Elizabeth Bryant
Elizabeth Bryant is an author at Religion News Service.
All Stories by Elizabeth Bryant
Migrants Fuel Evangelical Growth Across Europe
By Elizabeth Bryant — October 19, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service IVRY-SUR-SEINE, France _ Decked in Sunday finery, the chattering line stretches out the door and up a gritty block of warehouses and homes in this working-class Paris suburb. Inside, the congregation at Impact Christian Center sways and chants to gospel rhythms with an African flavor as the day’s first morning […]
Famous Shrine Lowers the Bar for Healings
By Elizabeth Bryant — September 15, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service LOURDES, France _ For nearly 150 years, millions of pilgrims have flocked to this tiny town nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains, where a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous is said to have witnessed apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1858. They come in wheelchairs, on stretchers […]
German Activist Puts a Face on Issues Plaguing Muslim Women
By Elizabeth Bryant — June 7, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service BERLIN _ Dusk is falling as Seyran Ates juggles signing last-minute paperwork prepared by her secretary and answering a reporter’s questions. Outside, a train rumbles past her law offices, located in Berlin’s trendy Hackescher Markt neighborhood. She keeps a worried eye on her watch: Tomorrow, Ates travels to yet another […]
Muslims Find an Open Door in Europe’s Churches
By Elizabeth Bryant — May 24, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service PARIS _ They came politely to St. Hippolyte Catholic Church one Wednesday afternoon: the middle-aged mason from Algeria; the onetime farmer from Mali; the two young Mauritanians who had fled drought and despair stalking their desolate country. And like a growing number of European parishes, St. Hippolyte let them in. […]
NEWS STORY: Grass-roots Innovation May Help New Pope Reclaim Europe’s Churches
By Elizabeth Bryant — April 27, 2005
c. 2005 Religion News Service POITIERS, France _ Marie-Cecile Augeai does not consider herself a church hopper, but after years of moving around France, the 47-year-old Roman Catholic is an expert of sorts on local parish life. Since settling in Poitiers last year, Augeai believes she has found her spiritual home _ at Saint-Jean de […]
NEWS FEATURE: Muslim Writers in Europe Test Limits of Expression
By Elizabeth Bryant — December 15, 2004
c. 2004 Religion News Service PARIS _ The letter arrived just a week after Aziz Chouaki spoke about his writing on a French Jewish radio show. “Aren’t you ashamed of speaking to Jewish people?” asked the chilling missive, which threatened to unleash an “Islamic revolution” against the 53-year-old playwright. “Are you with the Jews?” Sent […]
NEWS STORY: Slavery Lingers in Mauritania
By Elizabeth Bryant — September 22, 2004
c. 2004 Religion News Service NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania _ In the rigid caste system of her Kunta tribe, Ghoive Mint Sabahr knew her place. From dawn to dusk, she tended cattle and goats on the sandy plains of central Mauritania. School was a luxury for privileged children. Once a year, her owners _ nomadic Moors belonging […]
NEWS STORY: French Reopen Case into Murdered Monks
By Elizabeth Bryant — June 30, 2004
c. 2004 Religion News Service TIBEHIRINE, Algeria _ The seven French monks lived in a stone farmhouse fringed with pine and apple trees outside this small village, tucked into the soaring hills of northern Algeria. As Islamist violence tore the country apart, they cared for the sick and visited their Algerian neighbors. When the village […]
NEWS FEATURE: Nigerian Feminists See Gradual Progress
By Elizabeth Bryant — May 11, 2004
c. 2004 Religion News Service KANO, Nigeria _ Nafisat Usmaan draws a thick line under the word “sexuality,” scrawled in felt-tipped marker on a pink flip chart. “Should you talk to your parents about this?” she asks some two dozen teenage students, slouched in plastic chairs before her. Dead silence. “What about your family doctor?” […]
NEWS STORY: New Leader of World Council of Churches Gets a Guarded Thumbs Up
By Elizabeth Bryant — October 30, 2003
c. 2003 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The Rev. Samuel Kobia has struggled for greater democracy in Kenya and for peace in Sudan. But now, as the first African to lead the World Council of Churches, he faces a more complex battle from his office in staid Geneva as he seeks to heal internal rifts and […]
NEWS FEATURE: Santiago’s New Miracle: A Pilgrimage Renaissance
By Elizabeth Bryant — January 1, 2003
c. 2003 Religion News Service SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain _ They come sunburned and sore-kneed from Sweden, San Diego and Sri Lanka. They come with boots spattered with mud of the Pyrenees, with blisters hardened into calluses many miles ago. They come to heal suffering. To find faith. To make the hike of a lifetime. […]
NEWS FEATURE: French Monastery Keeps Gregorian Chant Alive
By Elizabeth Bryant — January 1, 2003
c. 2003 Religion News Service SOLESMES, France _ This tiny village abutting the river Sarthe boasts a single homestyle restaurant, several sleepy stone farmhouses and a tangle of apple-tree-studded country lanes as picturesque as anywhere in central France. But it is Solesmes’ massive monastery that draws hundreds of scholars, religious clerics and lay visitors each […]
NEWS FEATURE: France Mulls Banning Veils in Public Schools
By Elizabeth Bryant — January 1, 2003
c. 2003 Religion News Service TORCY, France _ Noura Jaballah pours tea and passes Turkish cookies in her spotless living room, just a few miles from Disneyland Paris. Outside, neat blocks of look-alike houses line quiet, tree-lined streets. Mothers push strollers in the late-spring sunshine. This bedroom community could be Any Suburb USA _ and […]
NEWS STORY: French Muslim Leader the `Prince of Double Language’
By Elizabeth Bryant — January 1, 2003
c. 2003 Religion News Service VIGNEUX-SUR-SEINE, France _ The mosque juts awkwardly from raw ground in this Paris suburb, a block of unfinished cement missing even a minaret. But throngs of bearded men, and women in long veils, crowd through its doors on a cold autumn afternoon. Upstairs, the curtained-off women’s prayer hall is packed […]
NEWS STORY: Europeans Debate God’s Place in Future Constitution
By Elizabeth Bryant — January 1, 2003
c. 2003 Religion News Service PARIS _ After sparring over Iraq, farming subsidies, fishing quotas and budget deficit caps, European countries have stumbled on another roadblock toward forging a larger, more integrated union: God. Or, more precisely, God, religion and spirituality _ three words that may, or may not, be included in the continent’s future […]
