We lead with our losses: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth is dead. The pastor of Birmingham’s Bethel Baptist Church faced down the police dogs, the fire hoses and Bull Connor. Dr. Martin Luther King called him “one of the nation’s most courageous freedom fighters … a wiry, energetic and indomitable man.” And here’s what President Obama had to say about his passing.
Steve Jobs was Job? His personal faith history is short on details, but the faithful are reading much into the life of the man, with many combing through Jobs’ thoughts on death. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite in the Washington Post has a lot to say about Job’s Apple and the one from the Garden of Eden.
Now appreciate who’s still here: Joseph Lowery, the “dean of the civil rights movement,” turns 90 today.
Two groups representing some 2,000 military chaplains have said they’re not going to perform marriages between gay people, even though the Pentagon last week said they can. But the two abstaining groups go farther, saying that the Pentagon has violated the Defense of Marriage Act by condoning gay marriages on military bases.
Is this a First or Second Amendment case? A gun rights group is trying to overturn a 2010 Georgia law that bans guns in houses of worship.
A judge upholds the firing of an Ohio science teacher for teaching creationism.
The U.S. House has passed a continuing spending resolution that keeps the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) alive through Nov. 18.
Maureen Dowd versus the Bishops, Round 2. The New York Times columnist and Catholic University alumnae gets an earful on the letters page from Howard J. Hubbard, the bishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Albany, for her assertion that that “American bishops have been inconsistent in preaching their values.”
Barbara Whitt and her son Michael stole more than $1.5 million from a Tennessee Baptist church where she was financial secretary for 46 years. The defense attorney asked the judge for leniency for the 44-year-old son, because he was product of an “overindulgent mother.”
The Sunni’s who run Saudi Arabia are getting nervous about Shiite unrest in an eastern province. They blame Iran.
Reuters offers an interesting profile of a five-year-old Nepali boy who is worshipped by many as a god. But he also wants to be a doctor. His parents are double proud.
– Lauren Markoe
