Mitt Romney mentioned his faith in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday night, casting it as part of a mostly secular American culture that doesn’t really care about rigid theological differences.
“We were Mormons and growing up in Michigan; that might have seemed unusual or out of place but I really don’t remember it that way. My friends cared more about what sports teams we followed than what church we went to.”
It was left to rank-and-file Mormons to do the heavy lifting explaining their faith in practical terms, says Joanna Brooks at Religion Dispatches. Three such Mormons got up on the Tampa stage to describe Romney’s service to the church in ways people could understand: Good works.
New York archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan delivered a four-minute benediction right after Romney’s speech.
But for Catholics, the big news of the day was the apology issued by the Rev. Benedict Groeschel. In an earlier interview with the National Catholic Register, the Franciscan friar had said priests who sexually abuse children “on their first offense” should not go to jail and that in “a lot of cases,” the child is “the seducer.”
Two U.S. regional groups of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have recently approved the ordination of women pastors.
Churches in Washington State were gently rebuked for trying to collect money for a political cause — a high-stakes ballot battle over gay marriage.
Just as Americans are being warned about the connection between soft drinks and obesity, the LDS Church announced this week it does not forbid cola drinking. Hot coffee is still out. That Starbucks Frappuccino? Unclear.
Our friend Jeffrey Weiss writes that despite reports to the contrary, serious institutional hostility toward religion in this county is exceedingly rare.
The GOP’s platform on abortion has remained essentially unchanged.
But an article in The Atlantic says better insurance coverage may be the key to lowering the number of abortions. In Massachusetts, as the number of insured has gone up, new state data show a corresponding decline in the number of abortions performed there since 2006.
And finally, now that the RNC is over, there’s the DNC to look forward to next week. Our own Lauren Markoe will provide a religion run-up to that convention on these pages today. Stay tuned.
Yonat Shimron