Monthly Archives: October 2006
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — October 19, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service Miami Archdiocese Urges Foley to Name Alleged Abuser (RNS) Former Florida congressman Mark Foley should name the Roman Catholic cleric who allegedly abused him as soon as possible to spare others from potential harm, the archdiocese of Miami said Wednesday (Oct. 18). “We don’t care how he reports the name, […]
Migrants Fuel Evangelical Growth Across Europe
By Elizabeth Bryant — October 19, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service IVRY-SUR-SEINE, France _ Decked in Sunday finery, the chattering line stretches out the door and up a gritty block of warehouses and homes in this working-class Paris suburb. Inside, the congregation at Impact Christian Center sways and chants to gospel rhythms with an African flavor as the day’s first morning […]
Companies Spot a Niche for Diwali Merchandise
By Ansley Roan — October 19, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Vasudha Narayanan was browsing in a Walgreens in Gainesville, Fla., last year when she saw something she’d never seen before in an American drugstore _ greeting cards for the holiday Diwali. “I was so happy,” said Narayanan, who was born in India. “It was like a piece of home […]
Jonestown Documentary Traces Cult From Promise to Perdition
By Stephen Whitty — October 19, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Here’s a list of questions to remember if a friend or child or lover ever tells you he or she has found a wonderful new group of friends. Do the new friends encourage them to leave home and move in with them? Do they discourage them from continuing old […]
10 Minutes With … Andrew Sullivan
By RNS Blog Editor — October 19, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Andrew Sullivan has never fit into easy categories: gay, yet conservative; a Brit who is a passionate lover of American politics; a serious writer who has a fond affection for clips from youtube.com. So it wasn’t surprising to find the Oxford- and Harvard-educated Sullivan, 43, sitting in a […]
RNS Weekly Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — October 18, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service Davenport Becomes Fourth Diocese to Declare Bankruptcy (RNS) The Roman Catholic Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Oct. 10, becoming the fourth U.S. diocese to pursue the financial shelter because of costly sexual abuse litigation. “I and the leadership of the diocese believe that, as difficult […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — October 18, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service Muslim Scholars Challenge Pope Over Islam Remarks VATICAN CITY (RNS) A group of Muslim scholars and leaders issued an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI on Monday (Oct. 16), challenging remarks the pontiff made on Islam that enraged the Muslim world. The letter offered a point-by-point rebuttal of an address […]
Hot-button Social Issues Take a Back Seat in Bellwether Ohio
By Stephen Koff — October 18, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service SPRINGFIELD, Ohio _ Russell Mossbarger, a Republican regular, in 2004 saw President Bush as a man who reflected his own moral and Christian religious beliefs. But then, he says, his party overplayed its churchiness. “People got tired of it all the time,” says Mossbarger, 71, in a bowling alley near […]
Influential Dozen Try to Help Democrats Bridge the `God Gap’
By Daniel Burke — October 18, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ At a meeting of the House Democrats’ Faith Working Group, a perplexed congressman turned to his colleagues for pastoral guidance. How could he counter a local preacher who argued that all Jesus’ moral teachings were about the world to come, not the here and now? Rep. David Price, […]
With the Help of a Dozen, Democrats Learn to `Get Religion’
By RNS Blog Editor — October 18, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Maligned as hostile to faith and forsaken by swaths of religiously minded voters in recent elections, Democrats have spent the last two years wringing their hands over how to “get religion.” Party leaders have lamented that Democrats ceded the moral high ground to Republicans because they failed to […]
COMMENTARY: What God Has Joined Together …
By Tom Ehrich — October 18, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Last Saturday I presided at a wedding in Duke University’s majestic chapel. After a year of planning, notes and lists, and countless sessions with the $40 billion wedding industry, a handsome couple stood before 150 guests and “in the presence of God” to join their lives in a union […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — October 17, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service Abuse Lawyers, SNAP Director Banned from Mexico (RNS) After suing a powerful Mexican cardinal, three American men known for challenging the Roman Catholic hierarchy over sexual abuse by priests have been banned from traveling to Mexico for five years. Mexico’s National Immigration Institute announced the ban Oct. 12 on two […]
Bush Concedes Impact of Torture, But Not Responsibility
By Carl Anderson — October 17, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) President Bush acknowledged last week (Oct. 11) that the scandal arising from treatment of prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison “kind of eased us off the moral high ground” in the war in Iraq. Bush’s remark came at the end of a news conference when he was asked whether […]
COMMENTARY: Evangelical `Nuts’ Shouldn’t Be Surprised by White House Treatment
By John Farmer — October 17, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) “Never give a sucker an even break,” W.C. Fields, the comical con man of so many old films, was famous for saying. He’d be right at home in the Bush White House. For we now have it on fairly good authority that the Bush team, led by Karl Rove, […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — October 14, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service Book Claims White House Ridiculed Evangelical Leaders WASHINGTON (RNS) A new book about President Bush’s already controversial faith-based initiative charges that White House officials ridiculed evangelical leaders and used the program to build political support. “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction,” by former Bush administration staffer David Kuo, […]
