religion

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Hollywood Prays for Laughs from the Faithful

With 'Evan Almighty,' Universal skews pious in comedy division

(Newser) - God is returning to the big screen this Friday in Universal's Evan Almighty, a big-budget comedy aimed at the churchgoing. The LA TImes recalls that Hollywood used to balk at religiously-inflected films, but saw the light when Mel Gibson's spiritual blockbuster The Passion of the Christ raked in $370M in...

Ruth Graham Dead at 87
Ruth Graham Dead at 87
Jun 15, 2007 4:14 AM CDT

Ruth Graham Dead at 87

Motorcycle-riding evangelist's wife recalled as spirited, opinionated

(Newser) - Ruth Graham, wife of Billy Graham, stayed in the background of the legendary evangelist's ministry but was far from obscure. The missionary's daughter was at once demure, feisty, independent, and unpredictable, the LA Times reports. Graham, who died yesterday at 87, was also an accomplished poet and parent to five...

Paris Declares She's Got God Intentions

Prison turns heiress towards religion, ABC

(Newser) - Paris Hilton says she's found God and will change her life at the end of her 45-day jail term. Barbara Walters chatted with the heretofore mischievous and materialistic heiress on a collect call from prison, and recapped the conversation on yesterday's View. "I have become much more spiritual,"...

'Heresy' Goes Digital
'Heresy' Goes Digital
Jun 8, 2007 11:24 AM CDT

'Heresy' Goes Digital

Italians Catholics renouncing their faith turn to the Web for help with 'debaptism'

(Newser) - Cutting ties with the Catholic Church is, in theory, a relatively simple matter known as "debaptism." More and more Italians who aren't worried about the Vatican's formal stance on what it calls "an act of apostasy, heresy or schism" are finding the documents they need online. Wired ...

Brazil to Subsidize Birth Control
Brazil to Subsidize Birth Control
May 29, 2007 7:50 AM CDT

Brazil to Subsidize Birth Control

Cheaper pills give poor women same right to family planning, says president

(Newser) - Just weeks after Pope Benedict XVI decried contraception as a threat to the future of Latin America on his visit to Brazil, Brazil's president announced that the government would subsidize birth control pills at private pharmacies so poor women can have "the same right that the wealthy have to...

Pope Backtracks on Muslims
Pope Backtracks on Muslims
May 29, 2007 5:31 AM CDT

Pope Backtracks on Muslims

Benedict rebuilds demoted department the leads dialog with Islamic world

(Newser) - The Pope applied some salve to wounded relations with the Muslim world yesterday after neglecting and then appearing to slander Islam in a speech last fall. In a surprising reversal, Benedict XVI announced he is restoring the Vatican department responsible for Muslim affairs, which he demoted in importance last year.

Tolerant Swiss to Ban Minarets?
Tolerant Swiss to Ban Minarets?
May 28, 2007 9:57 PM CDT

Tolerant Swiss to Ban Minarets?

(Newser) - The Swiss have gone NIMBY (not in my back yard) on minarets.  While Switzerland's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, a number of leading politicians want to ban them via a referendum this fall.  There are now exactly two minarets in all of Switzerland.

Desmond Tutu to Anglicans: Get Over It

Church should attend to AIDS, corruption, Darfur—not gay priests

(Newser) - Nobel peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on Africa's Anglican church to let go of what he called its "extraordinary obsession" with gay priests and same-sex marriage.  The church should, instead, be paying attention to the crises caused by AIDS, Darfur and Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe's corruption. 

Creationists Open History Museum
Creationists Open History Museum
May 24, 2007 5:40 PM CDT

Creationists Open History Museum

On the sixth day, God created dinosaurs, says curator

(Newser) - A $27 million museum opening in Kentucky next week promises a different kind of take on natural history: a biblical one. At the Creation Museum, the Earth is 6,000 years old, evolution is a yarn, and dinosaurs were booked on Noah's Ark.

Falwell's Death Ends an Era
Falwell's Death Ends an Era
May 16, 2007 9:08 AM CDT

Falwell's Death Ends an Era

Fineman takes the measure of a partisan preacher and his political legacy

(Newser) - It's impossible to grasp the profound change in American political life in the last quarter-century without understanding Jerry Falwell and the movement he fostered, writes Newsweek's Howard Fineman. Falwell, who died yesterday, created the Moral Majority, helped launch the Reagan Revolution, and dug the evangelical foundations—currently shifting—on which...

Televangelist Falwell Dead at 73
Televangelist Falwell Dead
at 73
May 15, 2007 1:09 PM CDT

Televangelist Falwell Dead at 73

Controversial conservative mixed religion, politics

(Newser) - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and mixed evangelism with conservative social criticism, died today after collapsing in his office at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. He was 73. A lightning rod for controversy, Falwell once called AIDS "the wrath of a just God against homosexuals"...

Pastor: Killer Possessed by 'Demonic Power'

Cho's mother sought spiritual healing as son deteriorated

(Newser) - The mother of Seung Hui Cho sought spiritual healing for her angry, troubled son, the Washington Post reports in an examination of the Virginia Tech shooter's mental state. The head pastor of the One Mind Church in Woodbridge, Virginia, said his church was approached last summer to help deliver the...

McGreevey Makes a Leap Of Faith
McGreevey Makes a Leap
Of Faith
May 3, 2007 7:29 AM CDT

McGreevey Makes a Leap Of Faith

Gay former N.J. governor to become an Episcopal priest

(Newser) - James McGreevey, who resigned as New Jersey governor to avoid being outed by a former gay lover, plans to become an Episcopalian priest. McGreevey, who had been a Catholic, was received into the faith at St. Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan Sunday, and has been accepted into the Master of Divinity...

How Barack Found Jesus
How Barack Found Jesus
Apr 30, 2007 1:32 PM CDT

How Barack Found Jesus

Candidate chose Christianity over mom's humanism, dad's Islam

(Newser) - The Times retraces Barack Obama's peripatetic path to the Christianity he embraced 20 years ago and now invokes as he presents his presidential campaign in nothing short of biblical terms. Obama's mother was an anthropologist who schooled her son in the variety of religious experiences; his father's family in Kenya...

Gunmen Execute 23 In Kurdish Sect
Gunmen Execute 23 In Kurdish Sect
Apr 22, 2007 3:54 PM CDT

Gunmen Execute 23 In Kurdish Sect

Yazidis pulled from bus and shot in reprisal for stoning

(Newser) - Gunmen in northern Iraq stopped a bus carrying workers home from a textile factory  today, identified 23 members of a tiny religious sect on board, and shot them to death. The bus was filled with Christians and Yazidis, a mostly Kurdish sect that worships an angel, the AP reports.

Bible Belt Brings Fight to Europe
Bible Belt Brings Fight to Europe
Apr 17, 2007 11:36 AM CDT

Bible Belt Brings Fight to Europe

Evangelicals attack stem cells, gays, truancy laws on the continent

(Newser) - American evangelicals have opened a new front in the culture wars—across the Atlantic. Christian groups, including Pat Robertson's legal organization, the American Center for Law and Justice, are actively challenging German laws against home schooling, defending Britons who refuse to work on Sunday, and combating same-sex marriage and stem...

Obama as Jesus Stirs Some Ire
Obama as Jesus
Stirs Some Ire
Apr 3, 2007 9:04 AM CDT

Obama as Jesus Stirs Some Ire

Christ sculpture draws protest, but Barack turns the other cheek

(Newser) - Another sculpture of Jesus is stirring protest this Holy Week—this time a work portraying Barack Obama as the savior. The Art Institute of Chicago has gotten a flood of angry calls over the piece in an exhibition of student work, close on the heels of the chocolate Christ brouhaha...

Germans Spy on Scientologists
Germans Spy on Scientologists
Mar 29, 2007 8:06 AM CDT

Germans Spy on Scientologists

They're wiretapping followers. Will Tom Cruise swoop in to save the day?

(Newser) - Celeb church-of-choice Scientology is under surveillance from German intelligence officials, alarmed at the recent opening of its new chapel in Berlin, just blocks from the Reichstag. Leaders' phones have been tapped. "This is a dangerous group… that wants to break the will of each of its members. That's why...

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