Tuesday’s Religion News Roundup: DuBois’ DC * Palin Alumna * Dawkins Documentary

God lives in D.C., says Joshua DuBois. A former Palin staffer gets a high profile job with the U.S. bishops. And Richard Dawkins stars in "The Unbelievers."

Joshua_DuBoisJoshua DuBois, President Obama’s recently-resigned point man on faith, quickly re-emerges to dispel a widely believed myth about Washington, D.C. – that it’s godless. In Newsweek, DuBois writes:

 . . . Washington is filled with people at the height of political power who are practicing their faith seriously and profoundly, but largely out of public view . . .  God is far more present in Washington than most Americans realize.

The USCCB has hired former Sarah Palin advisor Kim Daniels as a   spokesperson for its president, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Our own David Gibson remembers that Dolan not so long ago said the USCCB:

would do better to hire an “attractive, articulate, intelligent” laywoman to present its message because, as he put it, “In the public square, I hate to tell you, the days of fat, balding Irish bishops are over.”

Smart pick, says National Review Online Editor Kathryn Jean Lopez. Hmm, writes Grant Gallicho of Commonweal.


Sorry, we never should have gotten rid of that old-school confessional. Ann Marie Somma tells of a Connecticut church that re-installed a traditional confessional and all of a sudden  . . . long lines.

The young parishioner accused of stabbing several members of the choir at the St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church in Albuquerque Sunday apparently thought the choir director was part of a conspiracy involving the Masons.

Brainwashed??? In the wake of the marathon bombing, our man in Boston, Omar Sacirbey, looks at the assumptions many are making about the wife of the bomber who died — the same stereotypical conclusions we tend to draw about other women who marry Muslim men and convert to Islam.

Wycliffe Bible Translators is trying to resolve a controversy over its practice of avoiding the phrases “God the Father” and “Son of God” in translations of the Scriptures aimed at Muslims, who can find them off-putting when referring to the Divine.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan set off a firestorm among secularists when he pronounced the non-alcoholic yogurt drink ayran the national beverage – passing over beer and the aniseed spirit raki.

CNN interviews scientists Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins, who star in “The Unbelievers,” a new documentary about science, atheism and religion.


News you can use: Here’s a few pointers on figuring out when someone’s religious zealotry has crossed the line into evil.

RNS blogger Jonathan Merritt talks to Harvard humanist chaplain and former evangelical Chris Stedman about atheists and Christians bridging the chasm that lies between them.

Support for the plan to give women greater freedom when praying at the Western Wall has lost some of the support it originally enjoyed from both traditionalists and the women who want to be able to pray there in prayer shawls.

Ireland’s Supreme Court has ruled that a paralyzed woman with advanced multiple sclerosis, who says she lives in agony and wants to die, may not commit suicide with her family’s help.

Pope Francis has 6 million Twitter followers. I have 79. Could at least a couple of you massage my ego a little? Mom? @lmarkoe

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– Lauren Markoe

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