Monthly Archives: October 2009
Film revives haunting images for Holocaust survivor
By Tracy Gordon — October 23, 2009
(RNS) Eva Adler was a schoolgirl in 1944 when she climbed aboard a train that took her and 1,683 other Jews not to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, but to salvation. The train ride, embarking at Budapest as headlines in America proclaimed “JEWS IN HUNGARY FEAR ANNIHILATION,” was bartered by a Hungarian Zionist named […]
Abortion insurance
By Mark Silk — October 23, 2009
Pro-life Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) tells the AP why he can’t support the current House bill on health reform. Stupak says language specifying that someone obtaining an abortion must use her own money, not federal money from the subsidies, doesn’t go far enough because it’s impossible to clearly segregate funds in that way. “Once you […]
Just asking
By Mark Silk — October 23, 2009
Why is it that Richard Cizik gets canned as vice president for government of affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals for supporting civil unions, but when Richard Land, his opposite number at the Southern Baptist Commission, gives the Jew in charge of health policy at the White House a “Joseph Mengele award,” there’s not […]
Talk about pies in the face
By Mark Silk — October 23, 2009
Soupy Sales (alav ha-shalom) “was born Milton Supman on Jan. 8, 1926, in Franklinton, N.C., where his was the only Jewish family in town. His parents, owners of a dry-goods store, sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan.” (WaPo) Eli Evans, author of the indispensable book on Jews in the South, The Provincials, once told […]
Comparing `Science and Health,’ now and then
By Tracy Gordon — October 23, 2009
(RNS) Cheryl Petersen has updated the foundational text of the Church of Christ, Scientist for 21st century readers. Here are some side-by-side comparisons between Mary Baker Eddy’s original “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” from 1875 and Petersen’s revisions. From Eddy’s “Science and Health”: If a dissolute husband deserts his wife, certainly the […]
African Anglican bishop backs jail for gays
By Tracy Gordon — October 22, 2009
NAIROBI (RNS/ENI) An Anglican bishop in Uganda has rejected proposals that gays and lesbians should face the death penalty for sexual assault in some cases, but says prison terms should remain as a deterrent to homosexuality. “We want to state categorically that homosexuality is unacceptable,” Anglican Bishop Stanley Ntagali of Masindi-Kitara diocese said in an […]
No more Holocaust comparisons, religious leaders say
By Tracy Gordon — October 22, 2009
WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious leaders are urging their colleagues and politicians to keep comparisons to Nazism and the Holocaust out out of American public policy debates. The Interfaith Alliance responded to a recent onslaught of references to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, particularly as an analogy to the current discussion on health care reform. “There is […]
Dept. of Homeland Security amends uniform policy for Sikhs
By Tracy Gordon — October 22, 2009
(RNS) The Department of Homeland Security has amended its uniform and grooming policies after a Sikh man lost his job for wearing a turban and refusing to shave. Federal standards had required security guards to be clean-shaven and to wear a specified uniform and hat, two things that conflict with Sikh requirements to wear a […]
Man charged with killing Ill. pastor ruled unfit for trial
By Tracy Gordon — October 22, 2009
(RNS) The man charged with killing an Illinois pastor as he preached at a Sunday service is mentally unfit to stand trial, a judge ruled Tuesday (Oct. 20). Madison County Circuit Judge Richard Tognarelli made the ruling after a psychologist who performed a court-ordered examination said Terry Sedlacek was schizophrenic, the Associated Press reported. Sedlacek […]
Are sacred texts ever due for a make-over?
By Tracy Gordon — October 22, 2009
(RNS) Author Cheryl Petersen felt a sense of awe as she approached the task of revising Christian Science’s founding work, Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.” The Bible is the sacred text for the Church of Christ, Scientist, but Eddy’s 700-page book is nearly as influential. Petersen, a Christian Scientist […]
Conscience clauses not just about abortion anymore
By Tracy Gordon — October 22, 2009
WASHINGTON (RNS) Faced with a request to give an unmarried female patient a prescription for birth control pills, Dr. Michele Phillips looked to her conscience for the answer. “I’m not going to give any kind of medication I see as harmful,” said Phillips of San Antonio. The drugs would not protect her patient from “emotional […]
Thursday’s religion round up
By Daniel Burke — October 22, 2009
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, in New Orleans for a conference on the environment, said “we are consuming environmental capital and destroying its sources as if there is no tomorrow.” A bankruptcy judge approved the first step of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington’s Chapter 11 filing. An Illinois man accused of killing a pastor during a […]
COMMENTARY: American Jews hopeful, but wary on Israel
By Tracy Gordon — October 22, 2009
(RNS)Because America is such a self-absorbed society, we are always attracted to surveys about our opinions and beliefs on just about everything, like moths flocking to flames. Sure, I know the usual disclaimer: polls are merely blurred snapshots of a constantly shifting population. But snapshots, whether taken of a family or a religious community, frequently […]
Opinions on Global Warming
By Mark Silk — October 22, 2009
Too bad Pew didn’t ask for (or disclose?) opinions on global warming by religion.
Gov. in the None Zone
By Mark Silk — October 22, 2009
Dan Gilgoff calls attention to Melissa Block’s NPR profile of Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski by noting, “You don’t often hear American politicians who hail from the burgeoning ‘spiritual but not religious’ demographic discuss their beliefs but…” Here’s the extended quote from the governor, whom Block accompanied on an excursion on the South Santiam River to […]
