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Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Spamanot
Do you get tired of unsolicited emails clogging your inbox with offers of everything from Viagra to sure-fire stocks to a 20 percent share of Sister Fatima from Nigeria's unexpected $20 million inheritance?Spam has...
Cleveland Bishop Seeks Meeting with Breakaway Catholics
CLEVELAND (RNS) Bishop Richard Lennon wants to meet with the priest and lay leaders of a breakaway congregation to try to bring them back into the fold, a spokesman for the diocese said Monday (Aug. 16). The Diocese of...
Religious Groups Push Action on Prison Rape
WASHINGTON (RNS) Six months before she was scheduled to be released on drug charges, Marilyn Shirley was raped in 2000 by a guard at the Texas prison where she was serving time. I am still haunted by the words he...
Atheist Group to Raise Funds for Religious Charity
(RNS) An atheist foundation that seeks to foster charitable giving among nonbelievers is encouraging members to donate to a religious charity ”and the move is stirring mixed feelings among members. Foundation Beyond...
Six Observations From a Pilgrimage with Scripture
I am settling into a new Sunday school class. (It's actually a class that I helped start several years ago and have returned to after doing some other things on Sunday mornings.) The class emphasizes freewheeling...
Why Conservatives Should Favor Manhattan Mosque
The controversy over the construction of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City is escalating. The issue is being portrayed by some as a "conservative versus liberal" controversy. In fact, there are very...
British Churches Focus on 2012 Olympics in London
With less than two years to go, British churches are being urged to start formulating plans to coincide with the London 2012 Olympics. The umbrella organization More Than Gold, which was set up in 2008 to enable...
Sabbath conflicts from without and within
My meager early Sunday morning exercise was done and coffee in hand when a sleepy-eyed crowd began gathering on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga on Aug. 8. Out of love and obligation these friends and family would...
Fight over N.Y. Mosque Becomes a Partisan Wedge issue for Obama, GOP
WASHINGTON (RNS) What started as a local zoning debate about an Islamic center near Ground Zero, and then morphed into a fight over religious expression, has now turned into an election-year political brawl. Caught in...
Study Says Religious Hospitals more Efficient, Provide Better Care
(RNS) Catholic and other church-run health care systems in the U.S. are more efficient and provide higher quality care than their secular counterparts, according to a new Thomson Reuters study. The study looked at 255...
Atheists Campaign for Right to Blaspheme Religion
(RNS) The Amherst, N.Y.-based Center for Inquiry (CFI) has changed the name of its International Blasphemy Day to International Blasphemy Rights Day in a bid t show that organizers are not interested in mocking...
What Does Meat-Eating and Global Warming Have to Do with Spiritual Poverty?
A five-day environmental meeting at Prague's International Baptist Theological Seminary (IBTS) made the connection between global warming and meat consumption. According to the European Baptist Press (EBP) service,...
Manhattan Mosque: Gesture of Neighborliness, Healing
For thousands of families, Ground Zero in southern Manhattan is holy ground. Thousands lost someone they love in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and hundreds of thousands know someone who was directly or...
Compassion Guided Slain Medical Volunteers in Afghanistan
The numbers being quoted about the Pakistan floods are mind-boggling. They're inflating so rapidly that there is no point in repeating them here; they will be out of date by the time these words are read. So many...
Lace Up Your Running Shoes
A sermon delivered by Robert Browning, Pastor, Smoke Rise Baptist Church, Stone Mountain, Ga., on August 15, 2010. Hebrews 11:29-12:2 Amy is my thirty-two-year-old daughter. She is married to John and they have twins,...
Red Sky At Morning
A sermon delivered by Randy Hyde, Pastor, Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, Little Rock, Ark., on August 15, 2010 Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:49-56 If you ever wonder why some people...
Loving Beyond Our Theology
A sermon delivered by Joel Snider, First Baptist Church, Rome, Ga., on August 8, 2010. Jonah 4 Morning Prayer: O God, help us to live in this present moment. We pray that we would not feel the need to turn back to...
By Faith
A sermon delivered by Randy Hyde, Pastor, Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, Little Rock, Ark., on August 8, 2010. Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 When I first started out in...
Build the mosque, build good will
The proposed construction of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero has reached "scorching" on the hot-button scale of controversy. Political conservatives almost uniformly oppose the mosque, arguing that it encroaches...
Financial Woes Lead to President’s Resignation at Methodist College
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) Trustees at Birmingham-Southern College on Wednesday (Aug. 11) accepted the resignation of President David Pollick after a months-long controversy over accounting errors and overspending. The...
Christian Leaders Praise Taize Community on 70th Anniversary
GENEVA (RNS/ENInews) World Christian leaders are paying tribute to the ecumenical Taize community in eastern France, which is marking the 70th anniversary of its founding in 1940 by Brother Roger Schutz, who died in...