Friday’s Religion News Roundup: Sandy Frankenstorm. Deadlocked Anglicans. McGovern remembered

God's will and the hurricane, genetic engineering and ethics, Israel and Jewish pluralism, and Alan Jacobs leaves Wheaton...

Hurricane Sandy and the theodicy watch: the “Frankenstorm” is bearing down on the Northeast but has already claimed lives in the Caribbean.

While Indiana senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s comments about rape and abortion also raise issues about God’s will and human suffering, a Tennessee couple with a severely disabled infant have no doubts about their decision to have their baby.


New research could eliminate many hereditary diseases even before conception. Is that a good idea? Or genetic engineering?

Tired of our election slog? The Anglican conclave is deadlocked and folks want them to pick a new Archbishop of Canterbury, now.

Mitt Romney should look to Mormon women to close the gender gap, says Lisa Miller. They’re starting to look a lot like other working wives and moms.

The Family Research Council shooter has been charged with terrorism.

This is what “free agency” looks like in the Evangelical world: Alan Jacobs, Wheaton College’s “most public public intellectual,” as CT’s Ted Olsen calls him, has been hired away by Baylor.

Jacques Barzun, a remarkable historian who wrote on the “decadence” of the West, has died at 104. What did he think about God? Does it matter? First Things wonders

George McGovern’s funeral is today, and friends and family and his many fans – as well as Vice-President Biden – gathered at the First United Methodist Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Thursday to remember “a deeply moral and principled leader,” as one mourner put it.

A U.N. investigator says the Baha’i community in Iran is the most persecuted religious minority in the country, and its getting worse for anyone not in accord with the Islamic Republic.


Rabbi Miri Gold, who won a case before the Israeli Supreme Court that will make her the first non-Orthodox rabbi to earn a state salary, talks to RNS’s Lauren Markoe:

“Pluralism has in its message that we have to be respectful of one another. And as somebody said to me recently, maybe if there was more unity in Israel about religious pluralism, it would be easier to solve some of the bigger political issues, even with the two-state solution. Because if you respect people around you, maybe you can better respect people who you don’t feel the same familial connection to.”

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David Gibson

Photo credit: “Sandy,” via NOAA

 

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