Image courtesy of phasinphoto via Shutterstock.

We will get to the synod and the Supreme Court in a sec. Let’s first stop for a hearty, godly breakfast at “Just Cooking” in Dallas, N.C.

God grabs the check

Business was slow this summer at “Just Cooking,” Dana Parris’s restaurant in a suburb of Charlotte. So Parris decided to allow her customers to decide how much to pay for their food, and put the bill “in the hands of her customers and God.” She explained:

The way I could show I was giving God control was to give him control of the cash register.

In the first week of decide-your-own-price, revenue at Just Cooking tripled.

Stop saying that!

“Living in sin.” Not a helpful phrase, says a prominent cardinal at the Vatican’s synod on the family, in that it alienates people who might think better of the Roman Catholic Church if it instead tried a “gradual” rapprochement with those who, er, cohabitate outside the holy bonds of matrimony.

At that same synod, our own Josephine McKenna catches up with a long-married Wisconsin couple who tell the prelates that the church had better find more effective ways to address the collapse of the traditional family.

Mother of God wins Spanish police award

True. Spain’s Interior Ministry awarded its Gold Medal of Police Merit to a statue of Our Most Holy Mary of Love, “for sharing police values such as dedication, caring, solidarity and sacrifice.” Bestowing state awards on Catholic icons is apparently not that unusual in highly-Catholic Spain. But Spanish secularists have had enough of the practice, and are suing. Expect a ruling from the National Court in a few weeks.

Vegas gets ready for gay marriage

Nevada is one of the states that saw its ban on gay marriage lifted Monday because the Supreme Court turned away cases on the bans — effectively raising the number of states that allow same-sex marriage to 30. Las Vegas, writes the AP, knew this day was coming:

The marriage licenses are already gender neutral. Chapel photographers have been practicing shooting two brides wearing white gowns. And an ordained Elvis will be waiting at the end of the aisle.

Las Vegas, the land of wedding chapels, is ready for gay weddings.

Losers on gay marriage find a new issue

Now that most people in the country live in states that allow gay marriage, and it looks as if the momentum for same-sex marriage is growing yet stronger, those who oppose it are searching for a new front, writes Reuters. Many of them have found it in a fight for “religious freedom,” defined in some cases as the right not to bake a wedding cake for lesbians.

You call this a Supreme Court case?

At the Supreme Court Tuesday, Justice Roberts sums up the case of the Muslim prisoner denied the right to grow a half-inch beard. “Really? You really think it’s worth our time to rule on the case of the half-inch beard?” OK, maybe he didn’t use those exact words. But Holt v. Hobbs, he said, has got to be about something bigger.

A view of the Supreme Court on Oct. 7, 2014. Religion News Service photo by Lauren Markoe

Here’s my story, which also includes a semi-artsy picture of the court that I took with my very own untrained hands that is not half bad if I say so myself.

Ick

He’s not a lovely minister, but he plays one on TV. And it turns out that Stephen Collins is doing one heck of an acting job on “7th Heaven.” As he and his wife divorce, a tape has surfaced in which he recounts instances in which he sexually molested girls younger than 14. The NYC police department has opened a criminal investigation.

Museum of the Bibles?

You heard it here first last week that Hobby Lobby President Steve Green is going to house his priceless collection of Bible-related artifacts at the “Museum of the Bible.” Now some scholars are concerned that the museum, slated to open just blocks from the Capitol in 2017, will present only a Protestant approach to a book that is cherished by many — and exists in many different versions.

Green says that if any scholar discovered evidence that refutes any of his beliefs regarding the Bible:

I want to know what it is. It claims to be God’s word, and if it’s not I want to know that.

The Dallas church exposed to Ebola

The quarantined girlfriend of the first person in the U.S. to be diagnosed with Ebola is a congregant at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Tex. Its pastor, George Mason, said the Liberian couple planned to marry at the church before Ebola struck, writes the ABPnews/Herald. Now Mason is preaching to anyone who will listen that Ebola victims are God’s creatures, not carriers to be shunned and feared.

Bonus Tracks

When your rabbi comes out as gay.

Topeka goes from “God hates fags” to “God loves gays.”

A profile of Pastor Eugene Cho and his call for Asian Americans to speak out on race.

And the DOVE gospel music awards were last night. Hillsong won big.

– Lauren Markoe

The Religion News Roundup, all the religion news that’s fit to print with hopefully no more snark than is appropriate. Get it free by signing up below.