interfaith
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service Baptists’ money used in purchase of exclusive home (RNS) At least $90,000 from the accounts of the National Baptist Convention, USA, was used in the purchase of an exclusive waterfront home by the denomination’s president and a woman who is not his wife. The Rev. Henry J. Lyons has denied […]
NEWS STORY: European Christian assembly marked by division
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service GRAZ, Austria _ The quest for reconciliation and unity among European Christians remained as elusive as ever at the end of the Second European Ecumenical Assembly, and the gathering did as much to highlight tensions as it did to foster repeated calls for peace.”It has become clear that we in […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service Candidates announced for Episcopal Church’s top spot (RNS) Four bishops have been nominated to succeed Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning as the top official of the 2.5 million-member Episcopal Church. The four nominees are: Frank Griswold III of Chicago; Robert Rowley Jr. of Northwestern Pennsylvania; Richard Shimpfky of El Camino Real […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service Church-state separation group asks IRS to question Falwell (RNS) A public policy group concerned with church-state issues has called on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate a”church-based partisan political campaign”pushed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and other Virginia pastors who supported a candidate for state attorney general. Falwell, in a […]
NEWS FEATURE: Israeli interfaith project breaks new ground
By Elaine Fletcher — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service BAKA AL-GARBIYA, Israel _ The chant of the”dhikr,”the Sufi Muslim recitation of the 99 names for God, resounded inside the mosque. But here and there a word of Hebrew blended into the holy din. Spaced among the Muslim men chanting their devotions in Arabic were Jews wearing skullcaps. One murmured […]
NEWS STORY: Episcopal Church approves historic agreement with Lutherans
By David Briggs — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service PHILADELPHIA _ The Episcopal Church Friday (July 18) approved its end of an historic intercommunion agreement with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) that will create pastor exchanges, common parishes and joint ministries. The decision came as the Episcopal Church _ meeting here for its triennial general convention _ […]
NEWS STORY: Panel urges religious freedom as `paramount factor’ in U.S. foreign policy
By Kim Lawton — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Members of the State Department’s new panel on religious freedom abroad Thursday (Feb. 13) urged the U.S. government to take “bold as well as prudent” steps to ensure that support for religious freedom is a “paramount factor” in U.S. foreign policy. At its first official meeting, the advisory […]
NEWS FEATURE: Mormons making inroads among Spanish-speaking Catholics
By Alan Chambers — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service WEST NEW YORK, N.J. _ In the small fifth-floor apartment of Cruzita Castro, elders Mike Haugen and Richard Western huddled over Spanish-language versions of the Book of Mormon, following along while Castro slowly read a passage. For years, the 67-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic had resisted the efforts of […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service Non-profits object to scope of Senate committee subpoenas (RNS) Several non-profit groups that have been subpoenaed by the U.S. Senate committee investigating campaign finance _ including the Christian Coalition and Americans United for Separation of Church and State _ are complaining the requests impinge on their free-speech rights and that […]
COMMENTARY: The man behind the Bonhoeffer legend
By James Rudin — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ The German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer _ who was not yet 40 when the Nazis executed him in Berlin in April 1945 _ has emerged as the dominant figure of Christian resistance to Nazism. Indeed, […]
BC-RNS-CHAVIS-ISLAM: Benjamin Chavis joins the Nation of Islam
By Ira Rifkin — January 1, 1997
c. 1997 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Benjamin Chavis _ ordained a minister in the United Church of Christ (UCC) and a former leader of the denomination’s Commission for Racial Justice _ says he has joined the Nation of Islam led by Minister Louis Farrakhan. “I am affirming that the God who called me into the […]
COMMENTARY: Two films shed new light on a dark era
By James Rudin — December 27, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ Sometimes movies can be a source of disappointment and dismay. But two new and highly acclaimed films with historical themes have given filmgoers much to think about. Both”The English Patient”and”Shine”reflect our continuing fascination with the […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — December 23, 1996
c. 19) suspended indefinitely a ruling by a lower, Islamist-dominated court that an Egyptian professor, accused of insulting Islam, must divorce his wife. The legal battle between conservative Muslim lawyers and the more secular scholar and his wife has been watched around the world as a barometer of whether Muslim activists, intent on installing Islamic […]
TOP STORY: ETHICAL CHRISTMAS SHOPPING: Could your kids toys be made in a sweatshop?
By Bruce Nolan — December 21, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Ben Gordon, a respiratory therapist and consumer from New Orleans, always asks three questions before buying: “Where does it come from? Who made it? What kind of values are behind it?” It’s old hat for a man long accustomed to applying ethical values to the purchase of food […]
NEWS FEATURE: THE CUSTOMS OF RELIGION: Scholar casts a skeptic’s eye on religious practices
By Karen Long — December 20, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Charles Panati can tell you why Muslims are teetotalers, Jews don’t eat pork and some Christians experience a run of meatless Fridays. “Food taboos _ of the kind that abound in Leviticus, chapter 11, and Deuteronomy, chapter 14 _ are the means by which ancient societies maintained their […]
