TODAY IN GOD:
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE
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Faith adopts key role in 2008 campaign

The personal faith of candidates has become a very public part of the 2008 presidential campaign. Seven years after George W. Bush won the presidency in part with a direct appeal to conservative religious voters — he cited Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher during one debate — it seems all the leading presidential candidates are discussing their religious and moral beliefs, even when they’d rather not.

Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have hired strategists to focus on reaching religious voters. Obama’s campaign holds a weekly conference call with key supporters in early primary and caucus states whose role is to spread the candidate’s message to religious leaders and opinionmakers and report their concerns to the campaign.

Democrats in general are targeting moderate Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants and even evangelicals, hoping to enlist enough voters for whom religious and moral issues are a priority to put together a winning coalition.

Next week, Clinton, Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards are scheduled to address liberal evangelicals at a forum on “faith, values and poverty.”

Some top-tier Republican candidates, the natural heirs to conservative religious support, are finding the issue awkward to handle.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has been questioned so much about his Mormon faith — 46 percent of those polled by Gallup in March had a negative opinion of the religion — that he has taken to emphasizing that he is running for a secular office.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Catholic who says he gave serious consideration as a young man to becoming a priest, is fending off critics who say he should be denied the sacrament of communion because he supports abortion rights.

Religion has become such a common element of presidential politics that during the first televised debate among the 2008 Republican candidates, a reporter asked if any did not believe in evolution — three Republicans raised their hands: Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo.

“To many Americans, religion is a very important part of their life and they are interested in how religiosity influences candidates,” said John Green, a University of Akron political science professor and senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

“Where this election cycle is different,” he said, “is that more of the Democratic candidates are speaking out about their faith, and they’ve organized their campaigns to appeal to religious voters.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (AP VIA YAHOO NEWS) CLICK HERE

Obama Web Site Seeks to Rally The Faithful
Although Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is a Christian, he “embodies the basic ideals and values of most Hindus,” said Prianka S., a Hindu from Chicago.

Obama’s “love for Israel” is “evident not just in his work, but also in his heart,” said Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), an Orthodox Jew.

Obama “represents true faith,” said the Rev. Bertha Perkins, a Baptist minister in New Hampshire.

Those are among the gushing testimonials to Obama on his “People of Faith for Barack” Web site, which officially launches today.

Obama is the first of the Democratic presidential contenders to launch a religious outreach Web site, but the others won’t be far behind. Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) is set to unveil his “moral leadership” Web site tomorrow, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign is working on one, staffers said.

Edwards stumbled in February when two religious bloggers, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, resigned from his campaign over past writings that blasted religious conservatives as “Christofascists.” Much of his religious outreach has since been handled directly by his campaign manager, former Rep. David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), who spent a year in a Roman Catholic seminary before going into politics.

Obama’s effort is headed by Joshua DuBois, a former Senate aide who is associate pastor of a Pentecostal church in Cambridge, Mass. DuBois calls himself a “political progressive, religious evangelical” — exactly the demographic that all three Democratic candidates will be courting Monday night at a forum sponsored by Jim Wallis’s magazine, Sojourners, and carried live by CNN.
SOURCE: ALAN COOPERMAN AT WASHINGTONPOST.COM

Chance discovery of abused child reveals bizarre Czech grail cult
A flickering image of a small naked boy, lying tied-up on the bare floor of a room, was the clue that drew the Czech Republic into a tale of child abuse, obscure sects and a mysterious vanishing girl that has shocked and baffled the nation.

The picture was spotted by a father keeping an eye on his baby, when his video monitor received a stray signal from a similar device being used in a neighbouring house in the quiet town of Kurim, close to the south-eastern city of Brno.

When police searched the area on 10 May, sisters Klara and Katerina Mauerova allegedly refused to open a locked door in their home. When firemen broke it down, they found Klara’s eight-year-old son Ondrej inside, bound with duct tape, badly dehydrated and watched over by a video camera. Investigators believed Ondrej had been maltreated for six months, and he was taken into care with his brother Jakub and a girl called Anna, whom a court had allowed Klara Mauerova to adopt in March.

What was just a case of child abuse seized the nation’s attention, however, when Anna disappeared from a children’s home, sparking a search for her in nearby woods and villages.

Then came the bizarre revelation that “Anna” was not a 13-year-old girl, but a 34-year-old woman in disguise. Police believe “Anna” was actually Barbara Skrlova, a friend of the Mauerova sisters who, like them, belongs to a breakaway faction of an organisation called the Grail Movement.

The Grail Movement follows the teachings of Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, a German also known as Abd-ru-shin, who from 1923-38 wrote the Grail Message, which depicts man as a being whose spirit can return to its source in heaven by performing good deeds on Earth. It claims to have at least 10,000 followers worldwide, including several hundred in Britain.

“We broke with the people involved in this 11 years ago, after they added to the Grail Message with their own imaginings and fantasies,” said Artur Zaplukal, spokesman of the Grail Movement in the Czech Republic, where it has about 1,500 followers. “I sent them a letter telling them they were no longer part of the Grail Movement.”

Amid constant twists to a case that is being called one of the strangest in Czech criminal history, police now say they believe “Anna” never really existed.
FOR THE FULL STORY (THE UK INDEPENDENT) CLICK HERE

Accolades, Some Tearful, for a Preacher in His Twilight Years
CHARLOTTE, N.C.— For a man who has welcomed crowds his whole life, the evangelist Billy Graham appeared humbled and a bit embarrassed to be before this one Thursday in a parking lot near the Charlotte airport.

Hundreds of friends, family members, ministers and politicians had gathered to dedicate a library celebrating the ministry of Mr. Graham, whose vast popularity lent him the title “America’s pastor.”

Standing on a platform before the Billy Graham Library, former President George Bush delivered the keynote address, his voice cracking into a sob as he said Mr. Graham was “the man, the preacher, the humble farmer’s son who changed the world.” Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton also spoke of how Mr. Graham had transformed their lives.

Infirm and rarely appearing in public now, Mr. Graham approached the dais using a walker and noted the sense of completion and twilight that marked the speeches before his.

“I feel like I’ve been attending my own funeral, listening to all these speeches,” he said to the crowd’s nervous laughter. “I’ve been here at the library once, and my one comment when I toured it was that it is too much Billy Graham. My whole life has been to please the Lord and honor Jesus, not to see me and think of me.”

Initiated by the Rev. Franklin Graham, Mr. Graham’s older son, and board members of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the library is to serve as a tribute to the 60 years of Mr. Graham’s ministry around the world.

The $27 million, 40,000-square-foot library is to open on Tuesday. It holds childhood photos of Mr. Graham; his college yearbook, in which he said he wanted to be an evangelist; the tiny engagement ring he gave his wife, Ruth; and footage of his rousing sermons over the decades, from Los Angeles to Moscow, in which he urged people to open their hearts to Christ.
FOR THE FULL STORY (NEW YORK TIMES) CLICK HERE

Church Organist Fired for Selling Sex Toys
A New Franken, Wis., church organist and choir director was fired from her position for selling sex toys that she said can benefit cancer survivors.

Linette Servais, 50, said the priest who fired her from St. Joseph Catholic Parish told her the sale of the items is not “consistent with Church teachings,” the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Thursday.

However, Servais said she didn’t see anything morally wrong with her involvement with a company called Pure Romance. She said she joined the company after a brain tumor and the ensuing treatment left her sexually dysfunctional and she found the marital aids were beneficial.

“After I got over the initial shock, I prayed over this a long time,” Servais told the Journal-Sentinel. “I feel that Pure Romance is my ministry.”

Servais, one of 15,000 consultants employed by the company to sell its products at parties, said the priest told her to either give up the sales job or surrender her position with the church, which was largely performed without pay.

Servais said she sees it as part of her Christian duty to sell the items to women who need them, the newspaper reported.
SOURCE: UPI VIA BELIEFNET.COM

Baptist poll finds some support for speaking in tongues
A full half of Southern Baptist pastors believe that the Holy Spirit gives some people a “private prayer language,” a new survey suggests.

The result was seized on by some pastors as evidence that support for speaking in tongues is more common among Baptists than certain leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have maintained.

“This changes the dynamic,” said the Rev. Benjamin Cole, pastor of Parkview Baptist in Arlington and an advocate of greater tolerance for Baptists who claim a private prayer language.

The phone survey was conducted by LifeWay Research, part of the SBC. More than 400 SBC senior pastors were contacted.

Fifty percent agreed that the Holy Spirit gives some people “a private prayer language or the private use of tongues.” Forty-three percent disagreed, and the rest didn’t know.
FOR THE FULL STORY (DALLAS MORNING NEWS) CLICK HERE

A Growing Demand for the Rare American Imam
MISSION VIEJO, Calif. — Sheik Yassir Fazaga regularly uses a standard American calendar to provide inspiration for his weekly Friday sermon.

Around Valentine’s Day this year, he talked about how the Koran endorses romantic love within certain ethical parameters. (As opposed to say, clerics in Saudi Arabia, who denounce the banned saint’s day as a Satanic ritual.)

On World AIDS Day, he criticized Muslims for making moral judgments about the disease rather than helping the afflicted, and on International Women’s Day he focused on domestic abuse.

“My main objective is to make Islam relevant,” said Sheik Fazaga, 34, who went to high school in Orange County, which includes Mission Viejo, and brings a certain American flair to his role as imam in the mosque here.

Prayer leaders, or imams, in the United States have long arrived from overseas, forced to negotiate a foreign culture along with their congregation. Older immigrants usually overlook the fact that it is an uneasy fit, particularly since imported sheiks rarely speak English. They welcome a flavor of home.

But as the first generation of American-born Muslims begins graduating from college in significant numbers, with a swelling tide behind them, some congregations are beginning to seek native imams who can talk about religious and social issues that seem relevant to young people, like dating and drugs. On an even more practical level, they want an imam who can advise them on day-to-day American matters like how to set up a 401(k) plan to funnel the charitable donations known as zakat, which Islam mandates.

“The problem is that you have a young generation whose own experience has nothing to do with where its parents came from,” said Hatem Bazian, a lecturer in the Near Eastern studies department at the University of California, Berkeley, who surveys Muslim communities.

But the underlying quandary is that American imams are hard to find, though there are a few nascent training programs. These days, many of the men leading prayers across the United States on any given Friday are volunteers, doctors or engineers who know a bit more about the Koran than everyone else. Scholars point out that one of the great strengths of Islam, particularly the Sunni version, is that there is no official hierarchy.

But this situation is fueling a debate about just how thoroughly an imam has to be schooled in Islamic jurisprudence and other religious matters before running a mosque.
FOR THE FULL STORY (NEW YORK TIMES) CLICK HERE