Thursday Religion News Roundup: Gun prayers * Inauguration Bibles * Mormon feminists

Rick Perry says prayer, not guns, will keep Americans safe. Obama's approach to Scripture; part Lincoln, part Martin Luther King. Mormon feminists want to recite prayers at conference.

President Obama will take the oath of office on two Bibles.
Photo of Obama taking the oath.

President Obama will take the oath of office on two Bibles.

President Obama issued a raft of gun control proposals yesterday. No big surprise, reactions varied.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that instead of enacting tougher gun control legislation, Americans should pray for protections.


Meanwhile, a Reform and a Conservative Jewish rabbi penned a column in The Washington Post titled “Sandy Hook: never again.”

Offering to explain some of the differences in religious attitudes toward gun control, Robert Jones explains why 61 percent of white evangelical Protestants (and a slim majority of white mainline Protestants) oppose stricter gun control laws, while many Roman Catholics, black Protestants (and Jews) favor them.

File under “Democracy”: The Westboro Baptist Church has secured a permit to protest the second inauguration of President Barack Obama.

The American Spectator points out that Obama’s decision to go outside of the clergy for the invocation is a historic first. The headline? “Disinviting God to the Inauguration.”

In case you missed it, the widow of Medgar Evers will give the invocation. The benediction will be given by Cuban-born Rev. Luis Leon, rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square near the White House.

Our own Daniel Burke points out that Obama’s approach to Scripture sits somewhere between Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Obama will take the oath of office on Bibles owned by both men.)

A pastor known for promoting corporal punishment has been accused of physically abusing a woman for 25 years. Is anyone surprised?


Mormon feminists have launched a letter-writing campaign to LDS leaders called “Let Women Pray in General Conference.” The group notes that a woman has never given the opening or closing prayer at that conference.

Overseas, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi assured a delegation of visiting U.S. Senators of his respect for monotheistic religions after reports surfaced of his anti-Semitic statements about Jews and Zionists. The upshot? Jews, OK, Zionists: evil.

In Iraq, insurgents unleashed a string of bomb attacks mainly targeting Shiite Muslim pilgrims.

French soldiers pressed north in Mali territory occupied by radical Islamists.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, a Roman Catholic, paid a visit to Pope Benedict XVI.

Anti-abortion groups from 20 different countries have launched a petition to ask the European Parliament to recognize that life begins at conception.

Adelle Banks interviews the new president of the annual March for Life.

And finally, NPR continues its series “Losing Our Religion” examining married couples that share common values but not belief in God.

Stick with us. We’ll point out far more interesting and counterintuitive unions.

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