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Istanbul (AsiaNews) - On his return from Jerusalem , where he met with Pope Francis at the Holy Sepulchre, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, has revealed an important appointment for unity between Catholics and Orthodox: a gathering at Nicaea in 2025, where the first real ecumenical council of the undivided Church was celebrated. Speaking exclusively with AsiaNews, Bartholomew says that together with Pope Francis "we agreed to leave as a legacy to ourselves and our successors a gathering in Nicaea in 2025, to celebrate together, after 17 centuries , the first truly ecumenical synod, where the Creed was...

The American public has become more tolerant on a number of moral issues, including premarital sex, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia. On a list of 19 major moral issues of the day, Americans express levels of moral acceptance that are as high or higher than in the past on 12 of them, a group that also encompasses social mores such as polygamy, having a child out of wedlock, and divorce.

WaterBrook Multnomah, which has published numerous evangelical bestsellers, has resigned from the National Religious Broadcasters over Matthew Vines' controversial book God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. The move comes after it was learned that Christian staff of WaterBrook Multnomah worked on Vines' book, which was published by its imprint, Convergent Books. A number of conservative commentators have spoken out strongly against Convergent Books' decision to publish the book. It "is the first step in a larger effort to fundamentally recast long-held, universally acknowledged norms pertaining to sexual ethics," Andrew Walker, director of Policy...

Adapted from "Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself" by Anneli Rufus “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell Is low self-esteem all that bad? Self-loathing is. But between self-loathing and narcissism is a vast spectrum comprising infinitely various degrees of self-regard. Neither extreme is good. If only we could just reach medium. In 1986, California state assembly member John Vasconcellos proposed the State Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. This ignited a new movement: Based on the notion that low self-esteem...

Talk of religious freedom and limiting it, seems to be everywhere these days. The US Supreme Court affirmed the right recently of townships to say a public prayer before a local meeting, which seems rather like declaring the sun’s right to rise in the East, if you consult the Founding Fathers’ writings – and their practices. Meantime, atheist devotees – if there is such a thing as a formal devotee to atheism, since that might make them religious followers of non-worship – are trying to create the first non-religious religious chaplain in the military. Confusion seems to abound about...

What do we do when ministers, "reverends" and other church leaders are so very lost themselves? In one personal case convincing others that he is sin free and saved, when in reality he is far from that? If we do not have real leaders of spirituality in positions of various churches, how on earth do we turn America around!

Tengrists pray to their ancestors, to the spirits of nature, and to Tengri, the eternal blue sky, to cleanse and empower them. (Photo: David Trilling) Tengrists believe that the holy tenants of their faith are found in Kyrgyz traditions, culture, and national games such as horse wrestling and kyz-kuumai (“catch the girl”), where a young man and young women race on horseback while the man tries to steal a kiss. (Photo: David Trilling) Arslanbek Maliyev grew disillusioned with Islam when he realized foreign missionaries who came to Kyrgyzstan following the collapse of the Soviet Union were more concerned with building...

The majority party and its leader Narenda Modi have ridden the wave of religious fanaticism. Minorities are appealing to the legacy of democracy and pluralism India is officially in the hands of the Hindu right wing. The Catholic Church and other religious minorities are concerned but they are grinning and bearing it, grasping onto the old and deep-rooted legacy of democratic values and pluralism that characterizes the Indian nation. Their concerns stem from the contiguity of India’s leaders with groups of Hindu fanatics. This is the landscape that has been emerging in the Indian sub-continent since the official general election...

Detroit Black Pastors are speaking out against Judge Bernard Friedman's overruling of the 2004 voter approved amendment to the Michigan Constitution that defines marriages as between one man and one woman. Despite the votes of 2.7 million voters who voted in favor of marriage protection, Friedman called the amendment "unconstitutional" and "irrational."

A study released Saturday found that Americans tend to exaggerate their religious beliefs—and that liberals are more guilty of it than conservatives. The Public Religion Research Institute asked participants about their religious affiliation, their belief in God, how often they attend religious services and the importance of religion in their lives. Roughly half were interviewed over the phone and the other half answered an online questionnaire. Of the people interviewed over the phone, 43 percent said they attended religious ceremonies and 27 percent said religion is the most important thing in their lives. Among online respondents, those numbers dropped to...

Liberty University Commencement Address – May 10, 2014 Posted on May 10, 2014 by Hillary Congratulations Graduates! I have to warn you in advance…I’ve done a number of these graduations…and you will have to bear with your parents today. You may witness them shedding a tear or two. And when you see that, you will think that they are replaying the years in their minds …you will think that they are remembering when you first learned to ride a bike, when you took your first steps, you will think they are sadly wondering where the years went. But you would...

A new Fairfax County, Va., zoning proposal takes direct aim at the right to assemble in the privacy of one’s own home. This proposed “Group Assembly in Residential Dwellings” zoning ordinance amendment not only poses a grave and fundamental violation of the U.S. Constitution but smacks of the worst type of government overreach. The ordinance would limit the number of people one could have in their home to 49 a day, and to exceed that limit more than 3 times in any 40-day period would be a violation of law. I never imagined hosting a Bible study in my home...

The year was 1982, and the location was the University of Wisconsin’s campus in Madison. While listening to cassette tapes of Louis Farrakhan, I was invited to a Bible study by a young man who came from what many of the blacks from Wisconsin called “Whitefolks” Bay (Whitefish Bay). He was immediately identifiable—from the crisply pressed blue oxford shirt to the perfectly tailored tan khaki pants, down to the shiny brown penny loafers. His appearance was the textbook definition of a preppy, conservative, Republican. I hated him on sight. But I witnessed him do something that I had never seen...

Law professors John Eastman of Chapman University and Martin Lederman of Georgetown debated the religious implications of ObamaCare’s contraception mandate during a panel discussion at a recent Federalist Society conference. With the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (or RFRA), Congress was “trying to restore a 200-year-old understanding of what the free exercise clause did” for religious conscience. He said, “The First Amendment was not there to protect religions that could only get their accommodations through the majoritarian process.” With religion, “You can challenge the sincerity of religious beliefs but cannot challenge the merits of it” and people “have...

Crimson banners hang outside Memorial Church on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 6, 2012. Credit: Tim Sackton via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0). Cambridge, Mass., May 12, 2014 / 01:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Harvard University’s acceptance of a satanic black mass re-enactment on campus raises larger questions of tolerance and whether it is being applied selectively, scholars say. “If there is a serious question to ask here, it concerns the limits of liberal toleration itself,” said Dr. C.C. Pecknold, theology professor at The Catholic University of America. “Far from facilitating mutual respect and reasoned argument, such anti-Catholic...

Via social media, I heard there is a student club at Harvard planning a “Black Mass” for today. When I first heard of it, I didn’t think much about it except to pray for all involved, on both sides of the issue. Then, as today approached, I started to see more in my feed about this “Black Mass,” and I wondered if someone had penned a response, official or otherwise. You see, I’m not looking for official guidance on how to respond to a group of students exercising their first amendment right to free speech, especially if they change venues...

When congressional leaders asked the State Department to tailor American assistance to Nigeria in a way that would protect Christians from religious persecution at the hands of Boko Haram, an extremist group that kidnapped hundreds of Christian girls last month, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's team dismissed the idea on the theory that the organization was not motivated by religion. "This religious tension, while real, should not be mistaken as the primary source of violence in Nigeria," David Adams, assistant secretary of legislative affairs, wrote to Congress in an Oct. 4, 2012 letter. "Similar to the United States, Nigeria's religious...

Pressed by dozens of lawmakers from both parties in 2012 to put greater focus on growing violence by Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group that recently kidnapped 200 teenage girls in Nigeria, the State Department sent something akin to a form letter in reply. The Oct. 12, 2012 letter from the State Department to the congressional officials downplayed the religious motivations of the group's violence. "Similar to the United States, Nigeria’s religious diversity is a source of strength, with communities working across religious lines to protect one another," the letter, obtained by Breitbart News, said. The State Department's 2012 response...

Chris Matthews mocked Republicans on Friday's Hardball over their hawkish stance towards Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group that recently kidnapped hundreds of girls. Matthews made a thinly-veiled racial attack on the GOP during a panel discussion on the terrorist organization: " By the way, when did the Republican Party take this keen interest in Africa? I may have missed that one."

After the marshal on Monday spoke the traditional “God save the United States and this honorable court,” the Supreme Court ruled that the upstate New York town of Greece does not violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of “establishment of religion” by opening its board of supervisors’ meetings with a prayer. This ruling would not scandalize James Madison and other members of the First Congress, which drafted and sent to the states for ratification the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights. The Congress did this after hiring a chaplain. Three decades have passed since the court last...