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The church that routinely pickets military funerals with signs reading "Thank God for dead soldiers"... is planning to picket the memorial services of the seven college students who died in a North Carolina house fire, it said on its Web site.

New policy at Marshall University lets pagan students miss class for religious holidays, including yesterday's Sanhain.

...even where it is not allowed.

In his five-page letter, the senator asks Evangelist Joyce Meyer, one of the most prominent of prosperity ministers, for, among other things:
-- A "detailed accounting" of all her and her husband's expense-account items, including clothing and cosmetic surgery.
-- The tax-exempt purpose of items purchased for her ministry's headquarters, such as a $23,000 marble-topped commode, a $30,000 conference table and an $11,219 French clock.

Just wondering: If the IRS has given this ministry a green light, should Meyer (along with five other highly-paid ministers) also be the target of a Senate probe?

A few weeks ago it was a school system giving middle schoolers contraceptives without the permission or knowledge of their parents. This week, it's an antiabortion club in a public high school.

"These questions are as old as Epicurus, who gave them canonical form: "Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence, then, evil.”

How do you understand suffering and God's role in it?

"You're using technology but in a way that maintains religious integrity."

Do you have a problem when deliverers of the Gospel live like this?

Creflo and Taffi Dollar
(College Park, Ga.)

The Dollars' "Changing Your World" broadcasts are seen in over 150 countries. Creflo Dollar Ministries oversees the ministry. Dollar owns two Rolls-Royces, multiple private jets, a $2.5 million apartment in Manhattan and a mansion in Atlanta.

Randy and Paula White
(Tampa, Fla.)

Started the South Tampa Christian Center in 1991, renamed the Without Walls International Church in 1997. Among their possessions were a $1.9 million jet and a $3.5 million condo in New York. In August, Randy and Paula White announced their divorce.

Baptists are known around the world for their response and missions work for the less fortunate. They are also been labeled those fighting Baptists. This week's gathering of the the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina in Greensboro is historic, as much of the group's banner institutions are severing ties.

A $125-a-week nanny who says she was fired for not working on her day off, said she found a closet as big as her apartment while working for Richard Roberts and his family. Here's what else she couldn't believe.

Then there's the first wife, who gives us this look inside one of America's richest religious families:
"We lived like characters in a novel or a made-for-TV movie about the beautiful people and I reveled in it," she wrote. "Having made a truce, albeit an uneasy one, with my conscience over the source of our wealth, I proceeded to enjoy its prerogatives with total abandon."

Is God too 'girlie'?

News & Record copywriter Faun Finley takes you on a musical, spiritual and cultural tour of the Holy Land.

Traveling to the Holy Land is a spiritual quest for millions but I never expected that I would go. I saw myself in Turkey or Morocco but not Israel. It was as though Israel was beyond my imagination to reach.

That is until I received an invitation and an itinerary from Yuval Ron. Follow the daily journey.

There ought to be a law.... We can't set everyone's moral compass straight (not even our own at all times), but the parent in this situation should have known better. Then again, maybe that's giving her too much credit.

I got this email the other day and was hoping that pastor 'spouses' out there could offer some insight:

My pastor's wife has several children, the oldest has ADHD, and her pastor husband likes to get to church really early on Sunday mornings to organize his thoughts and prepare for the day.

What do pastor's wives do to get all the kids ready alone on a Sunday morning? What do they do when their child misbehaves in Sunday School or preaching? They obviously can't get their husband to take the child outside for some form of discipline? What do other pastor's wives do to avoid unwanted questions? Is it frustrating to always have to miss church when the kids are sick because the husband generally can't skip church to mind them?

I was at the mall picking up a group of teenagers when I saw a man in a wheelchair roll out of the mall and toward a specialized city van for people with disabilities. The driver apparently did not see the man in the wheelchair, who apparently had made an appointment to be picked up. As the man in the wheel chair rolled with one hand and waved the other hand toward the driver, a teenager who had been puffing on a cigarette nearby threw it down and began running after the van. He got the driver's attention and the van came back. The guy in the wheel chair got picked up and the kid went back to smoking a cigarette on the curb. I had to hand the kid $5 and say thanks -- I just had to do it. He looked dumbfounded and then smiled. (I hope he didn't use the money for cigarettes, though).

That's why I agree with Bush:
"Our nation's greatest strength is the decency and compassion of our people," Bush told hundreds gathered in an open-air tent at a plantation that stakes a claim to the first Thanksgiving.

TOKYO -- The Dalai Lama has said he may appoint a successor or call democratic elections before his death instead of relying on reincarnation, a Japanese newspaper reported Tuesday, following recent orders that China must approve Tibet's spiritual leaders.

The pastor of one affected church calls it "really comical." He says the "devil is trying to tell us we are doing something right for the Lord."

From Slate magazine
In Christianity Today's Leadership Journal, Eric Reed decried a "thankless society" that has forgotten the holiday's putative religious significance. R. Albert Mohler Jr. of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary called the secular vision of Thanksgiving "empty and false" on the Washington Post religion blog, On Faith. And conservative Web site WorldNetDaily offers up Thanksgiving-themed magnetic bumper stickers that counsel, "Remember to thank HIM" --perhaps an admonition to those who would merely thank their lucky stars.

Can Catholics root for Rudy Guliani?
From Newsweek:
It's not, strangely enough, that he was raised as a Roman Catholic, considered becoming a priest, then dumped his second of three wives on television and has been photographed in a dress. Rudy's Catholic problem is this: he is pro-choice, and 63 percent of white Catholics who go to mass weekly are not. This is a small activist group, yet they are determined, it seems, to see the former mayor fail. Before the Iowa straw poll in August, Fidelis -- Chicago-based conservative Catholic group -- ran anti-Giuliani ads in Iowa pointing to the candidate's longstanding pro-choice record. A month earlier, the group's president, Joe Cella, stepped down to go work for Giuliani opponent Fred Thompson. Thomas Melady, former ambassador to the Vatican, recently announced that he'll support Mitt Romney. The bottom line: "In the primary election, Catholics cannot vote for Giuliani," says Fidelis treasurer Brian Burch.

How are you true to your faith if you "respect" another's religious difference or belief or non-belief, even if you believe if to be wrong? Where is the line between respect and validation?

I watched Larry King interview televangelist Paula White on television last night and came to two conclusions:
*Tax laws for nonprofits and religious institutions need to be updated.
*People who send money to television ministries elsewhere should take 2008 to invest in those ministries/nonprofits whose work they can see in their own communities.
White's ministry is one of those being looked at by a Senate investigation -- others include Joyce Meyer, who apparently purchased a $23,000 toilet and Creflo Dollar, who apparently has a second jet.
Come to think of it -- if you have the will to buy a $23,000 toilet, doesn't that mean you probably have too much money on your hands, as claimed by some watchdog groups?

The Golden Compass is not yet into theaters (Dec. 7) but it's already creating a buzz because of the movie's theme and the anti-religious belief's of the author of the book the movie is based upon. Also being the subject of a religous boycott doesn't hurt.
Anybody read the book (said to be more popular than Harry Potter books in England) by British author Philip Pullman and should people of faith stay away? Or, is it just fantasy fun?

Before, he said God told him to fight allegations of misconduct .

UPDATE: She gets 15 days in prison and deportation.

KHARTOUM, Sudan -- Sudan charged a British teacher on Wednesday with insulting religion and inciting hatred -- a crime punishable by up to 40 lashes, six months in prison or a fine -- after she named a class teddy bear "Muhammad."

...on highway crosses on Hannity and Colmes.

Excerpt:

COLMES: Hold on. Hold on one second. They ruled on this case by claiming that the cross is not a religious symbol. The cross, as I understand it, represents the crucifixion of Christ. Isn't it insulting to a religion to say that's not a religious symbol?

M. JOHNSON: No, Alan, this is a simple case. It's about the right of all Americans to honor their fallen heroes as they choose. These are private memorials, completely funded by volunteer donation.

I had to laugh when I read here that he might be a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America.

What a wonderful welcome and a site full of wonderful 'faith' gifts.

But was he too young to make this important decision?

But how should we look at this?