Sylvia Vazquez and her husband were overflowing with pride and respect when their son Thomas Vazquez enlisted in the U.S. Army. But as Thomas prepares for his first year-long deployment to Afghanistan, Vazquez worries about how her son's faith could be tested by the experience.
Faith leaders in Kenya are trying to collect one million signatures to petition President Mwai Kibaki to rescind a new law, which legalizes traditional brews.
The crowd-control barriers and TV satellite trucks are gone after a Florida pastor called off a bonfire to burn 200 Qurans, but American Muslims say the political firestorm in Gainesville was more than a momentary flare-up.
The incident laid bare the wildly different perceptions of Islam’s sacred text between Americans — or at least some of them — and rank-and-file Muslims, not to mention the differing responses among Muslims at home and abroad.
But perhaps most troubling, Muslim leaders say the sacrilege of burning a holy text is less dangerous than the hatred or misunderstanding that motivated it, even after …
The Southern Province of the Moravian Church in America voted last week to enter into a covenant relationship with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
The aversion to homosexuality, and the violence that can accompany it, appears to originate less in political ideologies than it does in “religious doctrines of power transformed into cultural sensitivity,” says Latin American political scientist Helio Gallardo.
The president of Germany’s Roman Catholic Bishops Conference has called on Muslims to do more to support religious freedom for Christians around the world, especially in Turkey, from where most German Muslims originate.
The University of Wisconsin should not have prohibited the use of student funds for the worship-related activities of a Roman Catholic campus group, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison distributes funds from student fees for activities of registered student groups but rejected paying for worship, religious instruction and proselytizing by Badger Catholic, a student association.
“A university cannot shape Badger Catholic’s message by selectively funding the speech it approves, but not the speech it disapproves,” wrote Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Sept. 1 decision.
The …
The Rev. Clinton A. McCoy Jr., executive for partnerships of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Synod of the Northeast, died suddenly Sept. 12 of a massive heart attack.
Elder Cynthia Bolbach, moderator of the 219th General Assembly (2010) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, moderator of the 218th General Assembly (2008), have named the Monitoring Group on the Middle East.
Pope Benedict XVI is likely to focus on religious freedom during the first official state visit by a pontiff to Britain, where secularism is growing and Christianity declining.