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NEW DELHI – Nearly a year of attacks on Christians have put India’s leaders on edge, and the latest flare-up in violence drew an angry denunciation from the country’s Sikh prime minister as “acts of national shame.” “We are a secular state. We are a multireligious, multicultural nation,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told reporters during…

Hundreds of devout Catholics and curious onlookers have gathered to pray, weep and chant outside a Catholic hospital window in Springfield, Mass., where an image that some say looks like the Virgin Mary has appeared. Kevin Leeman, a maintenance worker at the nearby Sacred Heart Catholic church, was moved to say a Hail Mary when…

(UNDATED) Hundreds of Muslim workers at two meat processing plants in Colorado and Nebraska walked off the job earlier this month, protesting their employer’s refusal to grant time to pray and break a 12-hour fast during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. About 100 workers were fired in Greeley, Colo., followed by about 80 in…

CASCADE TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Mandy Helton Jones had planned to spend the next couple of months traveling to Asia and Australia with her new husband, Jon. But when she spotted a blog looking for couples to carry a handwritten Bible across America, their travel plans changed in a hurry. “We thought it just sounded like…

WASHINGTON – A day after the House defeat of a financial bailout plan that sent Wall Street into a frantic downward spiral, the Capitol was largely deserted Tuesday as Congress marked the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana. Congressional leaders were still actively talking, trying to develop an alternate plan that Congress will approve. But the…

BARNEGAT, N.J. – Is the Garden State Parkway the highway to hell? Or is the New Jersey Turnpike the road to damnation? Someone keeps stealing the metal signs at mile marker 66.6 along the heavily traveled toll roads, and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority is having a devil of a time keeping up with the…

(RNS) A Washington-based watchdog group has filed six complaints with the Internal Revenue Service after dozens of clergy participated in a challenge to rules that ban politicking from the pulpit. At least 31 pastors took part in “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” (Sept. 28), according to the initiative’s organizers at the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian…

(UNDATED) For Jews the world over, Rosh Hashana heralds a time of prayer and hope. Hope for a sweet new year. Hope for peace in the year ahead. Nowhere would such prayers and hope seem more poignant than in Israel, the Jewish homeland. Since earliest history, Israel has been one of the earth’s great crossroads,…

(RNS) Evangelist Tony Alamo was charged Thursday (Sept. 25) with transporting children across state lines for sexual activities, just five days after authorities raided his Arkansas ministry. Alamo, 74, was charged after police and social workers interviewed six girls who were removed from the compound on Sept. 20, The Associated Press reported. The former street…

WASHINGTON (RNS) Top leaders from a number of faiths have asked Congress to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all U.S.-held detainees, including those held at secret overseas prisons. A letter signed by 25 senior faith leaders calls on Congress to support legislation that gives the International Committee of the Red…

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