offering a cash reward for info on a series of crimes committed by men wearing women's Islamic garb as disguises.

Yr hmbl aggregator,

Daniel Burke

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