Billy Graham tried to save the world, traveling for months at a time to more than 170 countries to preach the Gospel to tens of millions. In a rare moment at home in 1965, he spends time with sons Ned (left) and Franklin. Photo from Graham collection published in his book, “Just As I Am” by Harper San Francisco

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“Welcome to this sin-sick world,” the Western Union message said, “and to the challenge you have to walk in your daddy’s footsteps.”

It didn’t take long for Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, to realize that being a preacher’s kid would be both a blessing and a burden.

“I love my parents,” Graham said in a recent interview, “but there came a time where I couldn’t let my parents live my life.”

After a rebellious youth, Graham found a straight and narrow path that took him to the pulpit and the helm of his father’s Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

But for every Franklin Graham, there’s a Friedrich Nietzsche, the atheist philosopher whose father was a Lutheran minister. For every Condoleezza Rice, there’s an Alice Cooper, the heavy-metal singing, fake-blood spouting son of a preacher man.

Evangelist Billy Graham (r), with son Franklin Graham, at a crusade in New York on Sunday (June 26). Photo by Michael Falco

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Beneath the stereotypes of preacher’s kids as either goody two-shoes or devilish hellions lies a tense and sometimes taxing reality, the children of clergy say. Studies show that many PK’s, as the lingo goes, struggle with issues of identity, privacy and morality. There’s even a support group, Preacher’s Kids International, dedicated to the “celebration and recovery of those who grew up in the parsonage.”

It’s unclear how the pressures of life as a prominent pastor’s child affected Matthew Warren, who took his own life on April 5. Warren was the son of megachurch pastor Rick Warren. 

Warren and leaders of his Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., declined to comment on Matthew, who was 27 when he died. After his son’s death, Warren said in a statement that Matthew had “struggled from birth from mental illness, dark holes of depression.”

If Matthew Warren also battled with his role as the son of a world famous pastor and bestselling author, Rick Warren did not mention it in his brief statement.

Still, after Matthew Warren’s death, several pastors and children of clergy stepped forward to offer empathy.

Jay Bakker, the son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, said he identifies with Matthew Warren as a fellow PK and as someone who has also suffered from depression. Photo by Mindy Tucker

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Jay Bakker, the son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, said he identifies with Matthew Warren as a fellow PK and as someone who has also suffered from depression.

“It’s especially hard because his dad wrote the book `The Purpose Driven Life,’ which has this incredibly optimistic tone,” Bakker said. “My parents wrote the same kind of books, and it was like, `Things are good for everyone else. What’s wrong with me?’ I can’t imagine the pressure he must have felt.”

Preacher’s kids are often considered an extension of their parents’ ministry, Bakker said, and are expected to put on a happy face, even during tough times.

At the height of the Bakker’s success during the 1980s, before their fall from grace, they sent thousands of copies of Jay’s school photos to loyal viewers of their show “PTL.”

“You start to feel like you’re a prop,” Bakker said, “because you know that, behind the scenes, mom and dad fought on the way to church.”

Baptist pastor Corey Hodges said Matthew Warren’s death prompted him to reflect on the lives of his own three boys.

“A pastor’s family has to share him or her with church-members,” Hodges wrote in his hometown paper, The Salt Lake Tribune. When tragedy strikes, pastors are expected to counsel their congregation, even if it means missing their children’s basketball games and school plays.

Evangelists Franklin Graham, left, and Billy Graham, right, stop on North Galvez Street in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward. Religion News Service photo by Ellis Lucia/The Times-Picayune of New Orleans

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“My boys masked their disappointment, but being a child of a pastor myself, I understood how much it hurt them,” Hodges wrote.

The children of non-Christian clergy struggle with similar issues, writes Israel N. Levitz in “A Practical Guide to Rabbinic Counseling.”

“It is well known,” Levitz writes, “that the higher expectations placed upon children of clergy create for them inordinate difficulties in growing up.” As Levitz notes, many rebel against those expectations, acting out to gain attention from their parents and to assert their own identity.

For Franklin Graham, his crusading father was often away from home, schoolmates tested his toughness and his behavior was scrutinized for chinks in the Graham family honor. He struggled to forge his own identity while remaining true to his father’s evangelical ideals. He didn’t always succeed: he fought, drank, smoked and got kicked out of college.

“It wasn’t that I wanted to rebel against God or my parents,” Graham said, “I just wanted to live my own life. But the more I thought I was going to have fun and show my independence, the more miserable I became.”

A similar battle between piety and promiscuity, between rebellion and obedience, takes center stage in the Lifetime series “Preachers’ Daughters.” Three teen girls test the boundaries of PK life – and their parents’ patience – mainly by showing an avid interest in boys.

A similar battle between piety and promiscuity, between rebellion and obedience, takes center stage in the Lifetime series “Preachers’ Daughters.” Three teen girls test the boundaries of PK life – and their parents’ patience – mainly by showing an avid interest in boys. Photo courtesy Lifetime

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“It is so much harder to be a preacher’s kid,” said Kolby Koloff, 16, one of the daughters featured in the show. “Preachers in general are held up to a high standard, and their kids are held to an even higher standard because we are a reflection of them.”

“The things that I do,” said Taylor Coleman, 18, another star of in the reality show, “a lot of people make a bigger deal of, only because I am a preacher’s daughter.”

In one episode, Coleman nearly gives her Pentecostal father a heart attack by joking that if she wasn’t a preacher’s kid, she’d be a porn star.

The show has drawn criticism for focusing almost exclusively on sexual temptation, though one daughter has also struggled with drinking and drug use.

“The parents on this show treat their daughters less like full human beings to be loved and cherished and more like walking libidos that have to be suppressed at any cost,” writes Amanda Marcotte in Slate magazine.

“It is so much harder to be a preacher’s kid,” said Kolby Koloff (pictured here with her father), 16, one of the daughters featured in the Lifetime series “Preachers’ Daughters.” Photo courtesy Lifetime

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Others argue that “Preachers’ Daughters” shows only a narrow slice of Christianity (all the families are evangelical) and exploits common teenage troubles to drum up dramatic plots.

After a series of its own dramatic twists, Jay Bakker’s life has arrived fairly close to where it began. Like his infamous father, he’s a pastor. The first service at his new Revolution Church in Minneapolis will be on May 12.

Bakker is married but doesn’t have children of his own yet. When he does start a family, he’s sure of at least one thing.

“I wouldn’t use my kids in my ministry,” he said. “I’ll probably be a stay-at-home dad.”

The post Beneath the stereotypes, a stressful life for preachers’ kids appeared first on Religion News Service.

The AP traces Zubeidat Tsarnaeva’s journey from Joan Jett look-alike to hijab-wearing conspiracy theorist. She reportedly discussed jihad with her elder son, Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

The New York Review of Books found the mysterious Misha, who was alleged to be a red-bearded Muslim extremist who radicalized Tsarnaev.

Mikhail Allakhverdov, aka Misha, is living with his parents in a run down area of Rhode Island and denied any role in the bombings.

Muslim civil rights leaders say the anti-Islam reaction has been more muted than after other attacks, Rachel Zoll reports.

CNN’s John Blake offers four warning signs that religious beliefs will turn violent.

Five car bombs exploded today in predominantly Shiite areas of Iraq, killing 26 civilians and wounding dozens, the AP reports.

The Yin: A man jumped over pews at an Albuquerque Catholic church and stabbed several worshippers just as Mass was ending Sunday, according to police.

The Yang: An 8-year-old girl took her first Communion in a New York hospital so that her father could see it.

More than two dozen members of Congress have formed the new bi-partisan American Sikh Congressional Caucus.

Latin American liberation theologians say Pope Francis has what it takes to revive a “church in ruins.”

Cardinal Timothy Dolan received an award from the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview and joked that, in earlier years, a Catholic’s appearance at an evangelical event would’ve felt like “Yasser Arafat at a bar mitzvah.”

Speaking of jokes, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, President Obama said, ”These days, I look in the mirror and I have to admit. I’m not the strapping young Muslim socialist I used to be.”

“Duck Dynasty” is a hit in the Bible Belt, but not all is lost in Southern culture, as long it keeps producing singers like George Jones, who died on Friday.

Borrowing a phrase from Flannery O’Connor, Russell Moore calls Jones “a troubadour of the Christ-haunted South.”

This is my last Religion News Roundup, but I trust the folks here will continue to bring you all the news that’s fit to link five days a week. Sign up below to get the roundup via email.

Yr dprtng aggrgtr,

Daniel Burke 

Sing me out, Possum.

The post Monday’s Religion News Roundup: Holocaust survivors * Finding Misha * George Jones appeared first on Religion News Service.

Meanwhile, Muslim leaders in Boston say they wouldn’t give the other suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, last rites.

Journalists and investigators are still searching for the suspects’ motivations, with attention focusing on Tamerlan’s trip to Dagestan, the “epicenter of  of a violent Islamic insurgency in Russia and a hub of jihadist recruitment,” reports the NYT.

After returning from Dagestan in 2012, Tamerlan created a YouTube channel with links to jihadist videos, CNN reports. He also reportedly disrupted Friday prayers at a Boston mosque by arguing about Martin Luther King, but never exhibited violent behavior, said the Islamic Society of Boston.  

Dzhokhar was fascinated by Chechnya’s bloody battles for independence from Russia, but neither brother publicly embraced violent jihad, the NYT notes in an article about homegrown Muslim extremists.

Muslim leaders strongly condemned the bombings and said “these were criminal acts, not religious acts.”

Our own Omid Safi offers 10 Essential points about the Boston Marathon bombers, Islam, and America

The Boston bombings’ mass casualties brought the city’s hospital chaplains into high demand, reports G. Jeffrey MacDonald.  

The pulpit at First Baptist Church in West, Texas was a flatbed truck in a pasture after this week’s brutal explosion at a fertilizer factory.

The Boy Scouts of America issued a proposal to lift its ban on gay scouts, but not gay scout leaders. The half-measure mirrors Mormon church policy, says Joanna Brooks, who notes that one-third of all BSA troops nationwide are affiliated with LDS congregations. 

Thousands of gay marriage opponents marched through Paris on Sunday to protest legislation to allow same-sex union and adoption. Reuters says the bill will probably pass.

Nuns on the Bus leader Sister Simone Campbell said she was “hurt” by Pope Francis’ reaffirmation of the censure of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

Yr hmbl aggrgtor,

Daniel Burke

The post Monday’s Religion News Roundup: Brothers Tsarnaev * Muslim last rites * Boy Scouts appeared first on Religion News Service.

The post Live: Obama at interfaith service for victims of Boston bombing appeared first on Religion News Service.

Photo courtesy of Sodahead.com

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President Obama will be in Boston this morning to once again try to console the grieving victims of mass murder.

First Lady Michelle Obama is expected to join the president for an interfaith service titled “”Healing Our City,” which will be held at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston’s South End.

You can watch the service live here. We’ve embedded the program at the bottom of this post.

People are already lined up for 10 blocks around the cathedral to attend the service, the Boston Globe reports.

Pope Francis tweeted his prayers for the victims of the deadly factory explosion in Texas, in which hundreds were hurt and as many as 15 are feared dead.

Continuing an early theme of his papacy, Francis told Argentine bishops yesterday that “A church that does not go out of itself sooner or later sickens from the stale air of closed rooms.”

The new pope was one of three religious leaders picked in Time’s list of the world’s most influential people. The others are the Rev. Wilfredo De Jesus, a Pentecostal pastor in Chicago, and Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish educator and Islamic scholar.

As a bi-partisan group of Senators introduced an immigration bill on Wednesday, evangelical activists spread across Capitol Hill to lobby for it.

A majority of pastors doubt Global Warming, according to a new LifeWay poll. As Christianity Today notes, younger pastors are the biggest skeptics.

An Indiana truck driver and former Marine was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay $1.4 million for setting fire to an Ohio mosque.

Also in Ohio, an elementary school pulled its Mindfulness program after parents complained that, “They were taking valuable time away from education to put students in a room of darkness to lay on their backs.”

A plan to restore the original structure that held King Herod’s tomb at Herodion in the West Bank has been scrapped, the Forward reports.

A statue depicting a homeless Jesus can’t find a home in Canada.

A study that tracked more than 12,000 Canadians over a period of 14 years has found that regular attendance of religious service lowered the risk of depression.

A former Jesus Freak traces the history of Christian rock, from Larry Norman to MercyMe.

A Michigan court ordered McDonald’s to pay Muslims $700,000 for falsely advertising their chicken as halal. Frankly, I’m a little surprised that it’s chicken.

Yr hmbl aggrgtr, 

Daniel Burke

Boston Interfaith

The post Thursday’s Religion News Roundup: Obama in Boston * Time’s 100 * Halal McDonald’s? appeared first on Religion News Service.

For true believers like Olympian Ryan Hall, marathons assume an almost-biblical importance.

“I have heard stories and had personal experiences in my own running when I felt very strongly that God was involved,” Hall, an evangelical Christian, has said.

Other Americans — athletic atheists, you might call them — roll their eyes and see marathons as a painful waste of a perfectly nice day.

Daniel Burke (second from left) with his wife and family after the Marine Corp Marathon in 2007. Photo courtesy Daniel Burke

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In the Church of Running, I sit somewhere in the back pew.

I’ve run four marathons, but my training regimen reads like a catalog of the Seven Deadly Sins. I swill beer on the night before long runs (gluttony). I don’t stretch (sloth). And I confess to an occasional desire to trip faster runners (envy).

Despite my failings and flat feet, my eyes remain fixed on Mecca. And for me, as for many runners, Mecca is the Boston Marathon.

Most races have an open-door policy, accepting even wretched sinners like me. But Boston has stringent time requirements. You have to earn the right to run down Boylston Street. You have to be worthy. Most runners aren’t.

Yet hope is hard to kill. Just as Jews pray to celebrate Passover “next year in Jerusalem” and Muslims pledge to visit Mecca, marathoners want to “run Boston.”

Like homebound pilgrims, even those of us who haven’t raced in the nation’s  pre-eminent marathon know the route. Heartbreak Hill. The “scream tunnel.” The kissing women of Wellesley College. The finish line at Copley Square.

For runners, Monday’s bombing struck on holy ground, testing sacred bonds.

“The Boston Marathon course is sacred to many,” writes the Rev. Katie Norris, a Unitarian Universalist minister, “even those of us who have never ran it, because we know what it means to get to that race.”

The late George Sheehan, the philosopher-saint of the marathon tribe, put it another way: “The things that make life worth living, like poetry and art, are not rational. And one of them is the Boston Marathon.”

As Sheehan and Norris note, the path to Boston is littered with nagging injuries and even more nagging self-doubts. That’s the dirty secret of long-distance running: Your spirit wants to quit long before your legs do.

Runners get different kinds of “highs” from pushing through that wall, from hushing the ever-eloquent ego. Some feel a rare sense of freedom. Others, like Sheehan, compare it to a monastery, “a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal.”

For me, running is little like a Buddhist lesson. I’ve learned that it’s painful and pointless to focus on the finish line. Better to take it step by step, improve inch by inch, moment by moment. When your spirit flags, focus on the world around you.

A meme that’s been circulating since Monday’s bombing quotes Kathrine Switzer, who became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon in 1967. “If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon,” she said.

Many people probably assume that Switzer had runners in mind. But I think she was also talking about marathon spectators and volunteers, the people who wake up early to hand water and jelly beans and orange slices to thousands of runners they’ve never met.

More than once, my eyes have welled up hearing strangers’ cheers. It’s almost like they’re praying for you. And in my case, prayers were appropriate.

Those volunteers and spectators were among Monday’s casualties. Children like Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy there to watch his father cross the finish line. The survivors include men like Carlos Arrendondo, who has lost sons to suicide and war but still cheered on runners and rushed to the site of the bombing.

As much as marathoners talk of Boston as sacred ground, there’s also a sacred bond — both inside and outside of the Church of Running. It connects marathoners and the friends and family and strangers who might not understand the need to race 26.2 miles but nevertheless offer their time and support.

Monday’s bombing has tested that bond, but it couldn’t break it. Marathoning may look like a solitary journey, but it’s a communal one. Like most things in life, you need plenty of people — and plenty of prayers — to reach the finish line.

The post Boston Marathon’s holy ground and sacred bonds appeared first on Religion News Service.

(RNS) The Vatican sent a telegram to Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley on Tuesday, in which Pope Francis expresses sympathy for the victims of the marathon bombings and urges Americans to “combat evil with good.”

Here’s the full text of the telegram, as provided by the Vatican:

His Eminence Cardinal Sean O’Malley
Archbishop of Boston

Deeply grieved by news of the loss of life and grave injuries caused by the act of violence perpetrated last evening in Boston, His Holiness Pope Francis wishes me to assure you of his sympathy and closeness in prayer. In the aftermath of this senseless tragedy, His Holiness invokes God’s peace upon the dead, his consolation upon the suffering and his strength upon all those engaged in the continuing work of relief and response. At this time of mourning the Holy Father prays that all Bostonians will be united in a resolve not to be overcome by evil, but to combat evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21), working together to build an ever more just, free and secure society for generations yet to come.

–Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State

Here are some additional reactions to the Boston bombing from religious leaders in the U.S. 

The U.S.-based Muslim Public Affairs Council said:

MPAC condemns this terrorist attack; this is a horrible crime, and we call on all of us as Americans to work together to bring those responsible to justice. The Boston Marathon is an annual, historic event with more than 28,000 people participating from all around the world. To attack those on what is supposed to be a day of jubilation is criminal and inexcusable. 

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori offered the following prayer:

Gracious God, you walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death.  We pray that the suffering and terrorized be surrounded by the incarnate presence of the crucified and risen one.  May every human being be reminded of the precious gift of life you entered to share with us.  May our hearts be pierced with compassion for those who suffer, and for those who have inflicted this violence, for your love is the only healing balm we know. May the dead be received into your enfolding arms, and may your friends show the grieving they are not alone as they walk this vale of tears.  All this we pray in the name of the one who walked the road to Calvary.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: 

The tragic end to the Boston Marathon April 15 reminds us all that evil exists and that life is fragile.

The deaths and injuries of people gathered for the celebration on Patriots Day in Boston calls on all of us to pray for the souls of those killed the healing of those injured and the restoration of peace for all of us unsettled by the bombings at a world renowned sporting event.

Our special prayers are with the Archdiocese of Boston and the people there who are working in the aftermath of this crisis to address those wounded in so many ways by these events.

 The growing culture of violence in our world and even in our country calls for both wise security measures by government officials and an examination by all of us to see what we can personally do to enhance peace and respect for one another in our world.

Council on American-Islamic Relations director Nihad Awad said: 

American Muslims, like Americans of all backgrounds, condemn in the strongest possible terms today’s cowardly bomb attack on participants and spectators of the Boston Marathon.

We urge people of all faiths to pray for the victims and their loved ones and for the speedy recovery of those injured. We also call for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators.

While spiritual measures can serve to comfort those in physical and emotional pain, we also call on Muslims and others in the Boston area to donate blood through the Red Cross as a concrete show of support for the bomb attack victims. Those who were participating in the marathon or were watching the event should contact authorities with any potential eyewitness information they may have. 

The post Pope Francis tells Bostonians to “combat evil with good” appeared first on Religion News Service.

Over the past 150 years, Seventh-day Adventists have built one of Christianity’s most inventive and prosperous churches – while praying for the world to end as soon as possible. Photo courtesy General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

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A small band of believers has mushroomed to more than 17 million baptized members, including 1.2 million in the U.S. Nearly 8,000 Adventists schools dot dozens of countries. Hundreds of church-owned hospitals and clinics mend minds and bodies around the world.

You might expect Adventists to celebrate their success while marking their church’s 150th anniversary this May. There’s just one problem: the church wasn’t supposed to last this long.

Back in the 1860s, the founders of Seventh-day Adventism preached that Jesus would return – and soon. That’s why they called themselves “Adventists.” By Second-Coming standards, the church’s long life could be considered a dismal sign of failure.

“If you took a time machine and visited our founders in May 1863, they’d be disconcerted, to say the least, that we’re still here,” said David Trim, the church’s director of archives and research.

Current Adventists aren’t exactly excited about the anniversary, either.

“It’s almost an embarrassment to be celebrating 150 years,” said Lisa Beardsley-Hardy, the church’s director of education. “But it’s also an affirmation of faith in Christ’s return.”

The Pacific Union Conference, which includes California and four other Western states, voted 79 percent to 21 percent at a special session on Aug. 19 to “approve ordinations to the gospel ministry without regard to gender.” RNS photo courtesy Pacific Union Recorder/Jim Paliungus

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Adventist leaders have slated May 18 – the Saturday before the 150th anniversary – as  “a day of prayer, remembrance and recommitment to mission.” On May 21, Adventists will hold a small ceremony at church headquarters in Silver Spring, Md. Don’t expect balloons or birthday cake.

“In one kind of way it really is a sad event,” said Michael Ryan, a vice president at the church’s General Conference, its top governing body.

“We’re a church that by its name believes in the Second Coming of Christ, and we have been hopeful that long ago Christ would have come and taken the righteous to heaven and this world would have ended.”

But Jesus told Christians to occupy themselves until he returns – advice that Adventists take to heart.

Ryan, the church’s director of strategic planning, said he eagerly anticipates projects to open health centers in poverty-stricken communities and a 26-story hospital in Hong Kong. Besides worshipping on Saturday – the biblical seventh day when God rested – Adventists may be best known for their healthy lifestyles. Studies show they live about 10 years longer than their neighbors.

Of course, most Christian churches preach the Second Coming, and nearly half of Americans believe Jesus will return in the next 40 years, according to a 2010 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center. But few American churches have been built on the ashes of apocalyptic dreams.

Adventism was founded in the aftermath the Great Disappointment, which dashed the hopes of some 50,000 followers who expected Jesus to arrive in 1844. Some had sold their possessions and let their fields lie fallow. The celestial letdown drove a few insane, crushed under the weight of what social psychologist Leon Festinger would later call “cognitive dissonance.”

Ellen White, the founder of Seventh-day Adventism, was viewed by outsiders as delusional yet the church she started is now one of the world’s fastest-growing. RNS file photo

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But the movement did not disintegrate, as Festinger argued. Instead, early Adventists like James and Ellen White adjusted their beliefs. Something of divine import had happened in 1844, even if it wasn’t the Second Coming, they taught.

Meanwhile, Adventist leaders brought dejected believers together, feeding the hungry and bonding over their shared disappointment. While keeping their ears perked for Gabriel’s horn, Adventists also turned an eye to earthly time, setting Saturday as their Sabbath and preaching the value of healthy living.

Over time, Adventists’ social bonds and distinctive doctrines “led to the creation of a church which survives and prospers today as one of the fastest-growing denominations in Christendom,” writes Stephen O’Leary, a scholar at the University of Southern California.

When those doctrines sail against cultural winds – as when Adventists are forced to work on Saturday, or famous members back Creationism – church solidarity strengthens, scholars say.

Adventist growth is especially intense in Latin America and Africa, where people are attracted to the faith’s blend of ethereal optimism (Jesus is coming soon!) and earthly education (Eat your vegetables until he does.)

“It’s a religious movement whose belief system compensates for both human needs and human longings,” said Edwin Hernandez, a research fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Latino Religion.

But some Adventists worry that the church’s modern success may bring Adventism full circle: a movement haunted by the hereafter becomes preoccupied with the present.

Adventism thrives because of the urgency of its message, argues church historian George Knight. Countless missionaries have crossed the earth to warn of Jesus’ imminent arrival. “When that vision is gone,” Knight writes, “Adventism will become just another toothless denomination that happens to be a little more peculiar in some of its beliefs than others.”

But Adventist leaders say the apocalyptic pull is still strong at church headquarters, especially during planning sessions. “I see that in our education system,” said Beardsley-Hardy. “Not wanting to over-invest in building because Jesus is coming.”

Beardsley-Hardy said she feels the same tension in her personal life. Should she sock away extra money in her retirement account, she wonders, or gratify immediate needs?

As a child, Beardsley-Hardy said she was convinced that every passing thunderstorm heralded the Second Coming. Now 54, with  two grandchildren, she said that sense of urgency is returning.

“I’m getting back to waiting,” Beardsley-Hardy said. “But I’m kind of glad the Lord has tarried.”

The post As they turn 150, Adventists still pray for the apocalypse appeared first on Religion News Service.

Meanwhile, Israeli researchers say anti-Semitic attacks have surged, as extremist parties grow in Europe.

Megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s son died on Friday, in what California police are calling a suicide.

Warren and his wife, Kay, shared their grief in a letter to his Saddleback Church, and said their son, Matthew, had long suffered from depression.

Christian leaders rushed to console the Warrens on social media, but Ed Stetzer says churches need to stop pretending that mental illness is not a real issue.

In another untimely death, J. David Kuo, an evangelical who spearheaded but later criticized President George W. Bush’s faith-based office, died on Friday. He was 44.

President Obama hosted an Easter prayer breakfast at the White House on Friday morning, and issued an executive order extending the faith-based advisory council late that afternoon. 

Pope Francis has charmed the public, but now comes the hard part of his new job: reforming the Vatican.

NCR’s John Allen visited the shanty towns in Buenos Aires where the future Pope Francis began his ministry.

Jesuits are seeing an upsurge of interest in their order since Francis was elected pontiff, reports the AP’s Rachel Zoll.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said a federal judge’s easing of restrictions on Plan B “makes young adolescent girls more available to sexual predators.”

Egyptian Christians clashed with a mob on Sunday, killing one and turning Cairo’s Coptic cathedral into a battleground, the AP reports.

A 19-year-old Tunisian who bared her breasts and taunted Muslim hard-liners say she now fears for her life and wants to take refuge abroad.

Jean A. Stevens became the first woman to offer a public prayer at the worldwide Mormon meeting on Saturday. Meanwhile, some Mormon women said they’ll continue to press for the priesthood.

A Mormon apostle told 20,000 churchmembers gathered in Salt Lake City not to pick and chose from among the Ten Commandments. Senior Apostle Boyd Packer told Mormons to avoid the “tolerance trap.”

As North Korea rattles its sword, the Economist examines the world’s 10th largest religion, juche, which is basically the country’s national ideology, including near-worship of the ruling Kim family.

Peter Smith explores a more irenic ideology: the work of Kentucky farmer and poet Wendell Berry.

This has been a sorta sad roundup, so let’s leave on hopeful words from Berry:

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.

Yr hmbl aggrgtr,

Daniel Burke 

The post Monday’s Religion News Roundup: Holocaust Remembrance * Rick Warren’s son * Juche appeared first on Religion News Service.

Some Christians were upset that Google chose to honor the Mexican-American labor icon – instead of Easter on Sunday.

The brainy crowd at First Things, on the other hand, says it was fitting to render onto Cesar.

They might not have been as happy if Google had doodled Hugo Chavez.

Still, some Venezuelans consider the late dictator a saint, the AP reports. ”He saved us from so many politicians who came before him,”  said one woman. “He saved us from everything.”

Over in Syria, Christians experienced real Holy Week hardship, dodging mortar shells and gunfire as they wondered where next Easter might find them.

In Nigeria, attacks between Christians and Muslims killed 50 people last week.

That’s persecution. American Christians, not so much, reports CNN’s John Blake.

Pope Francis celebrated his first Easter as pope, fresh off the controversy over his washing of women’s feet during a Maundy Thursday ritual.

By the way, if it’s against “church law” to invite women to participate in the rite, someone should tell the U.S. Catholic bishops.

Word is, Francis now plans to wash the feet of every single soul on planet Earth.

Cardinal Dolan of NY says the church “has not been too good” at separating its opposition to gay marriage from a general attack on gays and lesbians.

President Obama attended Easter services at an Episcopal church near the White House and heard a sermon that criticized “captains of the religious right,” according to the AP.

A new conservative line of attack? Obama’s dog stinks at Easter-egg hunting.

For many Americans, religious holy days have become family holidays, reports Cathy Lynn Grossman.

Mormon Marie Osmond says having a gay child has made her pro-same-sex marriage.

Some atheists are looking to shed their “grumpy Gus” image, our own Kimberly Winston reports.

Will image matter if atheists keep suing over things like the WTC cross?  A judge ruled that the cross should stay because it helps tell the 9/11 story.

The U.S. Air Force has its first female rabbi, The Forward reports.

Evangelical eminence John Piper preached his farewell sermon Sunday at his Minneapolis megachurch.

Hindus celebrated Holi this weekend, and our ace photographer Sally Morrow has the colorful video.

Is religiosity in kids a symptom of mental illness? Maybe, but Time doesn’t bring enough info to bear.

My favorite line: “Some children suffer from scrupulosity, a form of OCD that involves a feeling of guilt and shame. ”

Or, as I call it, “My Catholic Childhood.”

Yr hmbl aggrgtr,

Daniel Burke 

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