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Chances are that grown-ups know the truth about the holiday season’s biggest myth — the one concerning a certain elf, his generosity and his peculiar mode of travel. But there’s another big lie that’s almost as pervasive. No, Virginia, suicides do not increase around the holidays. “That is a myth,” said Pat Lyden, executive director…

Two-thirds of Americans think religion is losing its influence on U.S. life, a sharp jump from just three years ago when Americans were nearly evenly split on the question, according to a new Gallup Poll. Sixty-seven percent of Americans think religious influence is waning while just 27 percent say it is increasing. That perspective demonstrates…

Last week, Jill Miller Zimon, a writer from Pepper Pike, Ohio, attended her daughter’s school band concert. Four bands and orchestras performed. “All four played `Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah,”‘ said Zimon, laughing. “I thought I was going to tear my hair out.” Zimon, who’s Jewish, doesn’t think that would have happened a few decades ago. One…

San Antonio – Nearly two-thirds of the families living at a polygamist group’s ranch – targeted in a high-profile raid last spring – had children who were abused or neglected, Texas child welfare officials said in a report released Tuesday. The Department of Family and Protective Services concluded there was evidence that 12 girls, ages…

Vatican City – Galileo Galilei is going from heretic to hero. The Vatican is recasting the most famous victim of its Inquisition as a man of faith, just in time for the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope and the U.N.-designated International Year of Astronomy next year. Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to the Italian astronomer…

WARSAW, – Poland’s president has celebrated the start of Hanukkah with Warsaw’s Jewish community – the first time a Polish head of state has attended a religious service in a synagogue. The Jewish community is describing Lech Kaczynski’s visit Sunday as a historic step. Kaczynski entered Warsaw’s century-old Nozyk synagogue just after sundown. The congregation…

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI defended the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day as a “great feast of faith,” rejecting descriptions and criticisms of the popular annual event as a mere “rock festival.” Benedict made his remarks on Monday (Dec. 22), during his Christmas address to the Roman Curia, the Catholic Church’s international government at…

(RNS) U.S. congregations have changed significantly in the last eight years, according to a new study, with them becoming more ethnically diverse, more technologically savvy and more informal in worship. Predominantly white congregations reported greater racial and ethnic diversity between the first and second surveys of U.S. houses of worship by the National Congregations Study.…

(RNS) A Virginia judge ruled on Friday (Dec. 19) that three parcels of land belong to parishes that have broken away from the Episcopal Church, handing conservatives an important, if tentative, legal win. An 1867 state law, passed as Virginia congregations separated over slavery, allows a parish to disaffiliate from a denomination where a division…

(RNS) The recession has forced Hadassah, the national Jewish women’s organization, to cancel its 2009 convention in New Orleans, a local Hadassah officer said. The organization’s national convention, once scheduled for mid-July 2009 typically would have attracted 1,500 to 1,800 women, said national Vice President Roselle Ungar. But the group has canceled the meeting. “We’ve…
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