Church

Merry Clayton's spine-chilling vocal on the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" is one of the most famed in '60s rock. But the 1969 classic brings painful memories to Clayton: The physical strain of the intense duet with Mick Jagger resulted in a miscarriage after the session. So audiences' frequent requests for "Gimme Shelter" might sting like salt in an old wound. Clayton, who performs at the Gardenia Room on Friday, says she was buoyed by her religious upbringing in combating the loss.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has agreed to revisit the issue of church-state separation and decide whether a town council can begin most of its monthly meetings with a prayer from a Christian pastor. Thirty years ago, the court upheld a state legislature's practice of beginning its session with a nondenominational prayer. The justices said that "to invoke divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making laws" did not violate the 1st Amendment's prohibition on an "establishment of religion.

Re "A posthumous fall from grace," May 12 On the one hand, men like Cardinal Roger Mahony and the late Msgr. Benjamin Hawkes, who was accused posthumously of sex abuse, seemed to be just the men to act in the best interests of the Los Angeles archdiocese at a time of a rapid expansion of the Catholic population. On the other, they were unable to resist profound moral pitfalls while working to meet those needs. Mahony is trying to reinstate himself as a moral leader after having been exposed as a protector of sexual predators.

Re "A posthumous fall from grace," May 12 On the one hand, men like Cardinal Roger Mahony and the late Msgr. Benjamin Hawkes, who was accused posthumously of sex abuse, seemed to be just the men to act in the best interests of the Los Angeles archdiocese at a time of a rapid expansion of the Catholic population. On the other, they were unable to resist profound moral pitfalls while working to meet those needs. Mahony is trying to reinstate himself as a moral leader after having been exposed as a protector of sexual predators.

Religious conservatives in the United States  have been complaining that developments in the political arena - the Obamcare contraceptive mandate, the progress of same-sex civil marriage - threaten religious freedom. They're crying wolf, but similar alarums in the Mother Country make a bit more sense.  Because England has an established church, some of whose bishops sit in Parliament, the political question of same-sex marriage has religious reverberations that  don't sound here.

Re "Church used funds meant for the dead," Feb. 10 Several years ago I visited the small Roman Catholic church in Loreto, Mexico. There, I saw an older, probably poor woman with a small boy dropping a few coins into the collection box. A few years later, fortune brought me to the Vatican. It was beautiful and the works of art were stunning, but I couldn't stop thinking about that poor woman and child in Loreto giving what little they had to such a wealthy organization. As we stood in St. Peter's Square, the pope's private white helicopter flew overhead; our guide said, "There goes his holiness to his summer retreat.

"To live is to change," wrote the 19th century English Cardinal John Henry Newman, "and to be perfect is to have changed often." Pope Benedict XVI will preside over Newman's beatification — sainthood's honorific antechamber — when he visits Britain in September, but between now and then he's likely to hear growing demands for change in the governance of an ancient but scandal-ravaged institution In a stunningly blunt editorial, for...

Several readers who disagreed with The Times' Monday editorial , which expressed concern over priests who made political statements from the pulpit before Tuesday's vote, noted that the same day's paper published a photo of Gov. Jerry Brown in the pews of a South L.A. church campaigning for Proposition 30. In a letter Tuesday, Robert S. Rodgers of Culver City asked: "Do the editors approve of Democrats going to churches to push for their causes...

In response to "Preacher Scott Rents Theater in L.A. for Church," Part I, May 10: Bruce Corwin (president of Metropolitan Theaters and president of Miracle on Broadway) is quoted as saying, "A church is a splendid use for the theater." Friends, church is theater and I hope to live to see the day that it is taxed accordingly. MARY CARR MELKONIAN Woodland Hills

From time to time I read your column on My Favorite Weekend. To be honest, I am not interested in where the famous eat, but I have been waiting to see if any of them include church as part of their Sunday events. I may have missed some, but I was delighted to see in the June 26 column that Jesse McCartney did mention that he attended church. Nice to know that he includes time to thank God for his many blessings. Joe Sartoris Lomita

WASHINGTON - Can a public high school hold its graduation ceremony in a local church? The Supreme Court has been pondering that question in its private conference for six weeks, discussing whether to take up a Wisconsin case that could reset the line separating church and state. Last year, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that the Elmbrook School District, near Milwaukee, violated the 1st Amendment and its ban on "an establishment of religion" by holding a high school graduation ceremony in the sanctuary of an evangelical Christian church.

On occasion, my wife and I have taken out-of-town visitors on Sunday outings to the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles to expose the uninitiated to the joy of a live gospel choir. I sometimes wonder how I stand with that power greater than myself while intruding on a house of worship solely to observe a spectacle. But we're always received so warmly that I quickly lose myself in the music and forget where I am. In that state, I've paid little notice to hats and shoes and dresses.

KAMPALA, Uganda - He is a celebrity across eastern and central Africa, a gospel music star known to many as the "Dancing Priest. " But for years he also was a keeper of painful secrets - his own and many others'. In going public, Anthony Musaala has forced the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda to confront a problem it had insisted didn't exist. And he may stir a debate far beyond Africa's most Catholic of countries. The Ugandan priest has been suspended indefinitely by the archbishop of Kampala for exposing what he calls an open secret: Sex abuse in the Catholic Church is a problem in Africa as well as in Western Europe and North America.

A special task force of fire, police and federal agencies is investigating a church fire that erupted early Friday at a Leimert Park church. The fire was reported before 2 a.m. at Bethesda Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith on Crenshaw Boulevard. Flames tore through the church windows, and plumes of black smoke climbed into the night sky. Witnesses said they could see the flames up to three miles away. Firefighters were on the scene within four minutes of the first call, said Los Angeles Fire Department Capt.

"Home Run" is the heartfelt and deeply religious story of a baseball star's struggle with alcoholism and the Christian faith-based recovery group that gets him through. The first moments seem promising as images of a peaceful stretch of farm country fill up the screen. A weathered red barn sits in the distance next to a sprawling white farmhouse with a wraparound porch. But as the camera goes in close, something is wrong - the red is too red, the worn spots too worn. The metaphor is seriously overplayed and we are only in the first inning.

When in pain, pray. When you worry, worship. When in grief, share it in your small group. The Facebook post, sent in the early morning hours Friday by famed pastor Rick Warren, was short on words but deep in meaning. Since the suicide death of his son a week earlier, the pastor of Orange County's sprawling Saddleback Church has indeed been sharing his grief. But his "small group" includes not only his parishioners, but nearly a million Twitter followers as well as those who read his Facebook page.

"Bishops Ban Sterilization Services at All Catholic-Affiliated Hospitals" (June 16) brought expected responses (letters, June 19) from readers who believe that too many people on the planet is the greatest evil we face. The Catholic Church believes that all should be open to the possibility of life, but it does not teach that one cannot limit family size using moral methods. This is a difficult teaching to a society that has little concept of self-sacrifice, believes in a culture of death, reduces the meaning of sexual union to recreation and holds that humans alone completely control their destiny.

Hector Roach was in a race with his draining cellphone battery. "I've been calling everyone, but there sure is nobody here, and now I have no bars. " He had a decision to make: cancel the night walk or go it alone. In an attempt to quell the shootings that have plagued California's second-most-violent city, church members in the hardest-hit neighborhoods -- operating in groups of no fewer than three -- have been going up to youths hanging out on street corners and parking lots.

According to a survey conducted by the Bertelsmann Religion Foundation Monitor, the United States is the most religious nation in the industrialized world. The Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that 88% of the Americans it surveyed are fairly or absolutely certain that God exists, and that more than half of them say religion is "very important" in their lives. Personally, I've always had a tenuous relationship with organized religion, especially Christianity. As it was for most African Americans of my generation, the church was a powerful force in my childhood.