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The Pope really doesn’t like Republicans Ever since Francis started lobbing missiles at doctrinal conservatives, the latter have been asking ‘is the Pope Catholic?’ Last week we learned that Pope Francis has torn up the Catholic Church’s teaching that same-sex civil partnerships are gravely immoral. This week he will be rooting for the pro-abortion candidate in the US presidential election.These two surreal developments are causing distress bordering on spiritual despair to conservative American Catholics. Whether you feel any sympathy for them depends on your point of view. The Pope, it is safe to say, is unlikely to lose any sleep...

At an interfaith conference bringing together Jewish leaders and Protestant Christian pastors outside Jerusalem this week, several of the Christian representatives painted a very worrying picture about the future of relations between Israel and the mainstream Church. While an estimated tens of millions of individual Christians around the world love and support the Jewish state, many of the mainline Protestant churches have been actively boycotting Israel, encouraging pro-Palestinian activism and demanding that Western governments stop sending aid to Jerusalem. One of the main Christian representatives at the conference was Rev. Paul Wilkinson, associate minister at Hazel Grove Full Gospel Church...

Two weeks from now, the United Church of Canada will assemble in Ottawa for its 41st General Council, where it will debate church policy and elect a new moderator. The top item on its agenda is a resolution calling for a boycott of products from Israeli settlements. Fortunately, nobody cares what the United Church thinks about Israeli settlements, or anything else for that matter, because the United Church doesn’t matter any more. For many years, the United Church was a pillar of Canadian society. Its leaders were respected public figures. It was – and remains – the biggest Protestant denomination...

TULTITLAN, Mexico — About 200 impoverished and undocumented migrants recently packed into a small building in this ramshackle town 20 miles north of Mexico City. Nearly all were from Honduras and headed for the U.S. border. Almost none spoke a word in the shelter’s dark main room, where the only thing thicker than the smell of unwashed clothes was a sense of fear. “Yeah, I’m scared,” said Victor Caseres, 26, who had traveled 750 miles by hopping freight trains to arrive at the shelter, one of more than a dozen run by the Catholic Church in Mexico to provide refuge...

Delegates at the most recent national meeting of the United Church of Christ (UCC) agreed overwhelmingly July 4 to strike the term “heavenly Father” from the denomination’s constitutional definition of the local church. By a vote of 613 to 161, the delegates voted to change language in Article V of the church’s bylaws (see page 3) from describing a local church as composed of persons who believe in “God as heavenly Father” to those who believe in “the triune God” — thereby relieving UCC members of the responsibility of acknowledging God as masculine. Explaining the change, which reflects a trend...

I am excited that my 30-year journey as a Baptist leads me to the New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta Jan. 30 to Feb. 1. I've been thinking about what this upcoming meeting means to me, and how it relates to my long journey in the Baptist family. Perhaps these reflections can be helpful to others. I became a Southern Baptist by conversion. I grew up Roman Catholic in the Northern Virginia suburbs. But by the time I was a teenager I had rejected the faith of my upbringing and was seeking happiness in romance and baseball, in that order....

A leader in the United Methodist Church has equated the U.S. flag to the Nazi swastika, drawing the criticism of a watchdog organization that says it is an example of the church's "contemptuous" attitude towards the nation and its heritage. The comments came from Rev. Clayton Childers, of the Washington-based United Methodist Board of Church and Society, who said, "The presence of a national flag in worship can imply endorsement of national policies which often run counter to the teachings of Jesus Christ and our Christian faith. … One need only recall the way the swastika flag was displayed prominently...

A liberal church that has been threatened with the loss of its tax- exempt status over an anti-war sermon delivered just days before the 2004 presidential election said Thursday it will fight an IRS order to turn over documents on the matter. "We're going to put it in their court and in a court of law so that we can get an adjudication to some very fundamental issue here that we see as an intolerable infringement of rights," Bob Long, senior warden of All Saints Church, told The Associated Press. He said the church's 26-member vestry voted unanimously to resist...

Pasadena -- A liberal church that has been threatened with the loss of its tax-exempt status over an anti-war sermon delivered just days before the 2004 presidential election said Thursday it will fight an IRS order to turn over documents on the matter. "We're going to put it in their court and in a court of law so that we can get an adjudication to some very fundamental issue here that we see as an intolerable infringement of rights," Bob Long, senior warden of All Saints Church, told The Associated Press. He said the church's 26-member vestry voted unanimously to...

Pasadena -- With the campaign season in full swing, a liberal church is locked an escalating dispute with the IRS over an anti-war sermon — delivered two days before the 2004 presidential election — that could cost the congregation its tax-exempt status. Religious leaders on both the right and left are watching closely, afraid the confrontation at All Saints Church in this Los Angeles suburb will compromise their ability to speak out on issues of moral importance such as abortion and gay marriage during the midterm elections. Under federal tax law, church officials can legally discuss politics, but to retain...

Liberal Calif. Church Will Decide Soon Whether to Fight IRS Summons By The Associated Press Mon, Sep. 18 2006 11:10 AM ET[-] Text [+] SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER PRINT E-MAIL MORE FROM SECTION LOS ANGELES (AP) - A liberal church at the center of a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over a 2004 sermon will decide this week whether to fight an IRS summons. Related IRS Investigating Liberal Calif. Church (September 17, 2006) The IRS is requesting a number of documents be produced by Sept. 29 and that the church's rector, Rev. Ed Bacon, testify before an IRS agent on...

The Internal Revenue Service has ordered a prominent liberal church to turn over documents and e-mails it produced during the 2004 election year that contain references to political candidates. The IRS is investigating whether All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena violated the federal tax code when its former rector, Rev. George F. Regas, delivered an anti-war sermon on the eve of the last presidential election. Tax-exempt organizations are barred from intervening in political campaigns and elections, and the church could lose its tax-exempt status. Rev. Ed Bacon received a summons Thursday ordering the church to present any politically charged sermons,...

Thanksgiving: Thanking God for That Dead, Liberal Church By Matt Friedeman November 21, 2005 (AgapePress) - I thank God for that dead, liberal church. It was theologically and spiritually frustrating then, it is theologically and spiritually frustrating now, and in all likelihood it will be theologically and spiritually frustrating in the future. But that dead, liberal church, with pastor after pastor who was theologically and spiritually disappointing, did this for me: provided a Sunday school class that helped save my dad (and thereafter, my mother); taught me the Apostle's Creed; familiarized me with the awesome hymns of the faith; exposed...

Equating filibusters with hearing minority voices, the Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is urging that Congress' use of filibusters on President George Bush's judicial nominess not be ended. In its May/June 2005 Washington Report, Elenora Giddings Ivory, director of the Washington Office, said "Careful and independent scrutiny of judicial nominees can happen during the confirmation process in the Senate. Scrutiny should not be shortchanged by cutting off extended debate (filibuster). Without careful review we can almost guarantee that we will open our newspapers one morning and see stories of judges who are being impeached." According to Fox News,...

In a 2003 report on membership, ministers and finances, the research arm of the Presbyterian Church USA said the denomination continues to lose membership. The church has lost 42.4 percent of its membership since 1965. That accumulated loss of more than 1.8 million has resulted in an increase in the number of churches with small congregations. There were 4,171 congregations of fewer than 100 members in 1984, but 5,004 in 2002. The median contributions of those small congregations was $44,678. Older Americans are dropping out of organized religious activity in significant numbers, a research firm that tracks church trends said....

The head of the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States wrote a letter to President George W. Bush, asking him to take alternate measures in securing the safety of the Iraqi people, on Dec. 10, 2004. Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick’s letter comes at a time of heightened tension for the minority Christians living in the war-torn nation; Churches have been vandalized, looted and burned by terrorists in several instances over the weeks leading up to the first democratic election. “We have been watching with grave concern the chaotic situation in Iraq as it has continued to worsen since you declared...