Author: Staff Writer

Source: The News Tribune

Wire Service: AP

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/religion/story/487492.html

The Mormon church has consolidated its European headquarters to Germany as it undertakes a bid to increase its membership across the continent.

In August, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – which claims some 13 million members worldwide –...

Author: Telly Nathalia and Sugita Katyal

Source: Reuters

http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/09/20/asia/OUKWD-UK-INDONESIA-CHURCH.php

A multimillion dollar megachurch opened on Saturday in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, with a rousing service attended by some 4,000 people singing hymns and reading from the Bible in Bahasa Indonesia.

Jakarta's grand Katedral Mesias is the brainchild of...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7621590.stm

Two more churches have been vandalised in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, police say.

They say that a prayer hall was damaged by unidentified men in an attack at Ujjre near the city of Mangalore and a church attacked in the town of Kolar.

Police have arrested more than 170 people for violence in the state which injured at least 40 over...

Author: David D. Kirkpatrick

Source: International Herald Tribune

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/17/america/catholics.php?page=2

Until recently, Matthew Figured, a Sunday school teacher at the Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church here, could not decide which candidate to vote for in the presidential election.

He had watched progressive Catholics work with the Democratic Party over the last four years to remind the faithful...

Author: Michael Kohn

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=47,7139,0,0,1,0

Mitch Tillman is an unlikely savior. Six years ago, the Baptist missionary languished in an Alabama jail, facing a prison sentence on drug charges. Today he builds hospitals, feeds street children and saves souls in Mongolia.

For Christian missionaries like Tillman, Mongolia is the new El Dorado. Since communist rule ended...

Author: Vishal Arora

Source: The Charlotte Observer

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/175/story/196942.html

Franklin Caesar Thomas was one of India's millions of unlucky souls, born into a Dalit, or outcast, family that is the lowest of the low in this nation's rigid caste system.

His parents converted from Hinduism to Christianity, hoping for an escape. They sacrificed and saved to send their son to college for separate degrees in...

Author: Al Webb

Source: Religion News Service

http://blog.beliefnet.com/news/2008/09/church-of-england-apologizes-t.php

Some 126 years after Charles Darwin's death, the Church of England has gone into 21st-century cyberspace to issue an official apology to the naturalist for its own 19th-century "misunderstanding" over his theory of evolution.

Darwin's thesis that all life evolved over millions of years was published...

Author: Blaine Harden

Source: The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/13/AR2008091302274.html

After years of calm, the oldest insurgency in Asia has flared into a brutish war, with burned villages, slain families, artillery bombardments, vigilante death squads and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

The match was lit last month when the Philippine government...

Author: Janet Kawamoto

Source: Episcopal News Service

http://www.episcopal-life.org/79901_100625_ENG_Print.html

On the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 that killed some 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., Episcopal congregations around the country remembered the dead, comforted the bereaved, and sought hope for the future.

At St. Paul’s Chapel in lower Manhattan, which...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: Zee News

Author: Ben Stocking

Source: The Associated Press

http://www.amny.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-vietnam-catholic-challenge,0,5224939.story

At a vacant lot in downtown Hanoi, Catholics have gathered to worship the Virgin Mary — and pressure the communist authorities.

For the second time this year, the city's Catholics have taken the extraordinary step of occupying state-controlled land that...

Author: Samuel G. Freedman

Source: The New York Times

Author: Tim Murphy

Source: Religion News Service

http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=16427

Florida's Supreme Court on Wednesday (Sept. 3) tossed out two statewide ballot initiatives aimed at ending a longstanding ban on public funding for religious institutions, drawing praise from church-state watchdogs.

Civil liberties groups had filed suit to remove the amendments headed for the November ballot, which sought to rewrite the state...

Author: Trish Hollenbeck

Source: Northwest Arkansas Times

http://nwanews.com/nwat/News/68743/

A Muslim from Palestine, Fadil Bayyari, is helping to build the Jewish Temple Shalom in Fayetteville. It is being designed by a Christian.

University of Arkansas Chancellor G. David Gearhart gave this as an example of tolerance and diversity as he spoke during the Institute of Interfaith Dialog's fourth annual Interfaith Banquet Tuesday night at the Fayetteville...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: News Track India

http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/14460

Catholics have invited Hindu leader Rajan Zed, the president of Universal Society of Hinduism, for an interfaith dialogue. He has been invited to attend the Diocesan Ecumenical Interreligious Commission meeting of Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento schedule for November 18.

Most Reverend William Keith Weigand, Bishop of Sacramento Diocese, in a...