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COMMENTARY: Hollywood Confronts Jihad, and Insults Us All
By RNS Blog Editor — July 7, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Here we go again. Showtime will run a series called “Sleeper Cell,” about an American Muslim who infiltrates a terrorist cell. He’s an African-American, not Arab-American. The cell’s members are a Frenchman named Christian, an Egyptian-American, a white rich American, and a Bosnian. There was probably a Hmong Muslim […]
New Play Humanizes Survivors of 1978 Mass Suicide in Jonestown
By RNS Blog Editor — May 27, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service BERKELEY, Calif. _ Night after night, it is the moment when the 600-seat theater falls as still as a cemetery. “And I started walking up to the back of the pavilion and I got up to where the swings were and I saw bodies,” says James Carpenter, an actor portraying […]
New Play Humanizes Survivors of 1978 Mass Suicide in Jonestown
By RNS Blog Editor — May 27, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service BERKELEY, Calif. _ Night after night, it is the moment when the 600-seat theater falls as still as a cemetery. “And I started walking up to the back of the pavilion and I got up to where the swings were and I saw bodies,” says James Carpenter, an actor portraying […]
COMMENTARY: Newsweek Has Only Itself to Blame for Quran Story
By RNS Blog Editor — May 19, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Did no one at Newsweek consider the difficulty of flushing a book down the toilet? Perhaps the editors assumed American technical ingenuity had developed a commode capable of consuming a Tom Clancy paperback in six seconds. Heck, when they fire that thing up, the suction makes cots in detention […]
COMMENTARY: GOP Should Admonish Its Fringe Religious Elements
By RNS Blog Editor — May 5, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Conservatives often get slagged for speaking to religious organizations, as if they’ve thrown church and state in the blender and hit puree. Dominionist smoothies for all! Liberal politicians who speak in churches are presumably slathered with some sort of secular gel that insulates them from influence. (And criticism.) It’s […]
NEWS STORY: Romney’s Mormon Faith Could Hurt ‘08 Run, Experts Say
By Michael McAuliffe — April 6, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Millions of Americans think John F. Kennedy put to rest the issue of religion in presidential politics when, in 1960, he became the first Roman Catholic to win the White House. Another Massachusetts politician, Republican Gov. W. Mitt Romney, may find out that is not the case should he […]
NEWS FEATURE: With Five Books, Pope Left Legacy as Popular Author
By RNS Blog Editor — April 3, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service (RNS) John Paul II’s 27-year tenure is studded with firsts: the first pope to enter a mosque, the first to visit Rome’s main synagogue, the first to emphasize his personal past as a foundation for his present vision, and the first to not only utilize but fully embrace popular books […]
NEWS FEATURE
By RNS Blog Editor — March 23, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service (RNS) John Paul II’s 27-year tenure is studded with firsts: the first pope to enter a mosque, the first to visit Rome’s main synagogue, the first to emphasize his personal past as a foundation for his present vision, and the first to not only utilize but fully embrace popular books […]
COMMENTARY: Leave the Anti-Blasphemy Laws in Europe
By RNS Blog Editor — March 17, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Creeping theocracy watch, continued: A court has ruled that a fashion company can’t run ads that make fun of the Last Supper. To be specific: They can’t make fun of a painting done 1,500 years after the event. Pretentious denim-vendors Girbaud parodied Leonardo DaVinci’s famous painting; bishops complained, and […]
COMMENTARY: Congress Should Forget About Regulating Cable TV Smut
By RNS Blog Editor — March 10, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Short version of this column: If the Republicans wish to lose their majority, they can expend great amounts of energy to outlaw soft-core skin flicks on cable TV. Long version: Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has announced his intention to regulate decency on cable, much like the […]
COMMENTARY: Is It So Bad to Teach That the `Big Guy’ May Have Designed the Universe?
By RNS Blog Editor — February 17, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) It’s almost a cliche, or a reality TV show: New York family moves to the Shenandoah Valley and learns that the elementary school breaks in the middle of the day for Bible lessons. You can hear the lawsuits barreling down I-81, can’t you? The family has asked the school […]
NEWS FEATURE: Cycling Through: Buddhist Beliefs Help Tsunami Survivors Cope
By RNS Blog Editor — January 13, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service KHAO LAK, Thailand _ A Buddhist monk garbed in bright orange came to Yan Yao temple to look for his missing father days after tsunamis battered the coastline here. He gave a DNA sample and was told his father was dead _ engulfed by a giant wave. The monk calmly […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — July 20, 2004
c. 2004 Religion News Service Religious Groups Chide Congress for Not Passing Welfare Reform WASHINGTON (RNS) A coalition of Christian and Jewish groups urged Congress to stop keeping welfare alive with temporary extensions and instead move to a long-term overhaul of the program. Ten mainline Protestant churches were joined by anti-hunger groups, Jewish organizations and […]
NEWS FEATURE: With Campus Diversity, College Chaplains Rethinking Their Role
By Bridget MacDonald — April 30, 2004
c. 2004 Religion News Service (UNDATED) There was a time, more than half a century ago, when the chaplain at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., was a crusader for the faith in his various roles: campus preacher, religion instructor and pastor for keeping the majority of students true to their Methodist roots. Today the Rev. […]
NEWS FEATURE: In a Small Ohio Town, Origins of Mormon Faith are Recalled
By David Briggs — January 1, 2003
c. 2003 Religion News Service KIRTLAND, Ohio _ The rough upstairs room where Joseph Smith ran the School of the Prophets is as it was when the earliest group of Mormons reported seeing God and Jesus appear to them in the original Newel K. Whitney Store. The plain benches stand where they were more than […]
