Author: Soutik Biswas

Source: BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7637087.stm

Anti-Christian riots have rocked several parts of India over the past month. The BBC's Soutik Biswas travelled to a remote region in the eastern state of Orissa, where the recent violence broke out, to investigate the complex roots of the conflict.

A narrow ribbon of fraying tar snakes up from the plains of Orissa to the hills of Kandhamal, an unlikely...

Author: Raphael Thelen

Source: The Daily Star

Author: Katrin Bennhold

Source: International Herald Tribune

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/world/europe/25iht-schools.4.16488061.html?searchResultPosition=1...

Author: Philip E. Jenks

Source: National Council of Churches

http://www.ncccusa.org/news/080924gbwrap.html

The National Council of Churches Governing Board approved an ecumenical response to the Muslim message, "A Common Word Between Us and You," declaring Christianity and Islam share a love of God and "are compelled to find common ground."

The Governing Board also passed resolutions calling for action in reforming U.S. immigration and...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: The Associated Press

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-conscientious-objector,0,7706181.story

A federal judge has ordered the Army to grant conscientious objector status and an honorable discharge to a soldier who says he experienced a religious awakening in Iraq.

The ruling supersedes the Army's decision last year to deny Pfc. Michael Barnes...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: The Daily Etalaat Kashmir

http://etalaat.com/english/News/news-scan/2852.html

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan federal agency advising the Administration and Congress, sent a letter last Friday to President Bush, urging him to raise pressing concerns about religious freedom in India during his anticipated September 25 meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan...

Author: Staff Writer

Source: Don Bosco India

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...