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Here’s my pick for the top five religion news links related to America’s Independence Day: Nation’s founders: How religious were they? (Salt Lake Tribune) If government picked who can worship here, what would your faith be ‘in’? (USA Today) Happy Atheist — I Mean Independence — Day (GetReligion)  Culture Wars in School: A July 4…

Updated at 2:45 p.m. EST with more links. The New York Times has a big story today that looks into how Pope Benedict, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, handled clergy abuse claims as head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. One problem is that, until Pope John Paul II clarified…

I got a chuckle out of the “bikini brouhaha in Brooklyn” this week, as JTA dubbed this sexy protest of New York City’s decision to pull revealing ads from ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods: To avoid upsetting some local Chasidic communities, New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has banned Georgi Vodka ads featuring scantily ad women from appearing…

While I work on rounding up more information about the faith-based response to President Obama’s immigration reform speech, here are some links about the other big religion news out of Washington: how Elena Kagan responded to questions about the constitutional protection for religious freedom during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings yesterday. Kagan was asked about the First Amendment’s two religious…

Christian leaders have their fingers crossed for a good speech from President Obama at American University this morning, making the case for comprehensive immigration reform. This is a highly relevant debate for Catholics and evangelical Protestant groups with growing Latino memberships. But beyond that, a range of Christian leaders involved in the interfaith call for immigration reform cite biblical motives — “What…

My much-hyped (in certain circles) interview with Stephen Prothero, author of God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World — And Why Their Differences Matter, is now up at The Huffington Post. Check it out. Basically, I had expressed some doubts about Prothero’s premise after watching him on The Colbert Report a few…

(Updated at 6:30 p.m. EST to link to my interview with U.S. Vatican attorney Jeffrey Lena.) While defending the Catholic Church as it deals with the clergy abuse investigations in Belgium, lawsuits and church closings in America and allegations elsewhere, Pope Benedict is going on offense to boost Catholicism around the world. This includes appointing a Holy See representative to Vietnam, a major…

This is shaping up to be one of those religion news weeks where I have trouble remembering that Jewish Americans make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. population… even less, if you’re only counting those who attend synagogue more than a few times a year. Yesterday, I wrote about Newsweek’s fourth annual (and…

It’s been a month since Israel’s raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla killed nine Turkish activists (including one with dual American citizenship), and this caught my eye: JTA reports that a group of Jews from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany — including at least one Holocaust survivor — are preparing to sail…

(Updated at 6 p.m. EST to add the RNS link.) It’s a busy news day for the Supreme Court, not even including Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings — Reuters reports that SCOTUS has ruled in favor of the University of California’s Hastings College of Law, which refused to recognize the Christian Legal Society due to its exclusion…
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