Friday’s Religion News Roundup: gay baptism; gay marriage in Maryland; black atheists `come out’

There's a new kind of Mormon baptism (and Salt Lake City likely won't be amused) and a tragic kind of baptism at an Indiana church. Fidel Castro may come back to Mother Rome, and Southern Baptists say "no thanks" to a BUBBA name.

Since it’s Friday, let’s just get to the good stuff: Following the news that a proxy Mormon baptism had been performed (again) for Anne Frank, a new website allows users to perform their own proxy baptisms for dead Mormons — this time turning them gay. Note from the site: “Holocaust victims are not eligible for conversion.”

In more disturbing baptism news, a toddler in church-run daycare reportedly drowned in a church baptismal pool in Indiana that was filled with two feet of standing water.


As Maryland is poised to become the eighth state to legalize same-sex unions, Rick Santorum says he does not support civil unions, either. “Marriage cannot be defined differently from one state to another,” he said. Um, it already is.

Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, who prays regularly with POTUS, criticized the “silly season” of Republicans questioning the president’s faith.

Black atheists say coming out of the unbeliever’s closet can be a double whammy.

Southern Baptists have released a partial list of suggestions that didn’t make the cut as they were mulling a name change, including BUBBA, the “Baptist Ultimate Bible Believing Alliance.”

Seven states (Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas) and two Catholic groups filed suit in federal court over President Obama’s mandate for insurers to provide contraception coverage to all employees. Religion Clause has the full text of the suit if you are so inclined.

The conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is finding (rare) common cause with the Catholic Church on the contraception mandate.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Sen. Scott Brown is invoking the late Ted Kennedy (even though he famously ran against “the Kennedy seat” in the U.S. Senate) in saying, “Like Ted Kennedy before me, I support a conscience exemption in health care for Catholics and other people of faith.”

The White House says it “stands in solidarity” with Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani amid reports that his death sentence has been reinstituted because he refuses to renounces his Christian faith.


A New York lawmaker is standing with newly elevated Cardinal Timothy Dolan after the Empire State Building refused to honor Dolan’s elevation by lighting its spire in cardinatial red.

After a pile of burned Qurans were found at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan, Newt Gingrich blasted Obama for apologizing for the act of religious desecration. Gingrich said POTUS “is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States, period.”

Time to break out the ice skates in hell: Reports in Rome say Fidel Castro will rejoin the Catholic Church when B16 visits the officially atheist island nation next month.

Speaking of famous Cuban (American)s and religion, Sen. Marco Rubio, a Catholic and sometimes Baptist, was baptized into the Mormon Church as a boy before later returning to the Catholic Church.

And finally, with the full caveat that this has little or nothing to do with religion (but it’s our blog and we’ll post if want to), hats off to Sweden’s future queen, Estelle Silvia Ewa Mary, born yesterday in Stockholm.

Kevin “I wish I was Swedish royalty” Eckstrom

(photo via Gapersblock.com)

 

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