Interfaith Religious News Service

October 6, 2008
New research claims Bible’s negative stance on women is a myth
by, Bess Twiston Davies
Delilah is dangerous, Jezebel, wicked, and as for Eve… Whether they are temptresses, harlots or simply Old Testament chattels, women (it is often argued) get a raw deal in Scripture, with the odd saintly exception (the virgin Mary).

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By David Gushee
Thursday, 14 August 2008
(ABP) — In his recent book, The Great Awakening, Jim Wallis suggests that it is time to move beyond the conservative vs. liberal paradigm to a framework he calls conservative radicalism. This is true in American culture, in evangelicalism and certainly in Baptist life. As the new school year […]

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from Washington Post “On Faith” 
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/cal_thomas/
All politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, love to use God to baptize their political agendas. In August, 1994, President Bill Clinton addressed an African-American congregation in Maryland. Clinton told them it was “the will of God” that Congress pass his anti-crime bill. He didn’t say if God would accept any amendments.

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Small wonder

A young bishop doesn’t just want to care for the “World’s Smallest Cathedral” — he wants to buy the place and return it to the church.

Linda Leicht
News-Leader
Springfield MO
http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080830/LIFE07/808300331
Highlandville — When Bishop Karl Pruter entrusted the tiny Cathedral of the Prince of Peace to the Rev. Brian Brown last year, the […]

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Tue, Apr. 29, 2008 Posted: 14:53:49 PM EST
Reaching the lost has taken on new meaning for the 16 million Southern Baptists who may be on the brink of decline.

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The liberal end of the Society of Friends has long had members who denied God’s existence or Jesus’ divinity. Now hundreds of pagans call Quakerism home. Matthew Streib, Religion News Service
When his partner died in 2004, Kevin-Douglas Olive reached a crossroads in his faith. Even though he had been a Quaker for almost two decades […]

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JERUSALEM (AP) - Leaders of Ireland’s main Christian churches were barred from praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall Thursday because they refused to remove the crosses they were wearing.

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April 25, 2008
Hundreds of Chileans announced that they will leave the Catholic Church on April 29, in protest of the Vatican involvement with a court’s anti-contraception ruling. Chile’s Constitutional Court outlawed President Michelle Bachelet’s free emergency contraception distribution program on April 18. The court ruled that free distribution of emergency contraception was unconstitutional. According to […]

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5/2/08 
Recently, as we were returning from a church in Ohio, we were reminded that God is always watching over us. We had stopped in Bowling Green, KY, to get something to eat. As we were trying to make it back to I-65, we were repeatedly delayed. Once we finally got onto the interstate, we encountered […]

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May 3, 2008
(CBS) There have always been “haves” and “have-nots” in the United States, but over the past three decades, the gap between them has gotten a lot wider, statistics from congressional numbers crunchers show. 
 
According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, income for the bottom half of American households rose six percent since 1979 but, through […]

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HOUMA, La.—
Up the bayou. Down the bayou. Across the bayou.
For a visitor to this stretch of Louisiana, those are the directions you quickly learn while traveling the waterways and roadways of this southeastern region of this Southern state.
For those at home in the bayou, no weathervane is needed to guide you. No compass readings are […]

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4/17/08 
Would you visit a church called The Holy Assembly of the Fire-Baptized Brethren? Probably not, because it sounds elitist, self-righteous and really old-fashioned. Your unchurched neighbors would most likely drive a few extra miles to avoid passing the place. 
Yet many church names today sound almost as strange and unwelcoming. We insist on using religious vocabulary […]

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By Cary McMullen  THE LEDGER 
FORT WORTH, Texas
Advocates of gay rights wonder whether this might be the year when the United Methodist Church drops its sanction against homosexuality. A proposal that may be voted on today at the church’s General Conference would make the 7.9 million-member church the largest to withhold moral judgment about gay sexual […]

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by Justin Marville
Under the theme Building The Community Through Caring, Sharing, the Shorey Village New Testament Church of God has been stressing to its members the importance of supporting the community through farming.
Now the residents of the district are literally reaping the benefits.

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How The Religious Right Uses The ‘Prosperity Gospel’ To Win Foot Soldiers And Continue Its ‘Culture War’
Researcher Sarah Posner has been following the Religious Right for several years and writes a blog called The FundamentaList for The American Prospect. Her new book, God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (PoliPointPress, 2008) […]

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By Darrell Ehrlick | Lee Newspapers
WINONA, Minn. — Kathy Redig’s most profound act of faith might be the one that gets her condemned, if not excommunicated from the church she’s been a part of her whole life.
She claims the Roman Catholic Church, after May 4, may not claim her.
That’s when Redig plans to be ordained […]

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By Martin King  Apr 9, 2008 
 
CARLINVILLE, Ill. (BP)–Carlinville Southern Baptist Church “can do everything we want in the new facility except use it for worship,” the church’s First Amendment attorney, Daniel Dalton, said.
 
Dalton made the statement following a federal court ruling allowing the Illinois church to remodel a former Wal-Mart to accommodate the growing congregation.

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April 14, 2008 
 
 
By Andrew Wolfson
Fourteen-year-old Michael Ryan may attend St. Xavier High School, despite the objections of his atheist father, an Oldham County family court judge has ruled.
 
In a decision made public today, Judge Tim Feeley said he was persuaded that it is in Michael’s best interest to attend St. X, in part because that’s […]

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by Jim Lobe 
WASHINGTON, Apr 15 (IPS) - A new group of prominent U.S. Jews who believe that the so-called “Israel Lobby” has been dominated for too long by neo-conservatives and other Likud-oriented hawks has launched a new organisation to help fund political candidates who favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a stronger […]

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The participation of emergent church leaders in an interfaith dialogue raised flags for some conservative Christians who have been concerned over a growing cooperation of emergent church leaders with New Spirituality/New Age leaders.

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