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New York – More than 40 years after they traveled to India to study transcendental meditation, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will reunite for the cause. The only two surviving Beatles, who rarely appear in public together, will perform at “Paul McCartney and Friends: Change Begins Within,” an April 4 benefit at New York’s Radio…

San Francisco – Advocates on both sides of the gay marriage issue demonstrated outside California’s highest court Thursday before justices heard arguments on lawsuits seeking to overturn the state’s ban on same-sex nuptials. Supporters of gay marriage carried rainbow flags and banners that urged the overturning of voter-approved Proposition 8, which took away the right…

Membership has waned in the nation’s largest Christian bodies– the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention — while mainline Protestant churches continue to shrink, according to the “Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.” With more than 67 million members, the Catholic Church continues to far outnumber other American denominations. But Catholics lost nearly…

WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious groups are divided over a lawsuit filed Tuesday (March 3) to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which gay groups claim unconstitutionally denies them the rights and responsibilities given to straight married couples. The Clinton-era law prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages or providing federal benefits to same-sex couples.…

(RNS) Purim, the noisiest Jewish holiday of the year, has become more accessible to deaf and hearing-impaired worshippers, as a growing number of synagogues now use a PowerPoint program developed for the festival, which falls on March 10 this year. The “Purim for the Deaf” slideshow, launched in five synagogues in 2003, will be used…

Rome – The Vatican sought Tuesday to show that it isn’t opposed to science and evolutionary theory, hosting a conference on Charles Darwin and trying to debunk the idea that it embraces creationism or intelligent design. Some of the world’s top biologists, paleontologists and molecular geneticists joined theologians and philosophers for the five-day seminar marking…

Most days you can find college sophomore Adan Farrah on his laptop checking in with his classmates, looking at photos and updating his personal page on Facebook. For the 19-year-old and many of his friends, the social networking site is something close to an obsession. “I’m on there a total of three hours a day…

Washington — Muslims in America attend worship services weekly just as much as Protestant Americans. Among the nation’s faith groups, they are the most racially diverse. And they’re younger: more than a third of Muslim adults — 36 percent — are between the ages 18 and 29, double the percentage of young U.S. adults overall.…

BEIJING – Defiant Buddhist monks banned from marking a key Tibetan New Year prayer festival marched in protest in China’s southwest, rights groups and officials said. It was the latest resistance to Chinese rule ahead of sensitive anniversaries in Tibet. Tensions are high over harsh security measures set up before the Monlam festival, which began…

WASHINGTON (RNS) Conservative Christians called Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius an “unfortunate” choice for U.S. Health and Human Services secretary because of her support of abortion rights, while others — including fellow Catholic Democrats — came to her defense. President Obama formally announced his nomination of Sebelius for the post on Monday (March 2), citing her…
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