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The new effort to outlaw the full-length veil – niqabs and burqas – in public trumps earlier efforts to ban it only in some official buildings. The move comes at a time when French Muslims say they are being targeted as outsiders or not fully French.
Read the Full Article at Religion News Blog
If wearing a burqa prevents a woman from getting a job she should also not expect to receive benefits.
So says Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen in an interview with Dutch-language newspaper Trouw.
He is not calling for a ban on the burqa.
Read the Full Article at NYT > Religion and Belief
In a first presidential address in 136 years to a joint session of France’s parliament, President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed support to lawmakers who have called for a ban of the Muslim Burqa.
Read the Full Article at RNS Blog
The Vatican today sent a greeting to the world’s Buddhists on the occasion of the forthcoming festival of Vesakh, thanking them for their “inspiring witness of non-attachment and
contentment,” and emphasizing that Catholics and Buddhists share an appreciation of the spiritual value of poverty.
Read the Full Article at News2
In a letter to parliament, Dutch Education Minister Ronald Plasterk writes that the government intends to introduce a burqa ban in schools. –
Radio Netherlands reports Not only teachers and schoolchildren, but also parents and school
caretakers will be banned from wearing face-covering garments, both
inside the school buildings and outside in the playground. The minister
writes that it is important for children to learn that proper
communication requires being able to look the other person in the eye.
Read the Full Article at News2
A hells angel, a lesbian and a playboy are just some of the non-Christians to agree to Bible studies and Christian mentoring as part of a new Channel Four series to air this month. –
Christian Today reports Make Me a Christian follows the three-week journey of thirteen
non-Christians who also include a witch, a Muslim, an unmarried couple
with a child on the way, and a family of six, as they get to grips with
Christianity through a number of Bible studies and mentoring from an
ecumenical team of church leaders.
Read the Full Article at News2
Many Christian leaders lamented the results of a Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey from June, which revealed that 57 percent of those affiliated with evangelical churches agree with the statement that many religions can lead to eternal life. But that number may not be as alarming as it first appears, said Terry Mattingly, editor of media blog GetReligion. Many survey respondents, he said, may not have distinguished between religion and denomination. –
Christianity Today reports “It’s one thing for evangelicals to say they believe salvation can be
found through religions such as Catholicism, Lutheranism, and so on,”
Mattingly said. “It is something else to say that salvation can be
found through the religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Wicca.”
Read the Full Article at News2
Hashmel Turner of Fredericksburg, Va., wears two hats: City Council member and part-time pastor of the First Baptist Church of Love. Not surprisingly, Rev. Turner wants to pray in the name of Jesus Christ — including when it’s his turn to offer the opening prayer at council sessions. –
The Morning Sun [VA, USA] reports But on July 23, Turner lost the latest round in his battle to invoke
Jesus when the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the
Fredericksburg City Council’s policy requiring that prayers at meetings
be nondenominational.
In an opinion written by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor (asked to take part in the case as a visiting judge), the
court ruled that the prayers at issue are “government speech” and
therefore the prayer policy does not violate Turner’s free speech or
free exercise of religion.
Read the Full Article at News2
One of the core arguments of Intelligent Design is that the fundamental constants of physics and chemistry are just right or fine-tuned to allow the universe and life as we know it to exist. They are precisely the values needed to have a universe capable of producing life. –
Mukul Sharma at the Economic Times comments There is evidence for this: the observed
values of the four fundamental forces of nature appear to be delicately
balanced. A slight increase in the strong nuclear force, for instance, would
mean all the hydrogen in the early universe would have been converted to helium.
There would be no water or the long-lived stable stars that are essential for
life.
Read the Full Article at News2
Lawyers for the ex-husband of Juanita Bynum are suing the televangelist, claiming that she has not paid the first installment of a $40,000 legal bill to his divorce attorney. –
AP reports Bynum agreed to pay the bill in four $10,000 installments as part of a
settlement agreement reached between her and Thomas Weeks III. The
first installment was due July and the next is due Aug. 8.
Read the Full Article at News2
A recent federal court ruling has upheld the First Amendment rights of politically conservative and Christian students at Georgia Tech. –
OneNewsNow reports The Georgia Institute of Technology, more commonly known as Georgia
Tech, will have to modify its so-called "Safe Space" program. David
Hacker, litigation counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund,
explains the situation. “A government entity – Georgia Tech, in this
instance – was basically telling students that certain ways of
interpreting the Bible were incorrect; whereas, the way that they
were interpreting the Bible was correct and the only way,” he explains.
“And that is simply something that the government shouldn’t be in the
business of doing.”
Read the Full Article at News2
The National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago has drawn the wrath of homosexual activists who object to the induction of Dr. James Dobson, a major figure in the US Christian pro-life and family movement. Wayne Besen, a homosexual activist, organised a campaign against the Hall of Fame that resulted in several hundred emails demanding that Dr. Dobson be removed from the list of nominees. –
LifeSiteNews reports Dr. Dobson is the founder and head of Focus on the Family, one of
the most prominent US Protestant evangelical organisations. According
to homosexual activist Wayne Besen, Dr. Dobson is “an extremist who has
built his empire on the backs of gays and lesbians” and “a bigot who
distorts scientific research.” Focus on the Family is one of Besen’s
favourite targets and he has set up a website meant to refute the
medical and psychological research put forward by Focus on the nature
and treatment of homosexuality as a disorder.
“It is an affront for the Radio Hall of Fame to honor James Dobson, a right wing demagogue,” said Besen.
Read the Full Article at News2
The heirs of the Knights Templar have launched a legal battle in Spain to force the Pope to restore the reputation of the disgraced order which was accused of heresy and dissolved seven centuries ago. –
The Telegraph reports The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ,
whose members claim to be descended from the legendary crusaders, have
filed a lawsuit against Benedict XVI calling for him to recognise the
seizure of assets worth 100 billion euros (£79 billion).
They
claim that when the order was dissolved by his predecessor Pope Clement
V in 1307, more than 9,000 properties as well as countless pastures,
mills and other commercial ventures belonging to the knights were
appropriated by the church.
Read the Full Article at News2
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has continued to support Kenya’s Raila Odinga, even after Odinga has been blamed for inciting tribal violence and slaughtering Christians, according to an explosive new book written by WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi. –
WND reports In “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,”
Corsi argues that Odinga’s protests following his loss to U.S.-backed
Mwai Kibaki in Kenya’s 2007 presidential election led to a wave of
tribal and religious violence aimed against Kibaki’s majority Kikuyu
tribe.
The violence Obama’s ally was blamed for included the slaughter of some 50 Pentecostal Christians.
Read the Full Article at News2
For a man at the heart of a bitter dispute that threatens to sunder the Anglican communion, Bishop Gene Robinson seems more relaxed than almost any of the 650 bishops and archbishops gathered for the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade assembly that brings together the leaders of an estimated 80 million Anglicans worldwide. –
The NY Times reports The easy demeanor and constant smile of this openly gay 61-year-old
Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire, when we meet at the Falstaff
Hotel just down the street from Canterbury Cathedral, are all the more
remarkable for the fact that he is the only man among the many wearing
the Anglican bishop’s purple on Canterbury’s streets these past two
weeks who wasn’t invited to the conference. Indeed, since the
conference first met in 1867, he was the only Anglican bishop anywhere,
except those disgraced for disputed legitimacy, malfeasance or
criminality, to be told — in his case, by the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury — that there was no seat for him at the Lambeth table.
Read the Full Article at News2
The teen whose death led to calls for parental notification in abortion cases was married and had a child. Critics of California’s Prop. 4 file a suit asking to remove her story from the voter guide. –
The LA Times reports In court papers filed in her home state of Texas after her death, the
man with whom she lived declared himself her common-law husband in an
effort to secure custody of the child. Texas recognizes common-law
marriage and does not view a married 15-year-old as a minor, according
to an attorney for Planned Parenthood.
Read the Full Article at News2
That sense of taking responsibility is only one expression of what person after person has said to me: “There is no desire to separate.” When we have discussed – as we’ve had to – the possibilities of remaining divided or becoming more so, no one has relished this or thought it a good outcome in terms of our mission. And our guest speakers have, with surprising consistency, affirmed our capacity to bear with one another patiently as one of the great gifts they saw in us. –
The Independent reports But this is a point where we have to note the temptation to
congratulate ourselves, and be careful. “Anglicans are a profoundly
diverse community who nonetheless live tolerantly with each other”:
we’ve all said it, and it sounds wonderful, but it can conceal some
fault-lines – and some wounds. On its own, it could mean that nothing
matters enough to us to understand why some conflicts are unavoidable
and costly – why some feel we put unity before truth, and so feel we
have no very deep sense of truth itself.
Read the Full Article at News2
It’s a medical first – a 14-year-old German boy became the youngest patient in history to begin treatment to prepare him for a sex change, but a conservative group says the boy’s parents and doctors have been unfairly influenced by the homosexual lobby. –
CNS reports Tim, who now goes by the name, Kim, said he wanted to have the surgery
since he was 12, but that he considered himself a female since the age
of two. He has already begun receiving hormonal therapy, in preparation
for the operation which entails the surgical removal of his genital
organs.
Some doctors said he should be sent to a mental hospital for observation. Others approved of the sex change.
Read the Full Article at News2
Police in the Chicago area, investigating the slaying of five women in a Lane Bryant clothing store earlier this year, have sent 11 officers from Illinois to Texas to investigate what role a church may have played in the killings. –
WND reports The murder by an unknown gunman, previously reported as a botched
robbery, now invites more sinister speculation as police draw a
suspected connection between the collapse of a Chicago-area church and
one of the shooting victims, Rhoda McFarland.
McFarland served as an associate and youth pastor of Embassy
Christian Center in Crest Hill, Ill., but left the church in 2006 and
became the manager of the Lane Bryant store where she and four other
women were killed execution-style six months ago.
Read the Full Article at News2
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a seal impression belonging to a minister of the biblical King Zedekiah, which dates back 2,600 years, during an archeological dig in Jerusalem’s ancient City of David. The finding helps corroborate the story pertaining to the biblical minister’s demand to have the prophet Jeremiah killed. –
Haaretz reports The seal impression, or bulla, with the name
Gedalyahu ben Pashur, who served as minister to King Zedekiah (597-586
BCE) according to the Book of Jeremiah, was found completely intact
just meters away from a separate seal impression of another of
Zedekia’s ministers, Yehukual ben Shelemyahu, which was unearthed three
years ago.