The AJC profiles Herman Cain‘s Atlanta church, noting that it’s solidly Democratic and some of his fellow parishioners don’t recognize the man they see on the campaign trail. Notes one: “This is kind of weird.”
The LAT, meanwhile, profiles the Kansas City IHOP (no, not the pancake place) where round-the-clock prayer has been going on for 12 years solid.
The Vatican today denounced the “idolatry of the market” and called for a global bank to rein in greedy financiers who got us into this mess. Our own Francis X. Rocca notes, however, that while this was issued by the Vatican, it’s unclear whether it was issued by B16 himself, or if he even saw it before it was released.
Meanwhile, a CNN pundit notes that the largest sector of workers within the demonized “1 %” are actually doctors, not Wall Street fat cats (although they’re there, too).
Rick Perry, Cain, Michele Bachmann and a few other GOP wannabes went a courtin’ among Iowa evangelicals yesterday as abortion took center stage. Notably absent: Mitt Romney.
The man behind an investment scheme gone wrong at Bishop Eddie Long’s Atlanta megachurch (where a lot has gone wrong lately) says he’s trying “to make things right” with folks who say they got taken for a ride.
The Village Voice is reporting that “South Park” co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were the targets of dumpster-diving by the Church of Scientology after 2005’s memorable “Trapped in the Closet” episode.
Jewish military chaplains get a long-overdue nod today at Arlington National Cemetery. And civil rights icon Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth will be laid to rest today in Birmingham after he died at age 89 on Oct. 5.
Roman Catholics have a new saint, Italian priest Luigi Guanella, and the miracle that ushered him into sainthood involves a Pennsylvania man who recovered from a devastating head injury. During Sunday’s canonization ceremony, B16 was unfazed by a man who climbed atop the colonnade in St. Peter’s Square and set a Bible on fire (that’s him, top left, courtesy AP). And no, it wasn’t Terry Jones (he only burns Qurans).
Reuters unearths a rare find in Europe: a thriving (Lutheran) megachurch in eastern Germany.
Libya declared itself “liberated” yesterday, but there’s this memo to Foggy Bottom: the country’s de facto leader, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, says the post-Gaddhafi regime will be subject to Shariah law.
Thousands of Muslims in Malaysia rallied yesterday to denounce the “apostates” who are pushing conversion to Christianity.
— Kevin Eckstrom
