Deaf people have no sign language Bible, but a group in Japan wants to change that. Image of deaf people conversing courtesy of Vladimir Mucibabic via Shutterstock

We begin today on the international front where news is sober:

Blasphemy cases were once rare in Egypt, but their frequency has increased sharply since the revolution. More than two dozen cases have gone to trial, and nearly all defendants have been found guilty, according to The New York Times. Most blasphemy cases have been directed against Egypt’s Christian minority and filed by ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafis.

Thomas Friedman notes that the protesters in Turkey’s Taksim Square aren’t trying to throw out their democratically elected Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. What they’re doing is calling him out. They want greater religious freedom at a time when Erdogan has been telling them where and when they can drink alcohol, how many children each woman should have (3), and why abortions should be banned.

A candidate for chief rabbi of Israel was shoved and verbally attacked by ultra-Orthodox teens who apparently don’t view him as religious enough.

Russia will prohibit adoption by same-sex couples whose homeland recognizes their union as marriage, as well as by single people or unmarried couples from those countries. It has already banned American adoptions.

And finally some levity from overseas: Against all expectations, the pope’s Twitter account in Latin has gained more than 100,000 followers in six months and continues to grow, NPR reports. When the Latin account was launched in January, Vatican officials expected 5,000 Latin followers. But by May, it had surpassed Polish and was in a tie with German. Go figure.

Back on the homefront: The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department over its surveillance of Muslim communities, accusing the police of trampling on religious freedoms and constitutional guarantees of equality.

Ace religion reporter Rachel Zoll reports that the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph, which spans 10 Midwestern states, released an unusually candid report outlining how its leaders failed for decades to stop sex abuse in its schools and other ministries.

It’s been 500 years since Martin Luther posted his 95 theses, and Catholics and Lutherans have decided to mark the anniversary (Oct. 31 to be exact) with observances that focus more on what they have in common than what split them apart. Alessandro Speciale reports from Rome.

For the first time, the feds release guidelines for houses of worship on confronting a homicidal gunman. The are new rules for schools and colleges too, and pretty much upend the old “lockdown” theory for the following: “run, hide, fight.” Obviously, this raises a ton of thorny questions about guns and churches.

Speaking of tough questions, the Republican-led U.S. House passed a bill that would ban abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy, despite reservations within the GOP that their handling of abortion in the 2012 elections hurt more than helped the party.

There is no Bible for the deaf. But the Japan Deaf Evangel Mission is trying to create the world’s only full-text sign language Bible using video-recorded Scriptures. The visual media project, however, could take decades to complete.

While some people saw the “Superman: Man of Steel” movie and decided the super hero was Jewish, Jonathan Merritt notes the plot line — “A father figure from another world sends his only begotten son to Earth who, at 33 years old, must sacrifice himself to save the human race ” — and suggests the producers tried to play up the New Testament parallels to sell more Superman tickets to Christians.

Depictions of the crucifixion are not commanding high prices at auction like they used to, and Menachem Wecker’s RNS story offers some intriguing reasons as to why that might be so— including a growing reluctance to display religious art in the home.

RNS blogger Mark Silk dissects the numbers on that new Pew study that looks at how welcome gay people feel by different denominations.

On the subject of welcome, despite official opposition to same-sex marriage, scores of Catholic colleges and universities now offer some sort of programming, counseling opportunities, or student groups geared specifically for LGBT students, reports Michael O’Loughlin.

Finally, AP reports that the apocalyptic comedy “This is the End” was reshot to include a heavenly conclusion. We won’t spoil it for you, but read the article if you’ve seen the movie.

And this is truly the end, but only of today’s first-ever, jointly written Roundup. Tune in for more tomorrow.

The post Wednesday’s Religion News Roundup: Blasphemy complaints * Latin tweets * Bible in sign appeared first on Religion News Service.

Vice President Joe Biden released the new rules on Tuesday (June 18), six months after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 26 dead, including 20 children.

Pryor Creek Community Church is one of a few dozen churches around the country that are offering concealed carry certification classes as a way to reach out to non-Christians or to attract new members. RNS photo courtesy iStockPhoto.

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Beyond seeking shelter and waiting for police to arrive, as many Newtown victims did, the new rules also advise adults in congregations to fight back — as a last resort — in a bid to stop the shooter. The new federal doctrine is “run, hide or fight.”

After Congress failed to pass a slew of gun safety measures in April, Biden said the executive branch is doing what it can, promising to put gun control legislation back in lawmakers’ hands, and pointing to 21 executive actions to beef up gun safety taken by the administration since Newtown.

He also unveiled three new federal guidebooks to keep institutions safe: one for schools, one for colleges and one for houses of worship.

Though shootings at churches and other houses of worship remain relatively rare, they can make inviting targets for shooters — particularly disturbed individuals — who are looking for a highly visible target to settle a grudge or make a political statement.

Last year a gunman killed six people inside a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis. In 2008, a gunman killed two congregants inside a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn. In 2007, a gunman killed two people inside the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs, Colo., before being shot and killed by an armed volunteer.

As federal officials worked with education officials in crafting new school safety rules, they also consulted clergy, Biden told a White House auditorium filled with federal officials who have worked on the issue.

“The faith leaders not only want us to talk about making schools safer,” Biden said. “They’re worried that their congregations are at risk. So they wanted to know, what should they be thinking about when someone stands up in the middle of the congregation and decides to do something similar as we saw in the schools.”

In response to their concerns, Biden said, “we gave concrete direction.”

The guidelines’ basic run-hide-fight advice is similar to that given to schools faced with active shooters: Congregants should first try to flee the scene, taking people with them but not waiting for those who refuse to leave. If flight is not possible, hide – the guidelines describe some of the best hiding places. Fighting back is a last resort.

According to the new rules, gathered in a 38-page document called “Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Houses of Worship,” fighting back is advised for “adults in immediate danger,” who should:

“Consider trying to disrupt or incapacitate the shooter by using aggressive force and items in their environment, such as fire extinguishers or chairs. In a study of 41 active shooter events that ended before law enforcement arrived, the potential victims stopped the attacker themselves in 16 instances. In 13 of those cases, they physically subdued the attacker.”

The question of how best to subdue a gunman is likely to rekindle a debate within many churches, particularly in parts of the country where it is common to carry weapons: Should congregants bring guns to church?

“Each house of worship should determine, as part of its planning process, policies on the control and presence of weapons, as permitted by law,” the guidelines say.

It also says that individuals must make their own decisions about how best to respond when confronted by an active shooter.

Though the booklet was unveiled at an event on gun violence, it focuses on emergency preparedness in general, whether for a shooter, an arsonist or a hurricane. A special section focuses on “active shooter situations.”

The post Feds release first guidelines for confronting a church shooter appeared first on Religion News Service.

(Video courtesy Kraft)

We begin today with a short course on religion and marketing.

Some Christian mothers aren’t impressed by the “Zesty Guy,” the might-as-well-be-naked Adonis who currently stars in a salad dressing ad called “Let’s Get Zesty.” For One Million Moms, a branch of the American Family Association, the ad is just plain “vulgar.” Kraft Foods calls it “playful.”

The moms shouldn’t be bothered by Notre Dame perfume, though. Sports Business Daily reports that the Catholic university will debut a branded fragrance this fall, in time for football season. It’s expected to cost $60 for a 3.4-ounce bottle. Don’t scoff. The N.Y. Yankees’ bottled scent made $10 million.

Admirable commitment to their beliefs, or a monumental waste of time?Non-Mormon Christians are proselytizing in the capital of Mormonism. As its missionaries fan out across Salt Lake City, the Truth In Love Ministry took also out ads in the LDS-owned Deseret News and The Salt Lake Tribune:

“You have recently been told at [LDS] General Conference that if you love God, trust him, believe him and follow him, that you will feel his love and approval,” it says in the brochure. “But what if you are doing all that and still don’t feel God’s love or approval?”

Mother Dolores Hart used to be a big time movie star and gave Elvis his first on screen kiss. But for the past 50 years she’s been in a cloistered nun. Here’s my story on her remarkable decision to give up Hollywood for a contemplative life.

A veteran teacher in a San Diego area Catholic school has been fired because school officials are worried that her ex-husband, a stalker convicted of domestic abuse who will soon be released from prison, will endanger the school.

The Utah man shot in the head by his son-in-law as he attended Mass on Father’s Day, is expected to survive.

The International Criminal Court won’t investigate Vatican officials for the abuse of children by Catholic priests around the world, as some victims had requested.

Is it a license plate, or a violation of religious liberties? A Methodist pastor in Oklahoma says the state’s plate, showing a Native American shooting an arrow into the sky to prompt rain, amounts to an endorsement of pagan religion. An appeals court says his suit can proceed.

RNS blogger Martin E. Marty says denominations need to accept the dwindling whiteness of America.

FIFA, the world soccer governing body, nixes a ban on Sikh turbans at Quebec soccer games. 

Three in 10 gay American say they have felt unwelcome in a house of worship, our own Adelle Banks reports. The new Pew study also shows which denominations are seen as friendliest to LGBT worshipers. Marianne T. Duddy-Burke of DignityUSA considers the study results from a gay Catholic perspective.

Charitable giving rose 3.5 percent in 2012 – that represents slow and steady growth, according to Indiana University’s Center for Philanthropy. The main beneficiaries: animals, the arts and the environment.

Humanist Roy Speckhardt looks at the correlation between religiosity, fecundity and poverty and asks religious groups to rethink their commitment to “be fruitful and multiply.”

Near Baghdad Tuesday, suicide bombers attacked a Shiite mosque. The death toll is 26. Iraqis fear a return of the widespread sectarian bloodshed of 2006 and 2007.

Receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Jerusalem, Barbra Streisand lashed out at ultra-Orthodox Jews for their efforts to segregate women on public buses, prohibit them from singing in public and limit their freedom to pray at the Western Wall.

If you don’t already, you can get this daily roundup of religion news free of charge, no strings attached. Just sign up below.

The post Tuesday’s Religion News Roundup: Zesty Guy * Hollywood Nun * Sikh Soccer appeared first on Religion News Service.

Dolores Hart and Elvis Presley in “Loving You.” Photo courtesy of Globe Photos.

Even close friends and family could not fathom why this Grace Kelly look-alike, who gave Elvis his first on-screen kiss and had her pick of acting jobs, would stow herself away in a nunnery for the rest of her life.

As if to test her resolve in those weeks before she left Hollywood, Universal Studios offered her a role opposite Marlon Brando, a role she turned down shortly after she broke off her engagement to Don Robinson, a kind and handsome businessman who loved her intensely.

“Even my best friend, who was a priest, Father Doody, said, ‘You’re crazy. This is absolutely insane to do this,’” Mother Delores Hart remembered in a recent interview, conducted 50 years after she entered the Order of St. Benedict.

To try to explain her decision to a world that’s perhaps even more enamored of celebrity than it was a half century ago, Hart, 74, has written “The Ear of the Heart,” a memoir of her life on screen and behind the convent walls.

Even though she wasn’t raised Catholic, 9-year-old Dolores decided to convert when she found meaning and comfort in the rituals of her Catholic school. At 24, she quit Hollywood to answer a call she heard from God. “I left the world I knew in order to reenter it on a more profound level,” she writes.

But others took the abandonment of her career as an almost personal affront.

“It just offends so many that I would somehow look at that and say, ‘It’s useless, it’s meaningless, there is something more important. Because for most persons, success and money and fame are the things that really make life worthwhile, and so you don’t just dismiss that,’” she said.

“Even my beloved aunt, who was a sister of St. Joseph, she was livid,” Hart continued. “Because she loved having a niece who was famous.”

Hart’s book tour will take her across the country, and away from the place she has rarely left since she abandoned her movie star dream life, and where she is now prioress. The Abbey of Regina Laudis is 450 acres of farmland, barns and chapels in rural Connecticut, 100 miles north of New York City — an abbey that, not coincidentally, includes a working theater.

Founded by Hart and the late actress Patricia Neal, the open-air theater seats 300 and stages both dramas and musicals at reasonable prices for people who could not otherwise enjoy live theater. And yes, they have produced “The Sound of Music,” Hart confirmed without having to be asked.

Hart made 10 Hollywood movies from 1957 to 1963, including two with Elvis, and “Where The Boys Are,” the blockbuster 1960 comedy in which she stars as a college girl looking for spring break fun — and perhaps premarital sex.

Dolores Hart as a young woman (left) and Mother Dolores Hart (right). Photo courtesy Ignatius Press

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She is most proud of her supporting role in the 1959 Broadway comedy, “The Pleasure of His Company,” for which she received a Tony Award nomination, and the film “Lisa,” (1962) in which she stars as a Jewish woman tortured in a Nazi concentration camp.

To prepare for the role, she wanted to talk to a survivor who had actually lived through the Holocaust. 

Suzanne Zada, a young Jewish woman who had survived Auschwitz and immigrated to Los Angeles, hated to be an object of curiosity for those impressed by her wartime trauma. But she agreed to meet Hart at a restaurant on the Sunset Strip, and remembers how disarmed she was by the first thing the young actress ever said to her:

“Before I sit down, may I tell you, on my way here I was considering myself a real pig for wanting you to remember your suffering, just so I can do a better acting job.”

Hart was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of “Lisa.” Today, Hart is the only nun who is a voting member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars).

Maria Cooper Janis, the daughter of screen idol Gary Cooper and one of Hart’s best friends, said Hart found a way “to keep a foot in Hollywood” while fully embracing Benedictine life, which keeps the nuns mostly isolated, and on a strict schedule of prayer, study and manual labor.

A painful neurological disease, peripheral neuropathy, now limits her physical activity, but for decades, Hart worked in the abbey laundry and in the wood shop, building coffins.

She also carefully tended her friendships from her movie star days, and made Regina Laudis a welcoming place for those who needed a spiritual break — or those who just missed her and her borderline naughty sense of humor.

“Built like a brick shipyard,” is how Hart admiringly describes her friend, the retired actress Valerie Allen, and makes herself laugh when she remembers Allen’s questions about Catholicism:

“Once we were talking about heaven and Valerie said, ‘I’m not Catholic, so what does it mean, when you go to heaven, that you’re going to get your body back? And I said, ‘That’s what the Lord says.’ And Valerie said, ‘When I go I’m going to ask him for my boobs when I was 18, my waist when I was 33 and my ass when I was 36.’ And I said, ‘Valerie, if that’s what you want, ask for it. Faith teaches you to ask for whatever you need.’”

Dolores Hart and Don Robinson in their official engagement photo. Photo courtesy of the Dolores Hart Collection.

It was Janis who had introduced Hart to Patricia Neal, when the Oscar-winning actress was struggling with weighty personal problems. The two developed a strong bond. Neal, one of many in show business to seek rest and counsel with Hart at Regina Laudis, is the only one to become a Catholic on her deathbed at the abbey, and to have been buried there.

Janis — along with Hart’s devoutly Catholic fiance — was one of Hart’s friends who did not argue when told that she was leaving for the convent. Janis said she did not assume, as many others had, that her best friend was “running way from men, or Hollywood or running away from life.”

“I knew this was absolutely what she had to do,” said Janis, who is Catholic, but said she is moved more by the spirit of her religion than its doctrine. “You don’t stand in the middle of the tracks of a speeding train coming at you.”

Zada, the Holocaust survivor who became fast friends with Hart, did try to talk her friend out of monastic life.

Dolores Hart at her 1970 consecration. Photo courtesy Ignatius Press

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“I was very upset and actually for a couple of years I was still writing her angry notes about throwing her life away,” said Zada, who still travels from Los Angeles to visit Hart at the abbey.

“If you heard what I hear,” Hart once told Zada, “you would come, too.”

Zada said she came to realize that even though she would never understand what compelled her friend to give up one life for another, Hart did understand, and that was all that mattered.

“Everything comes from her heart,” Zada said. “As corny as it sounds.”

KRE/AMB END MARKOE

The post Mother Dolores Hart, from kissing Elvis to joining the convent appeared first on Religion News Service.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is reportedly in very poor physical health. Image courtesy of Natursports via Shutterstock. http://shutr.bz/115JlwB

First, let’s just deal with the “nude pope,” that Carnegie Mellon student who paraded naked from the waist down while dressed as the pope from the waist up. There’s a deal on the table to drop the indecent exposure charge in exchange for 80 hours of community service.

Anti-Muslim hecklers shut down a meeting meant to ease tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Tennessee, a gathering which attracted Pam Gellar and other professional anti-Muslims.

Keeping tabs on the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, Adelle Banks writes that President Fred Luter is pushing more in his flock to go on overseas missions, and black members of the denomination in particular.

Tom Krattenmaker writes that some evangelicals are putting aside their complaints about public schools to focus on the needs of struggling public school students. He writes:

If this kind of post-culture wars approach to social engagement becomes a major part of evangelical Christianity’s public face in the years ahead there is cause for optimism.

The federal government will no longer oppose the unrestricted sale of the morning after pill, which will allow girls of any age to get the drug without a prescription. The Family Research Council accuses the Obama administration of caving to political pressure, but did anyone really think the feds’ heart was in this fight in the first place?

Prominent Sunni Muslims in Egypt say they would appreciate it if Pope Francis declared Islam a peaceful religion.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is failing physically, say several people who have recently visited Benedict, who resigned in February. Vatican officials acknowledge that his health has declined, but not as far as the shocked visitors are claiming.

Nelson Mandela is also in rough shape today.

A blogger from Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate notes that every serious candidate who might challenge Hillary Clinton in 2016 is Catholic.

Don’t try to download it quite yet, but a Wisconsin priest is developing an app called MyConfessor.

In Winnipeg, the archbishop of an orthodox church has pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual assault against two boys.

What’s the Supreme Court going to decide on gay marriage this month? USA Today gives us the consensus guess:

The justices will limit the expansion of gay marriage rights to California, with few if any implications for the rest of the country. Only on the Defense of Marriage Act, most agree, will the court strike a broad blow against discrimination by striking down the ban on federal benefits for married same-sex couples.

As you may know, Uganda is thinking of actually making homosexuality punishable by death. The offspring of a Ugandan immigrant argues that the debate can’t be separated from the fact that the country has also recently discovered that it is sitting on vast reserves of oil.

In case you missed Omar Sacirbey’s latest version of Moozweek, an RNS-exclusive roundup of news about Muslims and Islam, Sacirbey tells of the recent number of ugly, violent attacks on mosques and Muslims in the U.S. 

Just don’t call them rabbis. An Orthodox yeshiva has ordained its first class of female “Spiritual leaders and Halakhic authorities.” Their title: “Maharat.”

Five days before Father’s Day, a Forward writer asks: what’s the stereotype of the Jewish dad? She notes that they didn’t need to ask the stereotype question on Mother’s Day.

From the religion sports pages: Tim Tebow could be going to the New England Patriots.

It was almost, like, really weird, man. Colorado — one of only two states to permit recreational pot — was about to become the only state that forbids the sale of magazines about pot on newsstands. Colorado officials made sure that the magazine law didn’t go into effect.

Are those magazines read? Rolled? You can’t roll the Roundup, but you can have it legally, for free, in whatever state  you happen to reside, and most of the rest of the world too.

- Lauren Markoe

The post Tuesday’s Religion News Roundup: Ailing Pope * Morning-After Pill * Southern Baptist Missionaries appeared first on Religion News Service.

Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, ordained in the liberal Reconstructionist tradition, sees a divide between generations of American Jews that could spell disaster for the community. Photo courtesy Rabbi Sidney Schwarz

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One generation he calls “legacy” or “tribal” Jews — those who built the national organizations and synagogues that have served for decades as the backbone of American Jewry. But reams of statistics show legacy Jews have enjoyed limited success attracting younger Jews.

The other is what he calls “covenantal” or “innovation sector” Jews, a younger generation that has founded a myriad of niche Jewish organizations — environmental, social justice and political — that can, in Schwarz’s vision, build on their parents’ work toward a more brilliant American Jewish future.

In a new book, “Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future,” Schwarz says the upstart generation cares deeply about Judaism — but draws on its spiritual legacy more than a sense of tribal solidarity.

Schwarz, who lives outside Washington, D.C., and has worked in both sectors of American Judaism, talked about the conversation American Jews need to have among themselves to preserve their collective future. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What’s wrong with the way that Jewish America organizes itself?

A: The problem is that the institutions that have guided the community for the better part of 100 years are too much in touch with their base. They’re committed to serving the people they consider loyalists, and they assume the next generation will fall into line. I wrote this book to send up a flare that that’s not going to happen.

Q: What can this new “innovation sector” of American Jewish life offer younger Jews, who are far less likely than their parents to join synagogues, Jewish federations and groups like B’nai B’rith?

A: The Jewish community was becoming less progressive in the 1980s, and Jews whose political affiliations skewed left were feeling disaffected. In response, you had an array of organizations crop up, ranging from Jewish Funds for Justice, to Mazon doing hunger relief, to the American Jewish World Service doing development work, to the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. They’ve proven for more than a decade that they can identify a market that the legacy sector can’t seem to capture.

Q: So should the oldsters just hand the car keys to your young innovators?

A: I believe the future lies in the two sectors collaborating. Each sector is at risk in different ways. The legacy sector’s membership and its budgets are declining. They can’t capture the next generation of Jews. The innovation sector is organizationally immature. Organizations pop up on the innovation screen, and everyone is so excited, journalists write about them — and then five years later they’re gone.

If some of the resources and the know-how of the legacy sector were shared with the innovation sector, you’d have a way to win.

Q: There’s tension between the two groups on Israel. Is that a sticking point in getting them to cooperate? I’m thinking of J Street, an organization that attracts Israel supporters who find the American Israel Public Affairs Committee too hawkish.

A: Israel is definitely a flash point. The Jewish community in America has very low tolerance for dissent around Israel. And if you are an organization that wants to challenge the policy of the State of Israel on any front, you are going to incur the wrath of large powerful forces.

In some cases, these new organizations love that conflict. When J Street came about, there was a strong effort to marginalize them, to portray them as not loyal to Israel. J Street parlayed that into astronomic growth over their first three years.

Q: Where do the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox fit into your landscape of American Judaism? What about Chabad, the Brooklyn-based Hasidic organization, which is running programs that attract Jews of varying levels of observance the world over?

A: Chabad has kind of written the playbook on innovation, and legacy organizations can learn much from Chabad. The two things they do right are one, they don’t judge you, and two, they set a high bar. The ethos of legacy organizations has been that the only way to interest non-Orthodox Jews in being Jewish is to deliver “Jewish lite” or watered-down Judaism. That totally doesn’t work.

What next-generation Jews want is something that’s authentic. The Orthodox, they get serious Judaism. The challenge will be: Can we create a non-Orthodox brand of Judaism that’s equally serious?

KRE/AMB END MARKOE

The post Rabbi’s message for American Jews: Change or die appeared first on Religion News Service.

Conservative activist David Barton wants Christians to stop drinking gay-friendly coffee. “Lesbians Making Coffee With French Press.” Image by Jari Hindstroem via Shutterstock.

This is not the church/state case of the year or maybe even the month (remember what the Supremes are working on), but it’s a fascinating one: a lesbian who taught computer science in an Ohio Catholic school got fired for having a baby through artificial insemination.

A federal jury just awarded her $171,000. Expect an appeal.

And lawyers are preparing for a similar case – an Indiana Catholic school teacher who had in vitro fertilization — that also involves the “ministerial exception” issue the Supreme Court ruled on last year.

Good Christians shouldn’t drink Starbucks, says conservative activist and former evangelical pastor David Barton, because Starbucks is good with gay.

The oldest U.S. senator, Frank Lautenberg, (D-N.J.), died Monday at 89. The last World War II veteran in the Senate, Lautenberg was Jewish, and active in Jewish causes, but his principal political achievements were not in areas of particular Jewish interest, The Forward writes.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has elected its first openly gay bishop, writes our own Sarah Pulliam Bailey. The move gives Rev. R. Guy Erwin a six-year-term in Southern California, and strengthens a trend among mainline Protestant congregations that have shown themselves increasingly willing to appoint gays and lesbians to leadership positions.

When the Boy Scouts of America said welcome to gay scouts last month, some churches immediately cut ties with the BSA. Here’s a look at some of the first to say “see ya.”

Speaking against a same-sex marriage bill in the House of Lords, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby says he fears the “abolition” of traditional marriage. He added:

“But it is not, at heart, a faith issue; it is about the general social good.”

RNS blogger Jana Reiss thinks the LDS can do better than “reassure Mormon women and girls “that even though they don’t hold the priesthood they can still enjoy the full blessings of the priesthood.”

In a special edition, an al-Qaida magazine takes credit for motivating the Boston bombers and warns the West of more “Lone Wolf” terrorist attacks.

The Czech Republic is going ahead with a plan to disburse 59 billion koruna ($3 billion) to religious institutions to help compensate for what was taken from them under communism. Fifty-nine percent of confiscated property will also be restored.

Ohio State University’s president withdrew as the graduation speaker at a  parochial high school after making disparaging remarks about Notre Dame, Catholics and the Southeastern Conference.

Eternal World Television Network, one of the world’s largest religious broadcasters, debuts a Washington-based news show next month featuring current events from a Catholic perspective.

Re. the Xbox faithful. Gamers don’t go to Mass so much, according to a study from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate

My colleague David Gibson is not Religion News Service’s movie critic, but he makes a cogent and entertaining argument for why “After Earth,” Will Smith’s new Scientology-inspired film, is such a bad one.

The story also gets me thinking: RNS should have a movie critic . . . and a TV critic. I should probably run these ideas past an editor before I throw them out to Roundup readers.

Before you get on with your day, please sign up for the Religion News Roundup. It’s an easy, free way to keep current on religion news today.

- Lauren Markoe

The post Tuesday’s Religion News Roundup: UnChristian Coffee * In Vitro Firing * Catholic Gamers appeared first on Religion News Service.

Singh, a featured speaker at the second annual National Religious Freedom Conference in Washington on Thursday (May 30), told the several hundred attendees that his D.C. taxi driver had the radio tuned to a religiously minded commentator, who was explaining that women become lesbians because they had been abused.

At the National Religious Freedom Conference in Washington Thursday (May 30), advocates included, from left, Amardeep Singh, director of programs for the Sikh Coalition; the Rev. Eugene Rivers, pastor of Boston’s Azusa Christian Community and senior policy advisor to the presiding bishop to the Church of God in Christ, and Shaykha Reima Yosif, founding president of Al-Rawiya, an organization that advocates for Muslims women. RNS photo by Lauren Markoe

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His cab story — both his telling and the reaction to it — reveals fault lines in the coalition of Americans concerned that government and popular culture are eroding religious freedom, and trying to banish religion from the public sphere.

“I felt uncomfortable knowing how our community, the Sikh community, is oftentimes broadly stereotyped and those broad stereotypes are used in a way to literally engage in violence,” continued Singh, director of programs at the Sikh Coalition. Sikhs, lesbians — no group should be broad-brushed, he said.

Short of his destination, Singh asked the cabbie to pull over, paid the fare, and explained that he didn’t want to hear such prejudice. You have a right to listen, he said he told the driver, “but I’m also going to exercise my right not to give you business.”

Sitting next to Singh at the podium, the Rev. Eugene Rivers III of the Church of God in Christ, listened intently, narrowing his eyes as Singh spoke.

When Singh had finished, Rivers made clear that he holds differing beliefs, and draws the line of tolerance in a different place. “What the guy said on the radio … there’s actually evidence for the argument that in certain cases young women, in this case we’re talking about lesbians, have come to that orientation as a function of abuse.”

“The radio guy may have simply overstated the case,” continued Rivers, pastor of Boston’s Azusa Christian Community and senior policy adviser to the Church of God in Christ’s presiding bishop.

The panelists who came to assess the state of religious freedom in the nation accepted the point that their various faiths might not stand together on anything beyond the need to protect religious freedom, and that at times, coalition building would present grand challenges that needed to be met head on.

Rabbi Abba Cohen, vice president for federal affairs of Agudath Israel, an Orthodox Jewish policy and leadership organization. RNS photo by Lauren Markoe

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Rabbi Abba Cohen, a panelist and vice president for federal affairs of Agudath Israel, an umbrella organization of Orthodox Jews, offered several examples of Jews viewing religious freedom issues differently than non-Jews.

Orthodox Jews do not believe in abortion on demand, but believe that in some particular cases, Jewish law requires abortion, Cohen said. And while he would not argue against a First Amendment right to proselytize, he said proselytization can damage the Jewish community.

Still, taking the larger perspective, Cohen agreed with the conference’s theme that religious liberty is under threat in the U.S. and that religious people must stand together.

On another conference panel, state legislators and activists spoke of the need to for conservatives to court liberal allies to help defend religious rights, and cited examples when the American Civil Liberties Union and Democrats had worked successfully with conservative religious people.

Among the evidence of a deterioration of religious rights offered during the daylong meeting sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center: the Obama administration’s rule requiring employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception; several state universities’ refusal to accept student groups that require their leaders to accept certain tenets of a faith; and companies that are allowed to relegate Muslim women with headscarves to jobs where the public will not see them.

“We see that religion is often treated with derision and ridicule,” Cohen said. “In these rough waters, it’s all hands on deck.”

Shaykha Reima Yosif, founding president of Al-Rawiya, an organization that advocates for Muslims women. RNS photo by Lauren Markoe

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Muslim theologian Shaykha Reima Yosif, who wears a headscarf and founded an organization to support Muslim women through art and education, said as an easily identifiable follower of Islam, she has often been told to “go back where you came from.”

The U.S.-born Yosif, however, said she has hope that faith leaders can set an example for the rest of the nation on tolerance of traditions other than their own.

“It’s not a priest or a rabbi or a pastor that will say such things. It’s the layman,” she said, referring to the insults that have been thrown at her. “These ideals that we have gathered here today for, we have to make sure that it trickles down to the average everyday American.”

As Singh’s anecdote showed, same-sex marriage and gay rights may be the most likely cause of friction as religious leaders try to assemble themselves into a force to protect religious liberties.

Rivers said his tolerance ends where people force him to accept anything beyond what he knows as biblical truth, or when opponents threaten his tax-exempt status because of his beliefs. He said he would be willing to go to jail to defend his religious views.

Elder Lance B. Whitman, general counsel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. RNS photo by Lauren Markoe

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“If you mess with the Bible, I’m going to jail,” he told the crowd, to an enthusiastic round of applause.

Elder Lance B. Wickman, general counsel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, took a softer tack. He called homosexuality “a secular thing,” and recognized protections for secular interests. But secular-minded Americans must understand that religion is also central to many people’s identity.

Too often, he said, religion is now considered a “hobby,” in America, a “lifestyle choice” to be confined to the home, church, synagogue or mosque.

“A new closet is being constructed,” he said, “for those with traditional religious values on sexuality and family.”

KRE/AMB END MARKOE

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This is 1. how I feel the morning after a three-day weekend and 2. a creature that did not live on Earth millions of years ago, according to a S.C. Christian school. Image courtesy Shutterstock (http://shutr.bz/115BxaC)

The “Oklahoma atheist” is showered with donations from impressed fellow atheists who appreciated her poise on national television as she noted her lack of faith amidst the tornado rubble, but didn’t blame anyone for “thanking the Lord.”

Archbishop of Newark John J. Myers speaks out for the first time about the sexual abuse scandal raging around him, and has sacked the second-highest ranking official in the archdiocese over his handling of the accused Rev. Michael Fugee.

Australian Cardinal George Pell acknowledges a cover-up of abuse in his country, but says the number of abuse cases has fallen since efforts began to change its “culture of silence.”

And the Los Angeles Times explains the suppression of the “sub secreto” files that document that archdiocese’s scandal.

On the business pages, the New York Times goes to India to profile the vast organization built by Amma, “the hugging saint,” who has just kicked off an 11-city U.S. tour.

Pope Francis called out the Mafia in no uncertain terms, accusing them of “enslaving people,” and asking them to come to God.

High-ranking Vatican officials say anti-Christianity should be combatted like Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

Nearly four years after anti-Christian riots in Pakistan left nine dead, an official Pakistani report says state security services could have prevented the violence, and recommends that the nation’s blasphemy laws be amended to stem continuing anti-Christian violence.

A French university says a student play produced with state funds is not anti-Semitic despite a character called Goldberg who convinces people to invest their life savings in repugnant causes and two Nazi-hunters, “Cohen 1 and Cohen 2,” who abandon their hunt for cash.

More anti-Semitism at a Beyonce concert in Germany.

Venezuela is suffering a shortage of altar wine.

Is Francis endorsing heresy? No. But David Gibson would not blame you if, reading the papal headlines recently, the thought crossed your mind — especially given the nice things the pope had to say about atheists.

You won’t be shocked to learn that the highest concentration of the world’s atheists live in China, but the data point on Saudi Arabia might surprise. Here’s the global map of atheism based on a poll that’s not brand new, but one that might be of interest given the pope’s recent statements about atheists.

One reason I like reading RNS blogger Jonathan Merritt is that he doesn’t mince words. On the Philadelphia couple whose religious beliefs kept them from seeking life-saving medical attention for their son — their second child to die for their beliefs, JM writes:

The Schaibles need to go to jail, and so should any other misguided faith healer whose beliefs result in another’s death. As I’ve said before, the ocean of religious liberty must stop at the shore of child welfare. Faith healers who endanger children should be placed on alert: You can believe whatever you wish, but if those beliefs result in the death of a child, you will go to jail.

Adelle Banks asks whether there will be a mass exodus of religious groups from the Boy Scouts now that they accept gay scouts, and gets some varied answers.

Several leading evangelical pastors and authors are defending a Sovereign Grace Ministries pastor accused of covering up the sexual abuse of children, writes Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

In Tennessee public schools, a sex ed curriculum designed from a strong Christian, Republican and anti-abortion point of view skews the facts of life, according to some Volunteer State docs and educators.

This goes beyond fact-skewing: A S.C. Christian school teaches kids that dinosaurs didn’t live millions of years ago and that the earth isn’t billions of years old. The school gets publicly ridiculed for its unscientific science lessons . . . and thousands of dollars from Creationists to help it stay afloat.

Serving a sentence for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” a member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot was transferred to a hospital during the seventh day of her hunger strike. 

Burmese Buddhists have been attacking Burmese Muslims, who represent about 6 million of Myanmar’s 60 million people. Seems as if the improving political atmosphere has lifted the veil on longstanding tensions among religious and ethnic groups.

We leave you with two cool slide shows from Reuters this morning: A Nepalese ceremony for the god of rain involving a 75-year-old man scaling a 104-foot pole and dropping a coconut, and a massive Hasidic “royal” wedding in Jerusalem.

- Lauren Markoe

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry releases the 2012 International Religious Freedom Report at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on May 20, 2013. Photo courtesy State Department/Public Domain via Flickr (http://flic.kr/p/ekTg4V)

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But why, when it comes to protecting religious freedom abroad, is the State Department so hesitant to name names?

Watchdogs say the State Department missed a key opportunity to put teeth into its annual assessment of global religious freedom, which was released by Secretary of State John Kerry Monday (May 20).

Continuing a pattern begun under President George W. Bush, the report does not include a new list of “countries of particular concern,” or “CPCs” — the diplomatic term for countries that either actively suppress religious freedom or don’t do enough to protect it.

The list varies little from year to year — North Korea, Iran, China and a handful of others are routinely cited as the worst offenders. But the new report contains no worst-of-the-worst list that would single out offenders for sanctions or other punishment.

The lack of new CPC designations in the report is a big flaw, according to Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., the dean of religious liberty watchdogs on Capitol Hill.

“As religious freedom conditions continue to deteriorate globally, it is more important than ever that the State Department use this vital tool to press governments to end abuses, protect their citizens and respect this fundamental human right,” said Wolf and two other congressmen who fired off a letter to Kerry on Monday.

Their concern was echoed by others who monitor religious liberty abroad, including the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom, the independent body created by Congress that each year puts out its own list of worst violators.

Knox Thames, USCIRF’s director of policy and research, said the commission believes that the 1998 law that mandates the State Department report also requires new designations of CPCs annually. The current CPC list dates from 2011.

For years the annual report and the CPC designations were simultaneous; that changed late in the Bush administration and has been continued under Obama, Thames said. But the list of CPCs “is what gave all of this teeth,” he said.

The list prompts “countries to do things they don’t normally want to do.”

But Aaron Jensen, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor said the CPC designations can be made on a different schedule than the report’s release and “at any time as conditions warrant.”

He said he has no information as to when the State Department may release a new CPC list.

Thames said he’s hopeful that the new designations will come out this summer.

They work, he continued, offering Vietnam as an example of a country that bristled at its inclusion on the CPC list. But actual reforms, pressed by U.S. diplomats, resulted in a delisting in 2006.

USCIRF — which generally pushes the State Department to be more aggressive in insisting on religious freedom reforms in its diplomacy — in April recommended that all eight countries on the State Department’s current CPC list be redesignated: Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.

USCIRF also wants an additional seven countries added to the CPC list: Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.

It’s true, said Paul Marshall, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Hudson Institute who specializes in religious freedom, that the State Department’s CPC  list has been “very stable for a long time.”

And there are certainly some entrenched, authoritarian governments, such as North Korea’s, that don’t care if they make the list or not. But that doesn’t mean the CPC list and the report in general are not valuable, Marshall said.

Take CPC-designated Saudi Arabia, he said, where non-Muslim religious practice is still officially forbidden. The U.S. has pressed Saudi officials on the topic, and in recent years, the Saudis have said that they are not going out of their way to root out non-Muslim observances, though they still prosecute them when they see them.

And in Myanmar, a long-standing member of the CPC club, the religious freedom situation has been fluid, and is something we want our government to keep track of, Marshall said. So “the list is a good thing.”

Jamsheed K. Choksy, a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University and an incoming USCIRF fellow, said the problem is actually larger than the report or whether the CPCs are included.

“What needs to happen is that the government of the United States needs to take these reports and make them central aspects of American policy and foreign relations,” he said.

Retired Ambassador Randolph Bell, who runs the First Freedom Center, a Virginia-based religious freedom watchdog group, took a similar view. The lack or inclusion of new CPCs isn’t as crucial as whether U.S. foreign policy is going to act on the information gathered by its own staff, and make religious freedom an organizing principle for U.S. bilateral and multilateral relations.

But in any case, Bell said, the U.S. needs to keep churning these reports out to keep attention focused on the cause of the repressed faithful.

“If they’re not there,” Bell said of the reports, “then wouldn’t people who are focused entirely on U.S. trade and economics, or people focused on some other aspect of global affairs, say climate change, just go about their business?”

KRE/AMB END MARKOE

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