Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, will serve a one year fellowship appointment at Yale University where he will be helping lead a course of study on faith and globalization.
His religion has often been best described as evangelical, but in various respects it appears not to conform to the definition. Unlike most other evangelicals, Bush blithely uses profanity and as governor would play poker. He doesn’t tithe. He didn’t try to convert others … even before he resumed a political career. He didn’t raise his daughters in his faith.
The Anglican bishop of Oxford has been receiving death threats after coming out in support of the public call for Muslim prayer in the city of Oxford.
Polish theologian, cosmologist, and philosopher Michael Heller, who lived through both Nazi and communist rule and has long sought to reconcile science and religion, has won the 2008 Templeton Prize. The £820,000 prize (more than $1.6 million) is awarded “for progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities.”
Ebo Patel: Whenever I’m on the radio or on television or giving a public talk about Islam and peace, I always get a bunch of questions from people who only associate two things with Islam – violence, and the absence of Muslims protesting violence. It’s like they were intentionally tuning out everything I said, even though they came to hear me speak.
A task force drafting a statement on sexuality for the nation’s largest Lutheran group said Thursday that the church should continue defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. However, the panel did not condemn same-gender relationships … and acknowledged that some congregations already accept same-sex couples.
A study by Ellison Research says more Americans consider adultery (81 percent) and racism (74 percent) sin, than homosexual activity (52 percent–the same as cheating on your taxes) or getting drunk (41 percent.) Evangelical Christians are far more likely than almost any other group to include numerous behaviors under the definition of sin.
It has a new Web site! Including a Church finder. Hat tip: Father Jake.
Christopher at Thanksgiving in All Things has this sensible bit of advice: Bishop Robinson should jolly well go to merry England. But let him be joined by Archbishop emeritus Tutu and others not at Lambeth, but in the gay districts and the economically depressed districts of major English cities. Let’s finally get on with God’s Mission, shall we?
A Christian archbishop kidnapped in northern Iraq last month has been found dead, according to a Nineveh province official. Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paul Faraj Rahho’s body was found Thursday near the town of Mosul, where he and three companions were ambushed by gunmen on February 29.