Category Archives: Jessica P. Wright

Some interesting law & religion stories from around the web this week:

• Two conservative religious groups say they were also the subject of unusual scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service
• Georgia governor Nathan Deal has ordered that Bibles be returned to state park resorts after review
• Minnesota became the 12th U.S. State to approve same-sex marriage
• In Tbilisi, Georgia, ultra-conservative Orthodox Church supporters prevented a gay rights rally
• A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced two men to lashes and prison terms for converting a woman to Christianity and helping her flee
• A Christian schoolteacher will be tried in Egypt for insulting Islam
• A growing number of Copts, including some of the most successful businessmen, have left Egypt or are preparing to do so, fearing persecution by an Islamist-controlled government
• Philippine Catholic groups make a push for Pro-Life candidates
• In Ohio, a gay teacher fired by a local Catholic school says her union will not support her challenge
• Human cloning advance prompts religious objections
• Christian churches back Jews facing anti-Semitism in Hungary
• In Singapore, six church leaders are being tried for embezzling more than $50 million to fund the pop music career of the wife of their evangelical movement’s founder
• Church leaders say Israeli police mistreated clergy at Orthodox Easter 

Some interesting law & religion stories from around the web this week:

• A Jerusalem court upheld women’s prayer rights at the Western Wall
• Boy Scouts of America proposed ending the ban on openly gay scouts, but will continue to bar gay adults from serving as leaders
• Atheists rally around four Bangladeshi bloggers arrested for “hurting religious sentiments,” but postpone protests after the collapse of a garment factory in Dhaka
• On Tuesday, the French parliament voted to legalize gay marriage and adoption amidst violent protests
• Palestinians hope the new pope will help to pressure Israel to drop plans to build a West Bank separation barrier. Residents have already appealed to the Roman Catholic Church.
• A Federal appeals court is weighing an asylum bid from German home-schoolers living in Tennessee
• Church leaders have told the British government that members of the royal family who marry Catholics will not be obliged to bring up their children in the Catholic faith
• Germany’s top labor court ruled that the country’s Catholic Charity Network had a right to fire an employee who quit the church
• In Syria, the minaret of the Great Umayyad Mosque was destroyed during fighting between Syrian insurgents and government forces
• Reform Jews are dealing with a controversy about whether an applicant to a rabbinical school can be married to a non-Jew
• The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has withdrawn its subpoena to Obama on birth control
• A new ad campaign launched by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn calls Jesus the “original hipster”
• In Pakistan, Christians retaliate against Muslim violence

Some interesting law & religion stories from around the web this week:

• Boston’s largest mosque requested that police guard its campus in the wake of Monday’s bombing
• Egypt’s Coptic Christians continue to live in fear of Islamic extremists
• An Irish constitutional convention has voted in favor of a civil marriage for same-sex couples
• The Archbishop of Canterbury will meet with a gay rights activist
• In Turkey, concert pianist Fazil Say was given a suspended jail sentence for blasphemy against Islam
• Pastors push back against city’s annual registration fee for churches, claiming the fee is a tax that it violates separation of church and state
• Rabbi Michael Broyde has been suspended from the Beth Din of America, a Jewish high court, for using a fake identity
• An Ohio elementary school shut down its “Mindfulness Program” due to concern over its roots in Buddhism
• McDonald’s settles class action over misrepresenting chicken as halal in a controversial $700,000 settlement

Here are some interesting law & religion stories from around the web this week:

• After funeral for Coptic Christians killed in sectarian violence, clashes outside Cairo’s Coptic cathedral leave one dead and raise tempers in a tense political atmosphere. Copts say they no longer see a future in Egypt and Egypt’s Coptic Christian pope directly criticized the Islamist president.
  
• President Obama issued an Executive Order extending the faith-based advisory council
• Time Magazine features “The Latino Reformation,” addressing the rise of evangelical Latinos in the United States
• A North Carolina lawmaker links Islamic prayer to terrorism
• Arizona weighs unemployment tax break for churches
• Study: religious schools perform better than public or charter schools
• Women continue to challenge Orthodox practice at Israel’s Western Wall. Orthodox rabbi says he will not oppose a proposal to create a new area of prayer for Jews to worship in a less traditional style. After the proposed compromise, five women are detained for praying at the Western Wall.
• Riley on interfaith unions
• Religious leaders from the G8 countries are pushing heads of government to renew their efforts to meet the anti-poverty benchmarks by 2015
• Church of England approves recognition of civil partnerships
• The Crown Prosecution Service warns that Sharia courts are putting women at risk
• Russian Orthodox patriarch denounces “dangerous feminism”
• Bryson urges the Roman Catholic Church to allow nuns to be U.S. military chaplains
• Romanian lawyer sues his bishop and four priests for failing to properly exorcise flatulent demons