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By Daniel Burke c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) It doesn’t have much of a beat, the kids can’t dance to it, and it’s sung in a dead language. But Gregorian chant seems to be the hottest thing in sacred music right now. Consider the following: — The wildly popular “Halo” videogames use Gregorian chant…

Associated Press Boston – For decades, Boston University sociologist Peter Berger says, American intellectuals have looked down on evangelicals. Educated people have the notion that evangelicals are “barefoot people of Tobacco Road who, I don’t know, sleep with their sisters or something,” Berger says. It’s time that attitude changed, he says. “That was probably never…

Associated Press Doha, Qatar – More than a dozen Jewish rabbis, including two from Israel, were in attendance this week as this conservative Muslim sheikdom opened one of the Gulf’s first scholarly centers dedicated to interfaith dialogue. The rare meeting of Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars in the heartland of conservative Islam is another sign…

Associated Press San Francisco – In a monumental victory for the gay rights movement, the California Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved ban on gay marriage Thursday in a ruling that would allow same-sex couples in the nation’s biggest state to tie the knot. Domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage, the justices…

Associated Press – May 13, 2008 WASHINGTON – John Hagee, an influential Texas televangelist who endorsed John McCain, apologized to Catholics Tuesday for his stinging criticism of the Roman Catholic Church and for having “emphasized the darkest chapters in the history of Catholic and Protestant relations with the Jews.” Hagee’s support for McCain has drawn…

By Omar Sacirbey c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The end to Ani Zonneveld’s “jihad” on “jihad” came during an episode of “Desperate Housewives,” when Lynette (Felicity Huffman) discovers she has cancer and throws a stone at a possum. “Look at yourself,” replies her husband, Tom. “You’ve declared jihad on a possum.” “At that point,”…

By Francis X. Rocca Religion News Service VATICAN CITY (RNS) Intelligent life may exist on other planets and has no need of redemption through Jesus Christ, the Vatican’s top astronomer said. The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted in the Wednesday (May 14) edition of the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore…

Associated Press Postville, Iowa – Federal immigration agents in northeastern Iowa have arrested at least 300 people in a raid on the world’s largest kosher meatpacking plant. U.S. Attorney Matt M. Dummermuth says the raid on the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville is the largest operation of its kind in Iowa history and followed months…

Associated Press London – Albert Einstein: arch rationalist or scientist with a spiritual core? A letter being auctioned in London this week adds more fuel to the long-simmering debate about the Nobel prize-winning physicist’s religious views. In the note, written the year before his death, Einstein dismissed the idea of God as the product of…

Associated Press Kyi Bui Khaw, Myanmar – The saffron-robed monks who spearheaded an uprising last fall against Myanmar’s military rulers are back on the front lines, this time providing food, shelter and spiritual solace to cyclone victims. The military regime has moved to curb the Buddhist clerics’ efforts, even as it fails to deliver adequate…
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