Zimmerman Gun Raffle * Machine Gun Preacher * Is Yoga Religious? : Tuesday’s Religion News Roundup

A gun rights group planned to raffle off the same model of gun used to kill Trayvon Martin -- and a Bible. The "machine gun preacher" gets a big award. And a court tries to decide whether yoga is religious.

A gun and the Bible. Image courtesy of timotheos via Shutterstock
A gun and the Bible. Image courtesy of timotheos via Shutterstock

A gun and the Bible. Image courtesy of timotheos via Shutterstock

This can’t be true, but it is.

A Bible and a Kel-Tec PF-9, the same model of the semi-automatic that George Zimmerman used to fatally shoot Trayvon Martin last year, were to be auctioned off at an event of the The Gun Rights Preservation Forum featuring Zimmerman’s defense attorney on Nov. 4.


Organizers have decided that the Bible/Gun raffle should be held at a later date.

I really don’t know what to say. Your comment here. Or just put it in the comment section.

Our own Cathy Lynn Grossman looks at a new survey of Libertarians from the Public Religion Research Institute, and finds the group young, white, male and “beginning to punch above their weight.”

At Liberty University Monday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., warned a crowd that advances in biology combined with abortion could lead to a society that weeds out people deemed to have undesirable traits.

Our own Kimberly Winston reports that the Air Force Academy has dropped “so help me God” from their honor oath. Said the Academy’s superintendent:

 . . .  we work to build a culture of dignity and respect, and that respect includes the ability of our cadets, Airmen and civilian Airmen to freely practice and exercise their religious preference — or not.

A federal judge in Texas has struck down key provisions of a new state law designed to restrict access to abortion, but left others in place.

But nontheists are crying foul in Brazil, where military police officers can now take a Christian Bible course designed to cut down on police brutality.

RNS blogger Cathleen Falsani said she wanted to look away many times while watching “Twelve Years A Slave.” But she said she didn’t, and that we shouldn’t either.

I know people who practice yoga religiously but is yoga religious? An Indian court considers mandatory school exercises.


Tourism officials in Rome are thanking Pope Francis for a seven percent rise in visitors to the city this year, 20 percent of which are, just like the pope, from Latin America. Is the mayor of Vegas wishing Francis was born in his town?

The controversial “Machine Gun Preacher” has joined the ranks of Malala Yousafzai and the Dalai Lama in receiving a top award from an Indian charity that eulogizes Mother Teresa, reports Christianity Today. Sam Childers becomes the first American to win the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice.

The United Methodist Church’s highest court issued three rulings this weekend that do not change church policy toward gays and lesbians but allow bishops to accept resolutions expressing dissent from church teachings.

The fiftieth anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis, the most popular Christian writer of all times, will be celebrated in the U.S. but hardly in Northern Ireland, where he was born and raised, or England, where he lived most his life.

True C.S. Lewis fact and my claim to fame: my Uncle Morty’s cousin was married to his wife, Joy Davidman, who was at various points in her life: a Jewish girl from the Bronx, an atheist, Communist, acclaimed poet, Christian, and author of Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments. The couple’s relationship is chronicled in the movie Shadowlands, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.

– Lauren Markoe

I may never live up to the legacy of my deceased, extremely distant relative Joy Davidman. But I will write the Religion News Roundup for you faithfully, and my colleagues will too. Sign up for your free, spamless roundup below.


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