Tuesday’s Religion News Roundup: Faith/Guns * Myrlie Preview * Imam Shortage

Faith leaders demand background checks for gun buyers. Myrlie Evers-Williams talks to RNS about her inaugural prayer. And where are all the American imams?

Image from Wikimedia Commons
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Image from Wikimedia Commons

A high-powered  interfaith coalition in D.C. this morning will demand — among other measures — a criminal background check for every gun buyer. (Check back later with RNS for the full story.)

Meanwhile, President Obama considers executive action on the gun front.


Myrlie Evers-Williams will be the first laywoman to give the invocation at a presidential invocation and RNS’s Adelle Banks is the first reporter to get a religion-focused interview with her as she prepares for the big day.

The fact that 36 percent of Americans have changed their minds on gay marriage is a heck of a statistic. Here’s one story behind the numbers: a Catholic mother, her soon-to-be married gay son, and a save-the-date card.

Many a mosque are seeking an imam who knows both Islam and American culture, and English and Arabic. Tracy Simmons reports on the great dearth of imams across the country.

“I was a stranger  . . . ” More than 150 evangelical leaders release a video to push for immigration reform.

British Airways should not have prohibited an employee from wearing a cross on the job, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. But the ECHR refused to side with three other Britons who brought religious freedom issues to the court.

Youths throw a petrol bomb at a Catholic Church in Northern Ireland, the latest salvo in a dispute I naively thought was settled in a peace deal brokered 15 years ago.

French Jewry could disappear according to the leader of France’s Jewish community, and Haaretz finds disarray in the world’s largest kosher certification agency.

In Hong Kong, 3-D Buddhas are projected onto a the walls of a cave, so that the actual frescoes depicted by the technology can remain safe from tourists in the grotto in which they were painted, 1,500 years ago.


“Five handsome and two not so handsome” Jewish men place a Craigslist ad for Shabbos dates. Discuss.

The Atlantic magazine Monday published, then unpublished, a glowing advertorial from the Church of Scientology that looked like any other page on the periodical’s website.

In Royal Religion News — because even if it’s boring, I am still interested — the Prince and Princess of Monaco meet Pope Benedict XVI.

– Lauren Markoe

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