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They decry the vitriol aimed at a planned Islamic center near ground zero.

Arrayed on the steps of City Hall, New York Muslim leaders Wednesday condemned the ugly rhetorical attacks aimed at Islam and its followers amid a national furor over a planned Islamic center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Faithful Central Bible bought the Inglewood arena for $22 million a decade ago, with ambitious plans to make it a family entertainment venue. But now the Forum mostly sits empty and is embroiled in a legal dispute with management company SMG.

At the Tabernacle in Inglewood on a recent Sunday, more than 2,000 members of the Faithful Central Bible Church jammed the aisles of the warehouse-turned-church hall, standing, clapping and swaying to the gospel music thundering from a men's choir and accompanying rock band.

The fact that only 34% of people correctly identify him as Christian doesn't bother the president, he tells NBC. 'There is a mechanism, a network of misinformation… in a new-media era.'

President Obama said in an interview Sunday that he can't worry about dispelling every rumor about him — even though a recent poll showed nearly 20% of Americans erroneously believe he is Muslim.

Zaytuna College hopes to address U.S. Muslim community's desire for leaders who understand Islam in a western context.

At a fundraiser in February for Zaytuna College, organizers seemed intent on preempting critical questions.

Hearing says the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr violated the church constitution, but praises her for ministering to gays. Some panelists hope the verdict will force the church to confront the issue.

A retired minister who officiated at more than a dozen same-sex marriages when such unions were legal in California was found guilty Friday of violating the Presbyterian constitution and her ordination vows for performing those ceremonies.

Materials from attic detail the early structure and teaching of the movement.

More than 1,000 documents, including some dating to the beginning of the Nation of Islam, were found in the attic of a home in Detroit, the city where the secretive movement started 80 years ago, a lawyer said.

Partly encouraged by outspoken clergy and the pope, leading French Catholic conservatives are distancing themselves from President Sarkozy, saying his policies toward migrants fuel racial intolerance.

Encouraged in part by outspoken clergy and Pope Benedict XVI, leading figures among France's Roman Catholic conservatives are distancing themselves from their political ally, President Nicolas Sarkozy, arguing that his policies toward Roma migrants and others fuel racial intolerance.

Britain and the Catholic Church conspired to hide the suspected role of a priest in a 1972 triple bombing that killed nine people, an ombudsman's investigation finds.

The British government and the Roman Catholic Church conspired to cover up the suspected involvement of a local priest in a deadly triple bombing in Northern Ireland in 1972 that killed nine people, a new investigation into the attack found Tuesday.

The lesbian is accused of violating the Presbyterian constitution when gay marriage was legal in California.

A lesbian minister, who officiated at more than a dozen same-sex weddings during the brief window gay marriage was legal in California, goes to trial Thursday before a Presbyterian court, charged with violating her denomination's constitution.

'Build it somewhere else,' says one protester about the project blocks from the former World Trade Center. Nearby, counterdemonstrators protest what they see as bigotry.

Kathy O'Shea lost her firefighter nephew in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York. Only the nameplate from his helmet was found.

Citing a growing atmosphere of distrust, especially since the issue of the Islamic center near Ground Zero erupted, some plan to tone down celebrations of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan.

For nearly a decade, the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno has held a carnival on the Saturday following the end of Ramadan, during a festival that has been called the Muslim equivalent of Christmas. With pony rides, carnival attractions, games and Middle Eastern food, it's a popular event for the community's children.

Bayview Baptist joins forces with a company to help distribute discount boxes of frozen food to families.

Before members of the congregation began arriving to pick up the prepaid boxes of food, the Rev. Bruce Jackson, associate pastor of Bayview Baptist Church , asked volunteers involved in the distribution process to join hands for a prayer circle.

A spokesman seeks to counter confusion, indicated by recent polls, about his faith.

President Obama is a Christian who prays daily, the White House said, looking to tamp down growing doubts among Americans about the president's religion.

Police had presented the case as a possible hate crime, but prosecutors file felony vandalism charges over damage to the monument at St. Mary's Armenian Apostolic Church.

A 23-year-old man who allegedly used a sledgehammer to smash a religious monument outside St. Mary's Armenian Apostolic Church in Glendale has pleaded not guilty to felony vandalism, officials said.

Professor Jeffrey S. Siker presented his academic paper at the Catholic Biblical Assn. of America's international conference. Obama quotes Bible passages that appeal to the broadest base, Siker said.

When President Obama cites the Bible in his public speeches, he expresses a faith rooted in the African American church as well as a refusal to cede the realm of religion to Republicans, according to a theology professor at Loyola Marymount University.

For Muslims like Omar Younis, observance of the holy month of Ramadan is one of the few religious rituals they still follow. They're likened to Christmas Christians.

As men and women in makeshift togas danced and jumped to booming house music, Omar Younis made out with a woman he had met just a few hours earlier at her 25th-birthday dinner.

The novelist says she still believes in God, but she couldn't find a basis in Scripture for some positions taken by churches. And she rejects the persecution of gays and women.

The author Anne Rice, best known for her vampire novels, made waves recently when she declared on her Facebook page that she had "quit being a Christian." Twelve years after her return to Catholicism, Rice said she still believed in God, but that, "In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life."

The Egyptian Muslim scholar and popular TV preacher angers some fundamentalists with statements such as, 'The West is the victim of the Arabs, not the other way around.'

The mellifluous man in the sleek gray suit can make an Islamic radical wince in a nanosecond.

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg praises the decision by the city's preservation commission to let plans move ahead for the center, which will house a Muslim prayer space. Opponents plan to sue.

With the Statue of Liberty at his back and religious leaders at his side, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg praised a city commission's decision Tuesday that cleared the way for an Islamic community center to be built two blocks north of the former World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.

The oil painting of Britain's venerated prime minister disappeared a few days ago from Ye Olde King's Head Pub in Santa Monica. Hazy memories make it hard for staff to pin down exactly when.

Talk about lack of decency.

In North Carolina, a church group and an atheist group put up dueling signs quoting their respective versions of the Pledge of Allegiance. Each group accuses the other of rewriting U.S. history.

In the Internet age, the nation's culture wars are often waged through online blogs and e-mails. But across North Carolina, a heated church-state debate is playing out on an old-fashioned canvas: highway billboards.

For the last two years, the Aetherius Society has opened its pilgrimages to all faiths. About 100 people joined last Saturday's trek up the tallest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The mountain was supposed to impart energy to its pilgrims, but as he neared the top, Ashraf Carrim wasn't feeling it.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, reports of anti-Semitic acts, ranging from taunts and threats to violence, in the state rose 20% for the second straight year.

The Anti-Defamation League said Tuesday that it had tallied a sharp uptick in anti-Semitic incidents in California last year, many of them involving taunts, threats and insults by adolescents and teenagers.

The Greater Los Angeles Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations cites the organizers' call for protesters to bring their dogs — considered an insult to Muslims.

A loosely organized protest planned this week over a proposed new mosque in Temecula whose organizers urged demonstrators to bring their dogs was sharply denounced by a Southern California Islamic organization Tuesday.

During two weeks at Georgetown University, they bring the U.S. and the Muslim world a little closer together.

Fifteen young American religious scholars and 14 teaching assistants from Al Azhar University, one of the oldest and most influential Islamic institutions in the world, spent two weeks together this month at Georgetown University in an attempt to bridge the divide between the Muslim world and the United States.

Although a draft environmental impact report released this week took no issue with the design of the church's expansion, aesthetics-conscious community members remain opposed.

In Pasadena's historic civic district, there's a conflict between two images of sacred space.

The largest immigrant bloc in Europe is Muslim, and one of its biggest defenders is the Roman Catholic Church. The church doesn't face the accusations of self-interest that it does in the U.S.

Visually speaking, the John Paul II Canteen is more IKEA cafe than soup kitchen. Tucked away in a pleasant hillside neighborhood in Rome, it has clean lines, attractive furniture, track lighting and framed photographs, making it a welcome oasis for the immigrants who stream in daily from shelters, homeless camps and overcrowded apartments.

Suits name the Vatican as a respondent on grounds that it employed clergy suspected of abuse. Papal spokesmen say it is a sovereign entity and immune from the American court system.

Pope Benedict XVI is a head of state and the leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide. To Jeff Anderson, a lawyer who represents victims of sexual abuse by priests, he is also a potential legal witness.

A report sharply critical of Israel could have led to a fight within the church. But the General Assembly averts a battle by toning down some of the language.

A week ago, the Presbyterian Church USA seemed headed for a bruising, polarizing battle over a report on the Middle East that sharply criticized Israel. On Friday, meeting in Minneapolis, the church's General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution that seemed to placate nearly everyone on both sides of the issue — a "miracle," some said, that offered hope to those who see the Mideast as hopelessly deadlocked.

The groups assert that the university's reaction has been too weak. University chief Mark G. Yudof says the groups may be basing their responses on an unreliable sampling of student opinion.

The president of the University of California and leaders of a dozen prominent American Jewish organizations are in an unusual public dispute about the extent of anti-Semitism on UC campuses and the university's response to it.