RELIGION NEWS

News and stories on religion and faith

Ridgecrest Baptist Church will have a dedication service Sunday at 10 a.m. for its new building in Trussville.

"It's a blended worship service with contemporary music and traditional hymns," said Pastor Brian Branam.

The 300-member church renovated a former Southern Comfort Van Conversion warehouse on U.S. 11 in Trussville. The first service in the building was this past Sunday, with prayer services Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night. "It's been awesome," said Branum. "Momentum has built each night."

Continue reading "New chapter, new church" »

She's been studying comparative religions for three years at college, so Huntsville's Sonya Petroff, 21, had a solid, scholarly respect for belief systems different from her own American Catholic upbringing. Continue reading "Sonya Petroff finds Balinese Hinduism is 'comforting and scary'" »

She's been studying comparative religions for three years at college, so Huntsville's Sonya Petroff, 21, had a solid, scholarly respect for belief systems different from her own American Catholic upbringing.

But one night in May, she accidentally disrespected a ritual mask of Bondres, the Balinese spokesman for the spirits. That mistake socked her with a visceral experience of realities.

Continue reading "Sonya Petroff finds Balinese Hinduism is 'comforting and scary'" »

She's been studying comparative religions for three years at college, so Huntsville's Sonya Petroff, 21, had a solid, scholarly respect for belief systems different from her own American Catholic upbringing.

But one night in May, she accidentally disrespected a ritual mask of Bondres, the Balinese spokesman for the spirits. That mistake socked her with a visceral experience of realities.

Continue reading "Sonya Petroff finds Balinese Hinduism is 'comforting and scary'" »

Harry Potter fans aren't the only ones well acquainted with invisibility cloaks.

The Associated Press reported early this morning:

Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

...

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

Just another reminder that simply because you can't see something -- or someone -- doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I love the Olympics.

I like the history, the competition, the sometimes-schmaltzy stories, the whole business.

I'm especially fond, though, of the moment when athletes around the world gather for opening and closing cermonies.

It gives me hope.

For a few minutes, the world, in some small sense, is one. People have remembered, as Mother Teresa put it, that "we belong to each other." The possibility for peace seems present.

And as writer Coleman McCarthy once observed: "The earth is too small a star and we too brief a visitor upon it, for anything to matter more than the struggle for peace."

Today's pictures from Slate pay tribute to the siesta.

Our word 'sleep' comes from the German word 'schlaff' which means 'loose.' To sleep, then, or to nap is to 'hang loose,' to be un-tight and to let go. Sleep at night or in short periods before bedtime is a beautiful expression of prayer since it is resting in God. It is letting go of our control of life. Sleep is a parable on prayer and it is also prayer. If we look only at the front side of sleep we might miss hidden implications. All things have a front and back door, and we should not be satisfied just to enter ideas from the front side only. The front door of sleep is bodily rest, but where does the back door lead?

The back door leads to the Prayer of Napping as an external sacrament of the inner ability to 'let go' of managing every aspect of our lives. It is an expression that we are able to allow the Divine Mystery to take over in the midst of troubles and deadlines. It is an expression of faith that the Divine Presence is even concerned with our seemingly common work and difficulties. Sleep is a form of humility for it says, 'God is saving the world.' To let go for coffee breaks or naps and to do so without guilt allows God a chance to save the world!

-Edward Hays, "Pray All Ways"

During the recent Lambeth Conference in England, John F. Burns writes for The New York Times, Bishop Gene Robinson may have been the busiest prelate in town (other than Archbishop Rowan Williams) and in some ways, the most popular.

The easy demeanor and constant smile of this openly gay 61-year-old Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire, when we meet at the Falstaff Hotel just down the street from Canterbury Cathedral, are all the more remarkable for the fact that he is the only man among the many wearing the Anglican bishop's purple on Canterbury's streets these past two weeks who wasn't invited to the conference. Indeed, since the conference first met in 1867, he was the only Anglican bishop anywhere, except those disgraced for disputed legitimacy, malfeasance or criminality, to be told -- in his case, by the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury -- that there was no seat for him at the Lambeth table.

...

(Robinson) said he sympathized with the archbishop, who had been placed in "an impossible position" by the uncompromising attitude that hard-line conservatives in the communion had taken on homosexuality. But by excluding him, the American said, the archbishop had made a strategic miscalculation. "In the end, the conservatives didn't come to the conference anyway, only proving that bullies never get enough," he said. "They always come back for more."