TODAY IN GOD:
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE
____________________________________________________________________________________
Sharpton accused of ‘bigotry’ after remark on faith

BOSTON — The Rev. Al Sharpton, who recently urged that radio host Don Imus be fired for making a racially insensitive remark, said in a debate that “those who really believe in God will defeat” Republican Mitt Romney for the White House.

But Sharpton denied he was questioning the Mormon’s own belief in God.

Rather, the New York Democrat said he was contrasting himself with Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author he was debating at the time.

“As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don’t worry about that; that’s a temporary situation,” Sharpton said Monday during a debate with Hitchens at the New York Public Library’s Beaux-Arts headquarters.

The comment was first reported Tuesday in a blog on The New York Times’ Web site.

The Romney campaign, which has been wary of campaign trail criticism of Romney’s faith, jumped on the Sharpton comment. If elected, Romney would be the first Mormon to serve as president.

“It is terribly disheartening and disappointing to hear Reverend Sharpton offer such appalling comments about a fellow American’s faith,” said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. “America is a nation of many faiths and common values, and bigotry toward anyone because of their beliefs is unacceptable.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (AP VIA CNN.COM) CLICK HERE

Flashy priest’s masses rock, draw Brazilian Catholics back
SAO PAULO, Brazil — The pop-idol priest strides to the altar, a rock band pounding away to his right, cameras flashing to his left and the multitudes pulsating in this cavernous ex-factory that serves as a church.

“Hold the hand of Jesus!” proclaims Rev. Marcelo Rossi, a dynamic giant in red cassock and billowing white sleeves, urging the faithful to hold hands. “God is tops! God is tops!”

Rossi is the kind of priest who might be able to save the Roman Catholic Church here. Brazil has more believers than any other country, but the church has been losing members to evangelical denominations.

Rossi is also the kind of priest Pope Benedict XVI, who arrives here Wednesday, is likely to frown upon.

Benedict is making his first papal trip to the Americas, home to half the planet’s Catholics, and will face a church replete with competing visions on how to retain the faithful and win back those who have left. The five-day journey to Brazil also will serve as a test of whether a pope seen as a rigid, Europe-focused intellectual, who stresses traditional dogma over creative worship can reach and influence today’s Latin America. He has scolded the region’s church in the past over leftist liberation theology.

For many here, the greatest challenge to Catholicism is the flashy, feel-good magnetism of Pentecostals and other Protestant evangelical groups, and the best response is to borrow from the competition. Rossi, 39, packs the Sanctuary of the Byzantine Rosary every week. Legions of supporters, especially among the poor, have made Rossi’s masses a televised hit.

On the makeshift altar, a poster of a smiling “Bento XVI” looks on as Rossi gyrates and urges worshipers into a hug-fest, replete with songs, candles, blessings and tears.

“I was away from the church for 35 years, and Padre Marcelo brought me back,” said Maria dos Santos, 59, one of more than 5,000 who recently came to see the famous priest’s service.
FOR THE FULL STORY (LA TIMES VIA CHICAGO TRIBUNE) CLICK HERE

Papua New Guinea police in gun battle with human sacrifice cult
PORT MORESBY – Riot police have been sent to a remote mountainous village in Papua New Guinea after a gun battle between police and members of a cult involved in human sacrifices, local media reported on Wednesday.

The National newspaper said several people were killed and many injured in the fighting last week in the Finschhafen area of Morobe province, 350 km north of the capital, Port Moresby.

Black magic is widespread in Papua New Guinea, a jungle-clad, mountainous South Pacific island nation where some villages only encountered Western civilisation in the 1930s. Women suspected of being witches are often hanged or burnt to death.

Police who flew to the area on Sunday said they believed they were dealing with a cult movement involved in murders and human sacrifices to their gods, the newspaper said.

Morobe’s chief police inspector, Augustine Wampe, said suspicions of cult activity started in April when a child was kidnapped and police were attacked trying to rescue the child.

“It takes a whole day to walk from [the town of] Sialum to the village in the mountains, where the child was held. The four (police) were ambushed and attacked by the villagers,” he said.

“Gunfire was exchanged and one of the policemen was injured in the leg with an arrow. Another policeman fell over a cliff.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (NEW ZEALAND HERALD) CLICK HERE

Bush Sr. To Celebrate Rev. Sun Myung Moon — Again
Next month the Washington Times, the conservative newspaper with close ties to every Republican administration since Reagan, celebrates its 25th anniversary. Former President George H.W. Bush will be the headliner.

And the former President deserves the honor. Barbara Bush ought to get a rousing cheer as well. The two of them have been beating the bushes for Reverend Sun Myung Moon for years.

Moon and his Unification Church came to America in the 1970s and quickly plunged into Washington politics. “In the 1970s, church officials organized prayer breakfasts and rallies in support of President Richard M. Nixon, dispatched young female members to infiltrate congressional offices and had extensive ‘operational ties’ with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency as part of the agency’s efforts to influence U.S. officials, according to a 1978 report by a House subcommittee,” the Washington Post would later report.

Those ties became fodder for the 1976 Koreagate scandal, which centered around the figure of Washington lobbyist Tongsun Park, a man legendary for his lavish parties and gifts of cash in white envelopes. He, too, was long suspected of being connected to Korean intelligence; he was also an influence peddler of great renown, and anywhere from 30 to more than 100 members of congress were said to be under his thumb at the time. Park was never charged with any crime in connection with Koreagate, but last year he was convicted on conspiracy charges for his role in Saddam Hussein’s United Nations oil-for-food machinations.

Moon was not prosecuted in connection with Koreagate, but he later became a target of an IRS investigation and in 1982 was convicted of conspiracy and filing false tax returns. He spent 18 months in federal prison. It was also in 1982 that he launched the Washington Times, which—with its access to conservative figures and reporters drawn from the newsroom of the defunct Washington Star —soon became essential reading for political news junkies.

Through the early 80s, while Bush served as Vice President, Moon operatives were building ties with the New Right—flying Hill staffers to junta-ruled El Salvador, and supporting the Nicaraguan contras’ fight against the Sandinista government. The late Terry Dolan, chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) and often credited with pioneering the modern political attack ad, helped Moon burrow into the conservative mainstream.
TO READ THE FULL STORY (MOTHER JONES MAGAZINE) CLICK HERE

Play and pray: Malaysian student creates PlayStation Koran
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – Muslim gamers worldwide will soon be able to mix praying with playing after the creation of a Koran which can be downloaded onto PlayStation portable consoles.

Student Ikhwan Nazri Mohamad Asran, 21, designed the software after seeing a similar version of the Bible.

“They did the Bible, so why not do the Koran … This application can help younger people to read the Koran,” Ikhwan told AFP Tuesday.

PlayStation enthusiasts, more used to playing games such as Ridge Racer and Metal Gear Acid, can download an English-language version of the Koran, with displays in Arabic script, from the Internet.

Ikhwan said the software should appeal to parents, who sometimes distrust the Internet and gaming.

“For some parents, when we talk about the Internet, all they see is porn, the bad things. When we talk about the PlayStation, all they see is gaming and spending too much time not studying,” he said.

“A mother can say, ‘Read the Koran first and then I’ll let you play games.'”

The software follows the creation of “The Raise,” an English-language magazine on Islam, for the Sony console, and other content such as Islamic wallpaper.
FOR THE FULL STORY (AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE VIA YAHOO NEWS) CLICK HERE

Anxiety, Emptiness Fuel Confucius Craze in China
BEIJING (Reuters) – Pop culture offerings in China these days run the gamut from Hollywood blockbusters to domestic versions of “American Idol,” but it is a book about the ancient sage Confucius that is causing all the buzz in the streets.

“Notes on reading the Analects,” by Beijing Normal University professor Yu Dan, has become China’s best-selling book in recent memory, defying critics who say it turns Confucian thought into self-help pulp for the modern age.

“It is good to have these teachings from old times because people are too selfish now,” 60-year-old accountant Qu Juan said of the book that has sold over 3 million copies in four months. “Everybody cares only about making money after the economic reforms,” she said, flipping through the softback at a book shop.

Yu first shot to fame in October when she went on state TV to lecture on the Analects, a canon of Confucianism recording discussions between the ancient Chinese sage Confucius (551-479 BC) and his disciples. She wrote the book based on the TV transcripts.

Her mass following tells of deep anxiety about morality and beliefs in a society that has gone through a disorienting transformation in recent decades, analysts said.

“We were taught Marxism and Leninism in schools,” said Tian Na, a 25-year-old teacher who bought the book on the Internet.

“But when I became independent and went to college, I saw professors take bribes and I felt the old slogans like ‘serve the people’ were no longer relevant,” she said.

Yu’s book appeals across generations, despite the vastly different experiences of growing up as Tian did, in the relatively prosperous and stable reform era of the 1980s and 90s, or as the older generation did, during the tumultuous reign of Mao Zedong.

After the Communist Party took power in 1949, a series of radical political movements plunged the country into anarchy and near economic bankruptcy, culminating in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

The turmoil is blamed by many for leading to mistrust between people and a breakdown of traditional values, including the Confucian ones which were denounced as “reactionary,” as the Party tried to obliterate the country’s past.

Confucian philosophy, emphasizing high personal morality and a strict hierarchy of social relationships, was endorsed by China’s imperial rulers over the past two millennia and still has huge influence in other East Asian nations.
FOR THE FULL STORY (REUTERS VIA NYT.COM) CLICK HERE

Hamas ‘Mickey Mouse’ Wants Islam Takeover
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Hamas militants have enlisted the iconic Mickey Mouse to broadcast their message of Islamic dominion and armed resistance to their most impressionable audience – little kids.

A giant black-and-white rodent – named “Farfour,” or “butterfly,” but unmistakably a Mickey ripoff – does his high-pitched preaching against the U.S. and Israel on a children’s show run each Friday on Al-Aqsa TV, a station run by Hamas. The militant group, sworn to Israel’s destruction, shares power in the Palestinian government.

“You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists,” Farfour squeaked on a recent episode of the show, which is titled, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers.”

“We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers.”

Children call in to the show, many singing Hamas anthems about fighting Israel.

Israel has long complained that the Palestinian airwaves are filled with incitement.

An Israeli organization that monitors Palestinian media, Palestinian Media Watch, said the Mickey Mouse lookalike takes “every opportunity to indoctrinate young viewers with teachings of Islamic supremacy, hatred of Israel and the U.S., and support of ‘resistance,’ the Palestinian euphemism for terror.”

The television station would not comment.

A spokeswoman from Walt Disney Co.’s headquarters in Burbank, Calif., did not immediately return messages asking for comment about the use of a Disney-like character.
FOR THE FULL STORY (AP VIA BELIEFNET.COM) CLICK HERE

Illegal immigrant sanctuaries set:
Religious groups in 5 cities back plan to win sympathy
On Wednesday, religious groups in Chicago and four other cities plan to announce a new “sanctuary” movement for illegal immigrants reminiscent of the 1980s, when churches and synagogues defiantly harbored civil war refugees from Central America.

But the illegal immigrants aren’t likely to be living in churches, they won’t be evading authorities and nobody is risking going to jail. Even participants say the cause today is less clear cut than the moral outrage decades ago over U.S.-supported government death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Where some religious leaders back then felt compelled to risk jail in their efforts to protect refugees who had entered the U.S. illegally, faith communities are less willing to take such a brazen stance against the federal deportation raids now occurring nationwide, organizers of the new movement said.With deep divisions over illegal immigration across the country, the New Sanctuary Movement is less a campaign to shield those facing deportation, and more of an effort to win sympathy for the families affected by the raids, they said.

“When you’re dealing with such a complex issue, you’re going to get people all over the place,” said Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, a Roman Catholic priest in New York who is coordinating the effort there. “Even within our own congregations, people are saying: `Why do they come here? Why are they illegal?'”

Kim Bobo, executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice, a labor group that is spearheading the effort, said a handful of undocumented immigrants across the country are currently part of the effort.
FOR THE FULL STORY (CHICAGO TRIBUNE) CLICK HERE