By David Gibson

By David Gibson is an author at Religion News Service.

All Stories by By David Gibson

Architect Sir David Adjaye on winning landmark commission for UAE Abrahamic House

By By David Gibson — September 30, 2019
NEW YORK (RNS) — A star architect who designed the $540 million National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, Adjaye said his design for the worship space, which will include a Catholic cathedral, a synagogue and a mosque, is intended for real use: 'This is not an exhibition space or tourism. This is a real place of faith.'

A church, a synagogue and a mosque planned together for the Arabian Peninsula

By By David Gibson — September 23, 2019
NEW YORK (RNS) — The 'Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together' met in New York on Sept. 20 to unveil plans for a church, synagogue and mosque on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. The three houses of worship will collectively be called the Abrahamic Family House and will stand together as a symbol of the kind of religious tolerance that the UAE wants to be known for.

The Slingshot: Nonstop pope. Gender wars. Christian intellectuals RIP?

By By David Gibson — August 18, 2016
Should Pope Francis give it – and us – a rest? Support for women deacons, countering a “transgender” God, the secret Jews of “The Hobbit” and the decline of Christian thinkers.

COMMENTARY/NEWS ANALYSIS: The Catholic Church and Islam: Repairing the breach

By By David Gibson — September 12, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks brought a renewed focus not only on that day’s devastation seven years ago but on the nation’s efforts to combat radical Islam while engaging the wider Muslim world. Friday marks a related milestone: It has been two years since Pope Benedict XVI […]

COMMENTARY/NEWS ANALYSIS: Of fakes and faith

By By David Gibson — August 1, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Biblical archaeology can produce more sequels than Indiana Jones, and recent news of a pre-Jesus stone tablet with apparent references to a Jewish messiah who would die and return after three days now joins the “lost tomb of Jesus” (c. 2007) and the “lost Gospel of Judas” (c. 2006) […]

Bishop says church mustn’t fear questions, or conversation

By By David Gibson — July 3, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ Sit down over a cup of coffee with Geoffrey Robinson, a soft-spoken, silver-haired Roman Catholic bishop from Australia, and you’d be hard-pressed to see him as a fiery prophet or an angry dissident. Nor does he come across as any of the other far less flattering names […]

RNS Daily Digest

By By David Gibson — April 12, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) During Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the U.S., Catholics will listen intently to what he says, and how he says it, all in hopes of figuring out if Joseph Ratzinger has indeed become a kindly German Shepherd or whether he remains, as he was known, God’s Rottweiler. Yet as […]

U.S. trip introduces unknown church to an unknown pope

By By David Gibson — March 13, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Central to the anticipation surrounding Pope Benedict XVI’s April visit to the United States is a widespread curiosity among U.S. Catholics about a pontiff whom they mostly know only through headlines and video clips. What he is like in person? And what he will say to his large and […]

Carter forges peace among a new group: Baptists

By By David Gibson — February 1, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) In the cloud of dust that passes for public rhetoric these days, few epithets stir up passions as quickly as accusing an opponent of being a “secularist,” or some variant of the term. To embrace secularization is to seem vaguely un-American, or at least irreverent. For religious conservatives, of […]

Fears Rise of Poland’s Catholic Foundation Eroding

By By David Gibson — January 17, 2007
c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) When Benedict XVI was elected pope nearly two years ago, it was obvious that the cardinals in the conclave chose the elderly German theologian in hopes that he might halt, or even reverse, what the electors viewed as the massive secularization of Europe, once the heartland of the faith. […]

COMMENTARY/ANALYSIS: The Education of Pope Benedict

By By David Gibson — December 5, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Years ago when I was working at the Vatican, in the vigorous middle period of Pope John Paul II’s reign, a priest I knew in the church’s diplomatic service returned from a human rights conference frustrated that his delegation had not been able to better advance the pontiff’s agenda. […]

COMMENTARY/ANALYSIS: The Return of Pope Ratzinger

By By David Gibson — September 27, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Pope Benedict XVI has had a bad couple of weeks, really the first bad weeks of his relatively young and surprisingly uncontroversial pontificate. The fury in many Muslim quarters over his academic lecture on religion and violence during a homecoming tour to Bavaria continued to spread, and he was […]

After a Year as Pope, Retirement Could Be Benedict’s Toughest Decision

By By David Gibson — April 18, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) It is a week of obvious milestones for Pope Benedict XVI: his first Easter as the Roman Catholic pontiff, and the first anniversary _ on Wednesday (April 19) _ of his election as pope following the death of John Paul II. But a more personal marker, also on Easter, […]

`Gospel of Judas’ Hardly `Threatens to Change Religious History’

By By David Gibson — April 11, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) So it turns out Judas Iscariot wasn’t such a bad guy after all. An ancient document called the Gospel of Judas, a tattered, 26-page papyrus text from the second or third century, has now been published after spending the last 20 years cycling through the international antiquities bazaar, and […]

NEWS ANALYSIS: To Understand This Historic Pope, Look From the Outside and the Inside

By By David Gibson — April 3, 2005
c. 2005 Beliefnet (UNDATED) How is one to reckon a balance sheet of the reign of John Paul II, who died Saturday (April 2)? His outreach to Judaism, his battles with communism, his championing of the poor, his stand against women priests, his promotion of interfaith dialogue, his hard line on Catholic theologians _ any […]
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