Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

Beliefnet News

By Michelle Boorstein A conflict that roiled Washington’s social service world last year is detonating in Illinois, with the state reportedly severing major ties with Catholic Charities over the issue of same-sex marriage. Three branches of Catholic Charities in Illinois went to court today to try and stop the state from ending foster care and…

  American Christians may one day find themselves facing legal penalties simply for believing marriage can only exist between a man and a woman, a fate already suffered by believers in other countries, writes New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan. Perhaps one of America’s most influential Catholics. He reflected in his personal blog on Thursday on the nasty…

A prominent Catholic professor says a New York Times attack on natural contraception is “very peculiar” and “completely uninformative.” Professor Janet Smith holds the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. She is a consultor to the Pontifical Council on the Family and an opponent of contraception.…

By the CNN Wire Staff (CNN) – A national organization focused on ensuring the separation of church and state challenged Wednesday the involvement of Texas Gov. Rick Perry in an upcoming evangelical Christian prayer rally. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is asking the Southern District Court of Texas in Houston to declare Perry’s connection to…

  Nico Alm Austrian drivers license holders are only allowed to wear head coverings in official pictures for religious reasons. These include scarves for Muslim women, skullcaps for Jewish men, turbans for Sikh men and a speghetti strainer for Nico Alm, who convinced officials that he is a “Pastafarian.” The term was coined from “pasta” and “Rastafarian”…

by Anthony Bradley One sign of the declining state of Christianity in America is the way in which believers publicly slander one another, which can do violence to love and undermine the witness of the Church to nonbelievers. A recent example occurred when a Christian blogger took offensive to a comment made by a prominent…

Australian law makers are calling for rules requiring Muslim women in full face veils to remove them at the request of law enforcement officers. Muslim women would have to show their faces to police officers or risk a $5,500 fine and/or a prison sentence under proposed new laws in Australia’s most populous state. The law proposed by…

“When I began this blog,” writes longtime Associated Press staffer Robert Mims, “one thing Beliefnet wanted me to explore was what inspiration or faith lessons could be gleaned from so-called ‘reality television'” shows. “Hmm. Well, there’s no doubt there is a plethora of them. ‘Survivor’ and ‘Big Brother’ began the craze more than a decade ago.…

A sign saying that “We who labor here seek only the truth” has been hanging above the benches of most Miami-Dade Circuit Court judges for decades. And it’s going to stay there, Judge Nushin Sayfie held today, denying a motion by a lawyer for a defendant in a triple-murder case to have the sign in…

By Dan Wiessner Reuters HUDSON, New York (Reuters) – A town clerk in western New York has resigned to avoid being forced to sign marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples, citing religious objections to same-sex marriage. Laura Fotusky, the town clerk in Barker, New York, said in her resignation letter that she will step…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners