Fat Tuesday’s roundup

Happy Fat Tuesday, everybody. May you enjoy your last indulgences before the sullen season begins. The National Council of Churches released its annual yearbook of church-membership statistics. The big news seems to be that the Southern Baptist Convention reported a decline, though slight, for the second year in a row. The Catholic Church rebounded with […]

Happy Fat Tuesday, everybody. May you enjoy your last indulgences before the sullen season begins.

The National Council of Churches released its annual yearbook of church-membership statistics. The big news seems to be that the Southern Baptist Convention reported a decline, though slight, for the second year in a row. The Catholic Church rebounded with an increase of 1.5 percent and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints grew by 1.71 percent.

Authorities are conducting a manhunt for a legal adviser to the American missionaries in Haiti who is wanted in El Salvador for alleged involvement in a human smuggling ring. The NYT has a story on the tensions between missionaries from different faiths in Haiti.


President Obama named a White House lawyer (and Quran expert) as his special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, as part of his attempts to rebuild ties with Muslims. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints appointed a new president, and Baylor University appointed Ken Starr as its president.

The openly lesbian Episcopal suffragan bishop-elect of Los Angeles has received 36 of the necessary consent votes from diocesan standing committees. She has until May to get 20 more. The (straight) woman elected as Los Angeles other suffragan bishop at the same convention has received 48 consents thus far. The Diocese of Los Angeles did not report the tally from diocesan bishops, from which the candidates also need majority approval.

A Kentucky judge has ordered the state to take down two billboards with religious messages, saying they violate highway beautification laws, a Washington teen was told to take off his Nietzsche t-shirt, which bore the philosopher’s face and famous quote “God is Dead,” before sitting for a yearbook photo, and Jewish groups are split on whether universities can refuse to recognize groups that discriminate, an issue which will be taken up by the Supreme Court.

Two teenage brothers shot in a Northern California church are cooperating with the police. Catholics are torn between the biblical injunction to “be fruitful and multiply” and the church’s condemnation of most reproductive technologies, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Pope Benedict XVI urged Irish clergy to confront the pedophile priest scandal that has rocked the church, the Vatican said it will post some of its WWII archives online in an apparent attempt to quell controversy over its efforts to canonize Pope Pius XII. Tibetans refused to celebrate the new year on Sunday to protest their lack of religious freedom.

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