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The Rev. Rick Lawson hates the sight of discarded Christmas trees in the gutter as he drives home from church on Christmas Day. He winces at the day-after rush to the stores. “Nothing is more shocking to me,” says Lawson, dean of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Salt Lake City. “So many people see it…

VATICAN CITY — With fresh fighting in the Holy Land and the global economy in ever-deeper crisis, Pope Benedict XVI starts 2009 with poverty and war among his most urgent concerns. Those issues also loom large in his agenda for the coming year. Among the major events on the papal calendar: — Benedict will make…

Washington – U.S. and global Christian leaders are calling on Israel to implement an immediate cease-fire in the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, while U.S. Jewish groups have largely defended Israel’s military campaign. Gaza officials say nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 1,600 injured, in Israel’s five-day air campaign targeted to destroy the military…

Clinton, Mass. – In this sleepy former mill town, where geopolitical tensions seem a world away, Americans are getting a fresh look at Russia through a lens that’s seldom made available on U.S. shores: the Russian sacred icon. Weekly attendance at the two-year-old Museum of Russian Icons has doubled from about 250 to 500 since…

Washington – A group of atheists is suing to bar prayers and references to God during the swearing-in ceremony of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama. Michael Newdow, along with 17 other individuals and 10 groups representing atheists, named Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., officials in charge of inaugural festivities, the Rev. Joseph E.…

Washington – The economic recession has not led to an increase in attendance at U.S. houses of worship, according to Gallup pollsters. Despite anecdotal evidence cited in high-profile media outlets, Americans’ worship patterns have held steady in 2008, the Gallup Poll reports. Since mid-February, Gallup said, it has asked 1,000 adults a day how often…

Trenton, N.J. – New Jersey officials said Monday (Dec. 29) that a lesbian couple can move forward with their discrimination complaint against a Methodist group that refused to let them use an oceanfront pavilion for a civil union. Since the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association regularly made the pavilion available for public use, including weddings,…

San Antonio – A teacher at a Roman Catholic school in San Antonio fired after she married a divorced man has filed a federal discrimination complaint. The principal of Central Catholic High School urged Marquis LaFortune, 25, a week before her wedding in November to resign or to have her husband-to-be seek an annulment of…

Openly gay New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson has spent the last five years seeking reconciliation with those who saw his election as immoral, unbiblical or, as one Nigerian archbishop put it, a “satanic attack on God’s church.” Yet the choice of megachurch pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the Jan. 20…

Colorado-based Focus on the Family has pulled an online interview with conservative television host Glenn Beck after concerns were raised about Beck’s Mormon faith. Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations for Focus on the Family Action, said that “differences in the Mormon faith and the historical evangelical faith are not inconsequential.” “We…
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