Free Republic

After twenty-one years, the infamous NOW v. Scheidler case has been laid to rest. Judge David Coar issued a final ruling in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals dismissing all charges brought by the National Organization of Women in 1986 against Joe Scheidler, director of the Pro-Life Action League. Joseph M. Scheidler was a pioneer of pro-life direct action and sidewalk counseling. His fearless in-your-face tactics outside abortion clinics quickly earned the ire of the National Organization for Women. NOW joined two abortion clinics in suing Scheidler in 1986 under the Sherman-Clayton anti-trust laws and the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt...

TALLINN (AFP) - While church attendance has sharply declined in Estonia in the last century, belief in things mystic and spiritual has gained ground in the small Baltic state -- including paid sessions to talk to one's personal angel. A dozen Estonians sprawled on the floor of a room in the capital's National Library to learn more about this hotline to the heavens. They closed their eyes and, under the careful, soft-spoken guidance of Katlin Roovik, tried to commune with the angels and gain greater belief in "self." "Ask your angel to guide and help you. We will take a...

CHARLOTTE (AP) — A jury on Thursday awarded about $315,000 to a woman whose fall during a service led to a falling-out with her former church and pastor. Judith Dadd, 52, of Lansing, accused Mount Hope Church of negligence and its pastor, David R. Williams, of defamation. In her civil lawsuit filed in July 2005, she contended the church was responsible for injuries she suffered three years earlier and that Williams damaged her reputation by suggesting she faked the injury. Dadd claimed that during a church rally on July 18, 2002, she went to the altar and was "overcome by...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Members of the Congregation for Saints' Causes met May 8 to consider the cause of Pope Pius XII and apparently voted to recommend that Pope Benedict XVI formally declare him venerable. Passionist Father Ciro Benedettini, vice director of the Vatican press office, confirmed the congregation had met, but since the result of the vote still had to be presented to the pope he would not say May 9 what the result was. Italian newspapers, citing unnamed sources, said the congregation's cardinals and archbishops recommended that Pope Benedict formally recognize that Pope Pius lived the Christian virtues...

Arguments currently swirling in Brussels over an invite to Pope Benedict XVI to address the European Parliament illustrate both the depth of current tensions between the EU and the Vatican, as well as the tightrope diplomats on both sides are walking in an effort to keep lines of communication open. The President of the European Parliament, German Hans-Gert Pöttering, extended the invitation to Benedict XVI in a March 23 meeting with the pope in Rome. In mid-April, a group of leftist parliamentarians and allied non-governmental organizations wrote to Pöttering to object. In his April 26 response, Pöttering denied that the...

VATICAN CITY (AFP) - Analysts say Pope Benedict XVI will use his trip to Brazil to promote Christ's divinity over the politicised Jesus embraced by Latin America's liberation theologists. Benedict is said to be convinced that the struggle for influence between the Roman Catholic Church and the rising tide of evangelical sects in Latin America revolves around the image of Christianity's central figure, the subject of his just published book "Jesus of Nazareth." The pope, who leaves Wednesday for a five-day trip to Brazil, himself is said to have selected the theme of a conference of Latin American bishops that...

HARARE, Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe told Roman Catholic bishops who issued a letter blaming him for the country's political and economic turmoil they had chosen "a dangerous path," and church officials said Friday a priest had been briefly detained for passing the pastoral message on to his congregation. The arrested priest and a member of his congregation were released without charge after spending 24 hours in jail last month, said Father Oskar Wermter of the Catholic social communications secretariat in Harare. It was the first reported arrest of a priest on political grounds in recent years. Later on Friday,...

It wasn't a big tent revival, TV evangelist or personal crisis that led Russ Sevedge back to church. It was big drives and fast greens. Sevedge and other serious golfers like him are finding Jesus on the fairways because of the In His Grip Golf Association, a ministry that teaches churches how to use golf as a way to share the Gospel. Founder Scott Lehman said he got the idea for In His Grip from driving by golf courses on Sunday mornings and seeing men teeing off instead of going to church. "A lot of Sundays, you go by the...

SAN BERNARDINO - A man or woman of God sees hope amid ruin. In Pastor Lenton Lenoir's case, he has to, because his luck has been bad enough to bury lesser men. On the evening of April 27, tragic deja vu swept over Lenoir when an associate pastor at Holy Land Church of God in Christ on G Street discovered a shocking scene and alerted him with the news. The 750-capacity worship hall's roof collapsed some time between April 25 and 27, burying everything beneath a spectacle of rubble. The news was doubly stunning to the 76-year-old Lenoir. It was...

CARAPICUIBA, Brazil (Reuters) - For years, Ronaldo da Silva's daily routine consisted of drinking himself into a stupor until he passed out on a sidewalk. Now he spends his days praying and singing with hundreds of fellow Christians at the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Carapicuiba, a sprawling shantytown on the outskirts of Sao Paulo where Pentecostal congregations are found on just about every block. "I'd probably be dead or in jail if it weren't for this church," said da Silva, a 38-year-old former Catholic who claims God cured him of epilepsy and helped him straighten out...

Rallies draw a fraction of last year's crowd as activists ponder the movement's future. Clash erupts in evening. Waving U.S. flags and demanding citizenship for undocumented immigrants, tens of thousands of jubilant protesters marched through the streets of Los Angeles on Tuesday during a mostly peaceful day that ended with clashes between police and demonstrators in MacArthur Park. Fifteen police officers were among those hurt. About 10 people were taken from MacArthur Park by ambulance to hospitals for treatment, said d'Lisa Davies, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. She said the injuries mainly were cuts, including head and...

When people pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV news, they generally aren't looking for a Sunday school lesson. This creates a challenge for journalists covering religious leaders, since most of their public utterances are devoted either to expounding their faith, or urging people to behave. The way reporters solve the problem is by combing through those utterances to find statements presumed to have broad, non-sectarian significance, normally because they apply to matters of politics or culture. The result is that the real concerns of religious leaders, and the priority they assign to those concerns, often don't come...

PHILADELPHIA, April 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Mr. James B. Davis, founding member and patriarch of the world-famous gospel group, the Dixie Hummingbirds, died in Philadelphia on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. Born June 6, 1916 in Greenville, South Carolina, Mr. Davis was the Hummingbirds leader from their inception in 1928 through his retirement in 1984. With a fluctuating lineup, the 'Birds spent their first decade doing what Mr. Davis called "wildcatting," performing along the eastern seaboard, establishing their reputation in each small town before moving on to the next. Mr. Davis took pleasure in explaining that he chose the name "Hummingbirds" because...

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Celebrities at a Catholic fund-raiser headlined by singer Sheryl Crow have joked about St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke's boycott of the event. Burke resigned last week from the board of the Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center Foundation because Crow has publicly supported legal abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. At the fund-raiser for the charity's Bob Costas Cancer Center, Costas joked that Crow was there for three reasons: to help children, put on a good show and, quote: "get me excommunicated." Comedian Billy Crystal said of the archbishop, "I respect his right to choose, his right to...

<p>Pope Benedict XVI wants to see a lower Manhattan church shuttered by Edward Cardinal Egan reopened, according to a European head of state.</p> <p>The bombshell claim by Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus - whose countrymen built Our Lady of Vilnius church on Broome Street early last century - heartened parishioners when they heard about it yesterday.</p>

LONDON (Agence France-Presse) -- Canterbury Cathedral, the seat of the Church of England, installed its first female archdeacon in its 1,400-year history yesterday. Before a congregation of 500, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams led the service of installation for the Venerable Sheila Watson, 53, the first woman to join Archbishop Williams' senior staff. The former archdeacon of Buckingham in the Diocese of Oxford, who succeeds the retired Patrick Evans, can now enthrone new diocesan bishops in 27 of England's 43 dioceses under Archbishop Williams' guidance. The move comes as the Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church, takes...

The president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities says he hopes that “a more pronounced prophetic voice will become one of Catholic higher education’s distinctive contributions to the world.” In fact, he has outlined a twelve-point program to get us there. Speaking at Neumann College in Aston, Pennsylvania on March 14th, Richard Yanikoski argued at length for the importance of devoting academic resources to making an impact on social justice issues (this being the unquestioned outlet for a prophetic voice). He even suggested the use of “curricular sensitivity” audits to ensure that academic coursework will “expose students to...

[Ecumenical News International] Autonomy and patriotism remain supreme principles for China's government-approved Protestant church in responding to rapid changes in society and protecting Chinese civilization against foreign influences, a Protestant leader has said. "The 'three-self' principle is an integration of loving Christ and the nation," said Ji Jianhong, chairperson of the national committee of Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China, who led a 10-strong delegation for a one-week visit to Japan beginning April 19. His comment was made during a lecture given as part of a class on Christianity at Kwansei Gakuin University, a Methodist-run institution in...

BEIJING (UCAN) – A China church official says authorities of the church in China will not discuss with the Vatican the appointment of a bishop for Beijing Diocese because there is no formal China-Vatican diplomatic link. After the funeral of Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan on April 27, Anthony Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), told UCA News that Beijing Diocese has capable priests to succeed the late prelate and there will be no discussion of the matter with the Vatican. China and the Vatican have not reached diplomatic ties, Liu said, because the Vatican still...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNS) - Total membership in U.S. Christian churches continued to rise in 2005, despite ongoing declines in some of the country's largest mainline Protestant churches, according to the 2007 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. Total recorded inclusive membership in 2005 was 165,878,323, up more than 2.4 million from the previous year, the yearbook said. The 439-page yearbook is an annual publication of the New York-based National Council of Churches. This year's book is the council's 75th edition. It lists U.S. and Canadian church bodies, with a brief description of each and its national headquarters, officers, periodicals and...