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(RNS) The election of an Episcopal bishop in Michigan who has practiced Buddhist meditation and changed traditional church prayers appears headed for defeat, according to an unofficial tally kept by a newspaper reporter. The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester was elected bishop of the sparsely populated Diocese of Northern Michigan in February. Under Episcopal Church rules,…

Wichita, Kan. – The church where late-term abortion provider George Tiller was killed is bringing in counselors to help members and has received supportive messages from around the world, the senior pastor said. The Rev. Lowell Michelson of Reformation Lutheran Church said crisis intervention experts will help people through group and individual counseling. “That’s certainly…

Washington — Dogged by persistent but untrue rumors that he was a closet Muslim, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign carefully sidestepped questions about his Muslim ancestry and asked two Muslim women in headscarves to take seats away from the cameras. But on Thursday (June 4), Obama quoted the “Holy Quran,” greeted his audience with the customary…

New Hampshire became the sixth state to legalize gay marriage on Wednesday (June 3) in part because faith leaders testified that the measure would not impinge on religious rights, according to V. Gene Robinson, the state’s openly gay Episcopal bishop. When credible Christians, Muslims and Jews advocated for same-sex marriage, it “had a lot of…

WASHINGTON — Not long after 9/11, Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani was working in Pakistan when her friend and housemate, Daniel Pearl, was abducted and killed by Islamic extremists. His death — and the version of Islam that seemed to sanction it — has haunted her ever since. When she returned to her native…

(RNS) The Rev. Thomas Berry, a Passionist monk who made it his life’s work to explore the connection between humans and the earth, died at a retirement community in his native Greensboro, N.C., on Monday (June 1). He was 94. The self-described “geologian” was on the forefront of eco-theological thinking, trying to link religious institutions…

(RNS) Germany saw the ordination of its own Orthodox rabbis on Tuesday (June 2), a first in the more than six decades since the Nazi Holocaust and World War II. Broadcast live on German television, the historic ordination of Zsolt Balla, 30, and Avraham Radbill, 25, signals a slowly reviving German Jewry, which once faced…

Dr. George Tiller’s murder on Sunday (May 31) morning in the lobby of his Lutheran church counters the secular image of a late-term abortion provider, pinning him more as a churchgoing “martyr” than a godless murderer. Shot and killed while passing out bulletins in the lobby of his Wichita, Kan., church as his wife sat…

Holland, Mich. – For the first time in 390 years, the Reformed Church in America has a confession to make. The Belhar Confession, a declaration of human unity, justice and reconciliation that was drafted in 1982 by Reformed churches in apartheid-era South Africa, will be up for approval at the RCA’s June 4-9 General Synod…

Religion writers for The New York Times and the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American are among the top winners of the American Academy of Religion’s prizes for in-depth religion reporting. Laurie Goodstein of the Times won the 2009 contest for journalists at news outlets with circulations of more than 100,000 or on the Web. She was honored…
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