Beliefnet News

RNS By Alexandra Steigrad Washingon — Can a Mormon win the White House? It’s a question on the minds of many voters watching former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — not to mention Romney’s campaign itself. But for the Romney camp, the more immediate question is whether Romney can conquer the South, a region where evangelicals…

RNS by Daniel Burke The nation’s largest Lutheran denomination will again face the divisive issue of sexuality when it considers resolutions on gay clergy and same-sex blessings at its biennial assembly in Chicago next week (Aug. 8-12). After the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voted at its last Churchwide Assembly in 2005 to maintain…

RNS by Michelle Rindels As Americans get older, their confidence in an afterlife increases, according to a recent survey of people over 50 conducted by the AARP, the advocacy group for seniors. Seventy-three percent of older people believe in life after death, and two-thirds of those believers say that confidence has grown with age, according…

AJC Embattled Falcons quarterback Michael Vick said in a radio interview on WVEE-FM Monday that he was remorseful for the negativity his situation has brought to Atlanta and team owner Arthur Blank and that he is hopeful, but not certain, that he’ll play for the Falcons again. Vick, calling from Virginia, also expressed gratitude to…

United Press International Chicago – Jul 31 – A U.S. study found that religiously focused physicians don’t disproportionately care for poor and underserved patients. The study — conducted by Drs. Farr Curlin, Lydia Dugdale, John Lantos and Marshall Chin at the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital — examined whether physicians’ self-reported religious…

RNS By G. Jeffrey MacDonald Religious activists with a moral agenda for corporate America used to rely primarily on consumer boycotts and sympathetic lawmakers to get the attention of Wall Street. But now their toolbox is growing — and there’s a lot more money it. Over the past decade, America’s market for religious investment products…

RNS By Bruce Nolan New Orleans – Nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina, members of 132-year-old Rayne United Methodist Church have finally moved back into their storm-damaged sanctuary, even as masons continue substantial repairs to the church’s toppled brick steeple. Meanwhile, in Algiers, contractors are just starting what promises to be at least nine months…

RNS by Michelle Rindels Washington – Several Congressmen are urging the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to investigate an allegedly anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic chaplain at a government-run clinical research hospital in Bethesda, Md. The Rev. O. Ray Fitzgerald, a Methodist minister and former head of the Spiritual Ministry Department, was demoted after a Catholic…

RNS by Michelle Rindels Washington – A broad coalition of evangelical leaders is attempting to “correct a serious misperception” that all evangelicals oppose creating a Palestinian state. Led by Ron Sider, a professor at the American Baptist-affiliated Palmer Theological Seminary and head of Evangelicals for Social Action, the coalition sent a letter to President Bush…

Associated Press Kandahar, Afghanistan – July 30, 2007 – A purported Taliban spokesman claimed the hardline militia killed a second South Korean hostage Monday because the Afghan government failed to release imprisoned insurgents. Afghan officials said they hadn’t recovered a body and couldn’t confirm the claim. The Al-Jazeera television network, meanwhile, showed footage that it…

More from Beliefnet and our partners