Monthly Archives: January 1996
TOP STORY: SPIRITUALITY: In search of inspiring stories, couple finds everyday heroics
By RNS Blog Editor — January 20, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service CLEVELAND (RNS)-The difference in Bruce and Julie Madsen is undeniable. It’s discernible in their faces, which are relaxed and lapse into easy smiles. Gone is the tension so apparent in those same faces nine months ago, along with the defensiveness. Back then, the couple spent a lot of time explaining […]
Global Religion Report
By RNS Blog Editor — January 19, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service (Following is a collection of international religion stories compiled by RNS staff, wire and denominational reports.) Episcopal Church leaders ask prayers for Bosnia peacekeepers (RNS)-Leaders of the Episcopal Church are asking Americans to pause at noon on Thursday, Jan. 25, to pray for the Bosnian peacekeeping mission and the safety […]
TOP STORY: WORLD RELIGION: Jewish political insider wages ardent fight for Christian religious liber
By Kim Lawton — January 19, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-Michael Horowitz has maneuvered around Washington political circles for nearly 15 years. A former Reagan administration official and current senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank, Horowitz has worked on issues ranging from welfare policy to federalism to tort reform. His latest political crusade, however, is raising […]
NEWS STORY: Vatican goes interactive with museum treasures
By RNS Blog Editor — January 19, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY (RNS)-Why spend richly to tour the Vatican museums, along hot, crowded and noisy corridors, when you can take in the artistic richness of the Catholic Church’s artifacts and paintings at home? The question may now be more than academic. The Vatican on Thursday (Jan. 18) unveiled the first […]
COMMENTARY: Remembering the chief architect of modern Israel
By James Rudin — January 19, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) (RNS)-In January 1896 the weekly Jewish Chronicle of London printed excerpts from a new booklet,”Der Judenstaat”or”The Jewish State,”whose author was even more fascinating than the provocative title of his work. The publication of Theodor Herzl’s 70-page volume […]
NEWS STORY: Religious groups form anti-gambling coalition
By Carl Anderson — January 18, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-In a rare show of unity on a public-policy issue, the liberal National Council of Churches and the conservative Christian Coalition said Wednesday they would work together to try to stop the spread of legal gambling in the United States.”When the Christian Coalition and the National Council of Churches […]
TOP STORY: THE CHECHEN REBELLION NEWS ANALYSIS:Chechens fortified by mystical approach to Islam
By Ira Rifkin — January 18, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-Chechen separatists face overwhelming odds in their fight against the better-equipped and far larger Russian military machine. Yet they persist, taking hostages on land and at sea and displaying a seemingly reckless willingness to die for their cause. Two factors keep them fighting, according to expatriate Chechens and others familiar […]
National Religion Report
By RNS Blog Editor — January 18, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service (Following is a collection of domestic religion stories compiled from RNS staff, wire and denominational reports). Parishioners shun visit by female Episcopal bishop (RNS)-The Rev. Arthur Woolley of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Bladensburg, Md., an opponent of women’s ordination, vowed to”use every means at my disposal”to block a visit […]
Pope likely to wait on Jerusalem visit until after peace talks begin
By RNS Blog Editor — January 18, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY (RNS)-Pope John Paul II is likely to wait until after peace talks begin next year on the status of Jerusalem before visiting the holy city, an Israeli government minister said Wednesday following a Vatican meeting with the pontiff.”From my understanding, it (the pope’s visit) is more likely to […]
COMMENTARY: Finding the simple pleasures in life
By Dale Hanson Bourke — January 18, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is the author of”Turn Toward the Wind”and the publisher of Religion News Service.) (RNS)-For some it comes as an epiphany, a sudden realization that the stuff of life has outpaced the substance. Others move toward it gradually, growing tired of the”shop ’til you drop”mentality that no longer […]
NEWS FEATURE: Proposed time change in Britain upsets Jews, Muslims
By Robert Nowell — January 17, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service LONDON (RNS)-Some Orthodox Jews and Muslims are objecting to a proposal to advance Britain’s clocks an hour and put the entire country on Central European Time. Such a move would make carefully planned religious observances-early-morning prayers and sabbath observances for Jews, and mid-day prayers for Muslims-more difficult, the groups say. […]
Murder victims’ families live with agonies that never heal
By Bruce Nolan — January 17, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service NEW ORLEANS (RNS)-The death penalty debate yields a bitter side effect-the fresh agonies it inflicts on victims’ families, who are trying to heal the most fearful emotional wounds. Moral arguments over the basic dignity even of killers, doubts about judicial competence, and the years of public attention a killer receives […]
TOP STORY: RELIGION AND POPULAR CULTURE: `Too much pain here,’ says author of death penalty bo
By Bruce Nolan — January 17, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-As a child in the early 1950s, Helen Prejean drifted off to sleep bathed in the security of a middle-class Catholic home, lulled by the sound of her parents murmuring the rosary.”Catholicism,”she said,”was in our DNA.” As a nun 30 years later, her faith, profoundly reshaped, led her to live […]
NEWS STORY: Black churches form corporation to aid members
By Ira Rifkin — January 16, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-Five of the nation’s largest black church groups have announced the creation of a company that will help businesses sell a variety of consumer products and services to congregation members while earmarking part of the profits to help African-Americans buy their own homes. The denominations chose the birth date […]
NEWS STORY: Episcopal court breaks heresy case into two parts
By Carl Anderson — January 16, 1996
c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-Did retired Episcopal Bishop Walter Righter commit heresy when he ordained a non-celibate homosexual as a deacon in 1990? A nine-member Episcopal Church court was scheduled to decide that question Feb. 27-29 at a trial in Wilmington, Del. But now the church has announced that before the court can weigh […]
