Monthly Archives: May 2008
Efforts to lure Jews to New Orleans start to pay off
By Bruce Nolan — May 28, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service NEW ORLEANS _ Twenty-three and single, Katie Tutwiler is another of those idealistic young people pouring into post-Katrina New Orleans. Tutwiler moved to New Orleans fresh out of college last summer, tugged by something like a moral call to join the city’s great story of post-hurricane reconstruction. Although she is […]
The open road feels a whole lot smaller
By Tom Ehrich — May 28, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service INDIANAPOLIS _ Like all American cities in the heady days after World War II, this city tumbled into marriage with the automobile industry. With little thought beyond straight-line projections based on cheap gasoline and available land, city leaders tore up trolley tracks that linked neighborhoods with downtown. They abandoned light-rail […]
RNS Daily Digest: 1,150 words
By RNS Blog Editor — May 28, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service British clerk files suit over gay partnerships LONDON (RNS) A Christian government clerk in Britain has taken her town hall bosses to court for threatening to fire her because she refused to register civil partnerships for gay and lesbian couples. Lillian Ladele, who earns more than $60,000 a year as […]
Film follows struggle of gay Muslims
By Shona Crabtree — May 28, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) For six years, filmmaker Parvez Sharma traveled to 12 countries interviewing gay and lesbian Muslims. In one mosque, he found two lesbians praying for their desire to be replaced by love. An Iranian man lifts his shirt to reveal his back riddled with lash marks. An Egyptian refugee finds […]
Film follows struggles of gay Muslims
By RNS Blog Editor — May 28, 2008
“A Jihad for Love,” a documentary about Islam and homosexuality, began its nationwide tour in New York this week. Filmmaker Parvez Sharma, an Indian Muslim, and producer Sandi Dubowski, who directed and produced the award-winning “Trembling before G-d” documentary about gay Orthodox Jews, traveled from Turkey to Egypt to France to interview gay and lesbian […]
British clerk files suit over gay partnerships
By RNS Blog Editor — May 28, 2008
LONDON- A Christian government clerk in Britain has taken her town hall bosses to court for threatening to fire her because she refused to register civil partnerships for gay and lesbian couples.
‘Davey and Goliath’ creator dies at 90
By RNS Blog Editor — May 28, 2008
Richard T. Sutcliffe, the creator of the “Davey and Goliath” animated television series, died May 11.
Churches applaud agreement between Burger King, farm workers
By RNS Blog Editor — May 28, 2008
Burger King Corp. has reached an agreement with a migrant workers’ advocacy group that is backed by U.S. churches to improve working conditions by raising wages for tomato pickers by one cent per pound.
Fourth Canadian diocese approves same-sex weddings
By RNS Blog Editor — May 28, 2008
TORONTO-A fourth Anglican diocese in Canada has voted to approve conducting same-sex marriages. Clergy and lay delegates attending the annual synod of the southern Ontario Diocese of Huron voted May 26 to ask Bishop Bruce Howe to permit clergy to bless same-sex marriages “where at least one party is baptized” and to authorize an appropriate […]
COMMENTARY: The open road just got a whole lot smaller
By Tom Ehrich — May 28, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS-Like all American cities in the heady days after World War II, this city tumbled into marriage with the automobile industry. It’s part of what enabled a modest Midwest city to become a throbbing urban giant. Yet as gasoline climbs to $5 a gallon and appears to be headed for $10, that automobile-centered world is […]
Shakespeare’s shocking secret…
By Daniel Burke — May 27, 2008
…he was Catholic. At least, that’s what Ave Maria University Lit professor Joseph Pearce says. While it ain’t exactly DaVinci Code-ish, Pearce’s research flies in the face of common scholarship. In 17th Century Protestant England, Catholics could be fined, prohibited from holding public office or killed, hence the playwright’s secretive faith, according to Pearce. But […]
Vatican to Harvard: have a little dignity
By Francis X. Rocca — May 27, 2008
Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s recent takedown of the President’s Council on Bioethics has earned a response from the Vatican. Pinker derides the White House panel’s latest report, Human Dignity and Bioethics, for its reliance on the concept of dignity, which he calls a “squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to […]
Catholic Church still has “franchise value”
By Kevin Eckstrom — May 27, 2008
Despite a scandal that has cost more than $2 billion and continuing concern over shuttered parishes and the availability of priests, the smart money says American Catholicism is alive and well.
Costs go up to go Down Under for World Youth Day
By Kevin Eckstrom — May 27, 2008
The logistics of bringing tens of thousands of young people together for World Youth Day in Australia this summer are bad enough; so is the sticker shock of a flight Down Under: $2,000 to $5,000.
Lieberman Hearts Hagee
By Mark Silk — May 27, 2008
Max Blumenthal, who has been on the Hagee beat for a long time (in not a positive way), goes after Joe Lieberman for continuing to support Pastor John in the wake of the Great McCain Separation. Lieberman, of course, has endorsed McCain’s presidential bid with a fervor rarely displayed by one senator for another, much […]
