The holy month of Ramadan is drawing to a close. Saturday will likely be the last day of fasting. It’s not too early to wish your Muslim friends an “Eid Mubarak.”
Following attacks on seven U.S. mosques in the last two weeks, Muslims are bracing for a tense holiday. Of course, it pales to the tensions experienced by Syrians, for whom Ramadan has been especially fraught.
Meanwhile, some Middle East researchers say American policy makers and think tanks should pay more attention to Muslims living temporarily in the U.S. because they shape perceptions of America abroad.
A judge is expected to sentence three members of the provocative punk band Pussy Riot today. Band members were found guilty of hooliganism driven by religious hatred and offending religious believers.
The head of the Family Research Council accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of sparking hatred that led a gunman to shoot a security guard at the Christian lobbying group’s headquarters.
The former head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious said there is little to no support to withdraw the organization from the church, where it could avoid a Vatican-order makeover.
For some Mormon feminists, there can be only one goal on the road to gender equality: priesthood ordination. Others crave a more visible role for women in the Utah-based LDS Church, one that falls short of the priesthood, says Peggy Fletcher Stack.
In Trinitarian Protestant congregations, 62 percent say the pastorate is open to women, according to a new Barna study. Yet 75 percent of the 600 women surveyed feel they “can and should be doing more to serve God.”
The President's Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships has decided to tackle the issue of human trafficking this year, a hot topic for evangelicals. The council will produce a formal report to the president soon.
A new, 63-foot statue of Jesus is planned for Monroe, Ohio. Its name? “Hug me Jesus.” That’s nothing compared a new statue of Santa Maria la Antigua — a.k.a. the Virgin Mary — rising now in Panama. The statue will be taller than the 305-foot Statue of Liberty.
Another Sikh has been murdered in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Police Department has been treating the case as a robbery, and has taken people of interest into custody. No motive yet.
The Archdiocese of Atlanta announced a major gift that includes a 50 percent stake in the trademark and literary rights to the bestseller “Gone With the Wind.” Joseph Mitchell, nephew of author Margaret Mitchell, made the multi-million dollar bequest.
Oregon police have arrested the Rev. Angel Armando Perez at Saint Luke Catholic Church in Woodburn after a 12-year-old boy ran out of a parish-owned house, telling authorities the clergyman had fondled him.
Millions of practicing Catholics have ceased to go to confession. The British journal The Tablet examines why.
Commenting on the murder of six Sikhs in Wisconsin last week, Bill Leonard of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity, reminds us that real religion is dangerous.
He mentions that Colonial Baptists were jailed, exiled and beaten by Puritans. Mormons, including their leader Joseph Smith, were killed. And Roman Catholics were gunned down in the infamous Bloody Monday on the streets of Louisville, Ky., in 1850.
Real religion may be dangerous. But reading about it is still safe. Sign up for your daily dose:
