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

Beliefnet News

WASHINGTON (RNS) The imam who has faced resistance for plans to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero said Tuesday (March 1) that pro-democracy movements across the Arab world need to be open to all faiths. “Government’s coercive powers should not be used against one religion,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a panel…

IRVINE, Calif. (RNS) “Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech!” And so began the protest of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s lecture at the University of California, Irvine in February 2010, as the shouting student, Osama Ahmed Shabaik, was escorted out of the auditorium by police to cheers and jeers. It didn’t…

METAIRIE, La. (RNS) A fundamentalist Christian pastor known for his bullhorn protests of the annual Southern Decadence gay pride festival was arrested on a charge of masturbating at a park on Friday (Feb. 25). The Rev. Grant Storms, 53, was taken into custody after two women reported seeing him masturbating in the driver’s seat of…

LONDON (RNS) Two senior judges have banned a Christian couple from any further foster care because they oppose homosexuality, a stance that the judges said has no place in the laws of a “largely secular” Britain. Owen and Eunice Johns, of Derby, England, have already fostered 15 children, but the High Court in London ruled…

(RNS) The Rev. Peter Gomes, the longtime minister of Harvard University’s Memorial Church who was hailed as one of the nation’s top preachers, died Monday (Feb. 28) at age 68. Gomes died from complications of a stroke he suffered in December, the university said. Gomes defied stereotypes throughout his life with his atypical attributes —…

(RNS) Late last week, the provost of Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., announced that the school officially had recognized its first gay student organization. The announcement came barely a month after the Christian school changed its anti-discrimination policy to include homosexuals, after a popular women’s soccer coach was forced out last December because her lesbian…

(RNS) For evangelical author John MacArthur, the best way to explain a Christian’s relationship to Jesus is what appears to be a simple metaphor — one often used by the Apostle Paul himself. “To be a Christian is to be a slave of Christ,” writes MacArthur, the pastor of a nondenominational church in Sun Valley,…

Rob Bell’s new book is ruffling some religious feathers, and it hasn’t even hit bookstores yet.The Founding Pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan and one of the foremost voices within the “Emergent” post-modern Church movement was vilified on Twitter and throughout the blogosphere for his upcoming release, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven,…

In honor of National Pancake Day, International House of Pancakes diners can get a complimentary short stack for a small donation to charities such as the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital. The dine-in special runs from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. Tuesday, March 1st. Last year, IHOP raised more than two million dollars for designated local…

(RNS) An Orthodox Jew has won a new trial after Maryland’s highest court ruled that a lower court erred when it denied his requests to suspend a trial so he could observe a religious holiday. Alexander Neustadter had argued he could not be in court during two days of a medical malpractice trial because of…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners