In a new move toward a break with their national denomination over
homosexuality, conservative leaders of 300 American Baptist
congregations in Southern California and elsewhere in the Pacific
Southwest called Friday for an advisory vote by local churches next
May on whether to leave American Baptist Churches
USA. The regional board said it was calling for a vote because it
wanted the “guidance and input” of local congregations.
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Day and night, a cadre of the condemned – 3,500 men and 54 women –
await their fate in
U.S. prisons on death row.
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In a new sign of improving relations between the Vatican and China,
Cardinal Roger
M. Mahony has just returned from China, where he met
with Catholic church and government officials and publicly celebrated
Mass in a parish church in Shanghai.
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The protests started as soon as playwright Colin Cox e-mailed
churches to announce the opening Sunday of his new play on the life
of controversial Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong.
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As the 40th anniversary nears for a landmark Vatican document that
declared that Jews as a people were not responsible for the death of
Jesus, American Roman Catholics and Jews are taking stock of how far
the religions have come in healing nearly 2,000 years of enmity –
and the challenges ahead.
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Leaders representing 300 American Baptist churches in Southern
California and parts of other Western states announced Wednesday that
they have taken the first steps to break with their national
denomination because they said it had failed to declare homosexual
practice incompatible with Christian Scripture.
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Robert
W. Funk, founder of the controversial Jesus Seminar, which
called into question New Testament miracle stories and the
authenticity of many of the statements attributed to Jesus, has died.
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Sixty-seven years after Spencer Tracy played the revered Father
Edward Flanagan in the 1938
MGM motion picture “Boys Town,” the
group’s new executive director unabashedly trades on such idealized
images of the past while adapting to the changing realities of
today’s troubled youths.
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Televangelist Pat Robertson’s call for the assassination of
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez provoked a storm of criticism
Tuesday, triggering condemnation from religious leaders and
international outrage, though the Bush administration said he was a
private citizen whose remarks were “inappropriate.”
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A conservative Newport Beach parish that severed ties with the
Episcopal Church in a dispute over scriptural teaching and
homosexuality is the rightful owner of its buildings and other
property, an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled Monday.
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