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WATERLOO, Ill. (RNS) Televangelist Joyce Meyer said Wednesday (April 6) she testified “honestly and truthfully” in a closed pretrial deposition in the murder trial of her former bodyguard, Christopher Coleman. But Meyer said she would honor a request not to reveal the substance of what was said. The testimony was originally slated to be public,…

(RNS) In its new Sunday night series, The Borgias, Showtime has found the magic combination for ultimate crowd appeal in a scintillating soap opera about a bad-boy pope. The Borgias follows the quasi-historic story of the Spanish noble family who, with the ascent of Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI in 1492, brought a nighttime-television-style…

WASHINGTON (RNS) A slim majority of evangelicals favor government shutdown over a budget compromise, according to new research by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The U.S. government will shutter all non-essential services at midnight, Friday (April 8th) if congressional Republicans and Democrats cannot reach an agreement on the U.S. budget…

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (RNS) At Spiritus Christi Church, the choir sings the lyrics of “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun” — a song about a brothel. Surely, such a tune for a sacred service would never meet the approval of the Rochester Roman Catholic Diocese. Then again, nothing about Spiritus Christi…

WASHINGTON (RNS) President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai blasted the recent burning of a Quran at a Florida church and the deadly riots that followed during a video teleconference meeting on Wednesday (April 6). Both leaders “deplored” the desecration of the Muslim holy book and condemned the subsequent April 1 attack on a U.N.…

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday (April 7) lamented the “tragedy” of a growing number of African migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to reach Europe. In the most recent incident, a boat carrying at least 200 people fleeing the civil war in Libya capsized Wednesday near the island…

(RNS) Pharmacists with religious objections to “morning-after” emergency contraceptives cannot be compelled to sell the product, an Illinois Circuit Judge ruled Tuesday (April 5). The Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act was passed in 1998 to shield health care workers from going against their own beliefs. In 2005, then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued a ruling…

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Obama administration’s embattled nominee for religious freedom ambassador is comparing herself to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as she tries for a second time to land the post. “They called Margaret Thatcher the ‘iron lady,”‘ the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook said Tuesday (April 5) in an address to a dinner of…

(RNS) A British theoretical astrophysicist who has achieved renown for his study of the cosmos and for sounding warnings about the future of humanity has won the $1.6 million 2011 Templeton Prize. Martin J. Rees of Cambridge University, a former president of Britain’s prestigious Royal Society, was announced the winner on Wednesday (April 6) by…

NEW YORK (RNS) The Cross at Ground Zero was one of thousands of I-beams used to construct the iron skeletons of the World Trade Center towers. This one fell from the fiery, apocalyptic heavens during the 9/11 terror attacks and stuck upright in the ground, in a field of similar but smaller crosses. The iconic…

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