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More than 50 leading Muslim groups said it is "unethical, insensitive and inhumane" to oppose the planned Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero.

Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations released three public service announcements highlighting American Muslims' roles in 9/11 as first responders to, and victims of, the attack. A former military interrogator in Iraq and a national security expert, together with faith leaders, said Park51, as the NYC project is known, would deprive terrorists of a recruiting tool.

More than 90 clergy have signed a public letter castigating the widespread mischaracterizations of President Obama's Christian faith and saying that "the elephant in the room is race." 

Obama said Wednesday that he is "cautiously hopeful" about the prospects of a new Middle East peace deal after meeting with leaders at the White House on Wednesday. Before a working dinner with the leaders, Obama mentioned that both Jews and Muslims are celebrating holy months (Elul and Ramadan, respectively), a rare shared period of devotion.

For both, Obama said, it's "a time to reflect on right and wrong; a time to ponder one's place in the world; a time when people of two great religions remind the world of a truth that is both simple and profound, that each of us, all of us, in our hearts and in our lives, are capable of great and lasting change." Then Abbas slipped a whoopee cushion under Netanyahu. 

Thousands of Shiite Muslims in Pakistan mourned the 35 victims of a triple bombing that sought to inflame sectarian tensions. 

John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, has asked a federal judge to order prison officials to allow him and other Muslims to pray as a group, in accordance with Muslim practice.

Funding a Catholic group through student activity fees at the University of Wisconsin does not violate the Establishment Clause, a federal appeals court ruled. An Illinois city has given up on trying to collect a tax bill from a Hindu woman who refused to remove a tree from her property because she says Hinduism prohibits the needless killing of any living thing. 

Dozens of children whose parents were missionaries for a Florida-based organization were sexually and physically abused at an African boarding school, according to a new report. 

The Mormon church says it has changed its genealogical database to prevent the names of Jews killed during the Holocaust from being posthumously baptized. But not everyone is convinced the problem is settled, the SLT reports.

The United Methodist Church is using the results of a massive congregational survey to halt a decades-long drops in members. RNS reported on the study last month. 

Focus on the Family says schools' anti-bullying and tolerance programs promote political aims like same-sex marriage. The Toronto Vegetarian Association barred the Seventh-day Adventist Church from having a booth at the annual Vegetarian Food Fair because of the church's opposition to homosexuality.

Physicist Stephen Hawking says God wasn't necessary for the creation of the universe.

The State Department says the imam planning to build the Islamic center near Ground Zero is wrapping up his diplomatic tour of the Persian Gulf early, returning on Wednesday.

On Tuesday in Dubai, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told a group of intellectuals that the fight over the mosque is more than "a piece of real estate" and could shape the future of Muslim relations in the U.S.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that a state investigation of the finances behind Park51, as the project is known, would set a "terrible precedent." Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., disagreed, saying it is essential to find out whose behind the project. "A number of terror plots have emanated from mosques," King told the AP. 

A group of teenagers fired a shotgun at a small-town mosque in western New York during two nights of drive-by harassment, according to authorities. Austria's far right Freedom Party has designed an online video game that has players collect points by shooting mosques, minarets, and muezzins, who call Muslims to prayer.

A new Newsweek poll confirms what last month's Pew and Time magazine polls have already shown: About 20 percent of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim.

The president is opening a new round of Mideast peacemaking today in Washington, as he brings Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the White House for their first face-to-face talks since 2008. On cue, a Palestinian gunman opened fire one a Israeli vehicle in the West Bank, killing four passengers, and Israeli settlers responded by vowing to break a freeze on West Bank settlements.

As expected, the Obama administration on Tuesday asked a federal judge to lift a restraining order blocking federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

A conservative legal group that includes Christians is trying to force California's Gov. Schwarzenegger and attorney general to defend Prop 8 in court. Gay couples cannot divorce in Texas, where they also cannot get married, a state appeals court has ruled. 

A federal lawsuit against the new health-care bill alleges that the legislation violates the religious freedom of the plaintiffs by funding abortion and establishing the "secular religion of Socialism."  

Pennsylvania law enforcement will not bring charges against a 40-year-old Catholic priest who impregnated a 19-year-old girl; the Vatican, though, is looking into defrocking him. The priest and the girl, who has given birth, are evidently living together now, the AP reports. 

James Dobson and Glenn Beck touched their rings together and activated their Wonder Twins powers, Beck said. The conservative commentator noted that several conservative Christian leaders decline to enlist in his "Black Robe Regiment," saying they'd "lose half their congregation." The RNS story on Beck's courtship of evangelicals is here.

Indonesian Buddhists succeeded in getting a "Buddha Bar" branch closed, and its owners were fined about $110,000 for causing mental distress, according to Reuters. NPR looks at whether religious belief confers an evolutionary advantage. 

Oklahoma City has rented out a room to a Satanist Church for a public exorcism ceremony; a Rastafarian forgot to say that his dreds were religious, which means the security company that refused to hire him did not discriminate against his religion, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court ruled.

Two members of a church that preaches faith-healing pleaded not guilty Monday to manslaughter charges for failing to provide medical care to their infant son, who died shortly after his premature birth.

Dale and Shannon Hickman are the third couple identified as members of the Followers of Christ Church to face criminal charges in the death of a child during the past two years.

The developer behind the Islamic cultural center and mosque planned near Ground Zero said it never occurred to him that his project would stir up so much controversy.

Sharif El-Gamal has a checkered past, according to the AP, with arrests for disorderly conduct, driving while intoxicated, petite larceny, patronizing a prostitute, and trespassing. A former tenant also says El-Gamal roughed him up in 2005 when the tenant was a month late on the rent. "I regret many things that I did in my youth," El-Gamal said in a statement. 

A new poll finds that 71 percent of New Yorkers want the Park51 project moved further away from Ground Zero. The same number want NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to investigate funding of the project.

A 21-year-old film student was indicted on Monday on charges of attempted murder and assault as hate crimes for slashing a Muslim taxi driver last week. A suspicious fire at a mosque construction site in Tennessee has local Muslims worried that their project has been dragged into the Ground Zero debate. The Council on American-Islamic Relations are suing the Illinois State Police on behalf of a local Muslim cleric whose appointment was revoked last month. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a suit on behalf of Somali Muslims who were denied prayer time and faced harassment. 

U.S. Muslim leaders say they are stepping up efforts to unify their communities and get them politically involved to counter the recent spate of anti-Muslim sentiment.

The man suspected of gunning down a lay Mormon bishop in California was mentally ill and believed the church wronged him when he was a member back in the 1980s, family members told the AP. Mormon officials are in talks with China to secure religious freedom for Mormons living the communist country.

In yet another Obama-Lincoln parallel, a New York University law professor says that just as many Americans believe Obama is a closet Muslim, many in the 1860s believed Honest Abe was a secret Catholic.

Glenn Beck sought the imprimatur of 20 heavyweight evangelicals like James Dobson at a secret meeting weeks before he went all Billy Graham on us, according to WaPo. He wants to lead, but will evangelicals follow?

Germany's Catholic bishops approved new guidelines that require the church to report to prosecutors suspected cases of sexual abuse of minors. An Oregon couple pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges in the faith-healing death of their infant son. 

A new study says that American women derive more happiness from religious services on Sunday than shopping. The Dalai Lama has come out for free-range eggs. 

President Obama marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Sunday with a visit to the recovering city and a quote from the Book of Job.

"`There is hope for a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again, and that its tender branch will not cease,' " Obama said, drawing from Job 14. Fortunately, he stopped there, because the rest of the chapter, like a lot of Job, is pretty grim. For example, the next verse says that, unlike trees, "man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more."

In his first comments on the polls that showed nearly 20 percent of Americans believe he is Muslim, Obama told NBC Nightly News, "the facts are the facts" and blamed the mistaken rumours on "a network of misinformation that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly."

In a fiery Sunday sermon in Arkansas, Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, said people who wrongly believe Obama is Muslim of catering to political enemies.

Neither comments are likely to appease conservative commentator Glenn Beck, who sharply criticized Obama's religious beliefs in his "Restoring Honor" rally this weekend in Washington. Beck's own language was remarkably religious, a kind of civil religion on steroids, as he enlisted and exhorted his "black-robed regiment." Does that mean he's going to recruit Catholic priests? Southern Baptist political guru Richard Land says he was "stunned" by Beck's missionary rhetoric, saying "he sounded like Billy Graham."

Back to Katrina, the NYT looks at how churches in black neighborhoods still haven't recovered from the storm, calling the Lower Ninth Ward "a desolated disgrace." The AP writes about a Catholic priest still missing after five years.

In the wake of a wave of hate crimes against U.S. Muslims, a coalition of religious groups, including the Baptists, Jews, Christians and Muslims are meeting with Department of Justice officials. The FBI is investigating a fire at a Tennessee mosque construction site that had drawn anti-Islamic protests. The Council on American-Islamic Relations also says a mock pig emblazoned with the message "No Mosque in NYC" was left at a California mosque's mailbox.

The chairwoman of a NYC committee that approved the Islamic cultural center to be built blocks from Ground Zero says an interfaith center should be added to the blueprints. The imam spearheading the project, who is on a diplomatic tour of the Middle East, told an Abu-Dhabi newspaper that the "election season" has had an adverse impact on the debate about Park51. The AP says, "Whatever the outcome, the uproar over a planned Islamic center near the former World Trade Center site is shaping up as a signal event in the story of American Islam."

A lay bishop at a Mormon church was fatally shot as he was was doing administrative paperwork on Sunday between services. The former leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium urged a victim of serial sexual abuse by a bishop to keep silent for a year, until the bishop - the victim's own uncle - could retire, according to tapes made by the victim last April and published over the weekend in two Belgian newspapers.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, founder and now spiritual head of Israel's ultra-orthodox Shas Party, declared that God should send a plague to strike down the Palestinians and their leader, Mahmoud Abbas. Shas is a member of the current Israeli governing coalition, whose leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is about to enter into formal peace talks with Abbas.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's attempt to convert dozens of young women to Islam during a visit to Italy led to an angry reaction from Italian media. A motorist fired pepper spray Saturday at a group of demonstrators from Westboro Baptist Church outside a funeral for a U.S. Marine in Nebrask.

More than 1,000 documents, including some dating back to the beginning of the Nation of Islam, have been found in Detroit, the city where the secretive movement started 80 years ago.

An Arizona federal district court dismissed a complaint by a Quaker that the use of his federal income tax payments for military spending substantially burdens his religious exercise. The Kentucky Supreme Court held that the Medi-Share Program operated by the American Evangelistic Association and the Christian Share Ministry is subject to regulation by the state.

 

The Utah Supreme Court on Friday said a polygamous sect waited too long to object to a state takeover of its historic property trust, rejecting its bid to undo changes made to the United Effort Plan Trust.

The court sided with the Utah Attorney General’s Office, which argued that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ignored numerous opportunities to participate in the changes to and management of the trust.

A Santa Fe congregation that uses a hallucinogenic brew of South American plants as a sacrament thought its battle with the government was over in early 2006.

It had won a unanimous ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that year that said federal drug regulators hadn't met their burden under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in trying to restrict importation and use of the tea.

But it wasn't until last week that the case actually ended.

CNN says some (semi) high-profile evangelicals are under fire for their participation in tomorrow's "Restore Honor" rally hosted by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin in DC; some Christians are nervous about Beck's Mormon faith, even though they easily worked with Mormons to outlaw gay marriage in California. Conservatives are happy, though, that the FCC will appeal a federal judge's ruling that struck down its policy against "fleeting expletives" on TV.

The NYT profiles the Gainesvilles, Fla., pastor at the center of that 9/11 burn-a-Quran rally; he's now packing heat because of reported death threats, and he says he wants to "send a message" to Muslims worldwide that Sharia isn't welcome in the US of A. They also profile the developer of the Park51 Islamic center who, in their words, "has yet to secure financing, hire an architect, incorporate the nonprofit entity that will run the center, start its fund-raising, recruit its board members, or present formal feasibility studies and business plans to community meetings."

WaPo looks intothe widespread hostility directed at U.S. Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan. The Muslim cab driver who was stabbed by a drunken 21-year-old who asked if he was a Muslim met with NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg as Hizzoner tries to calm tensions in Gotham. Muslim leaders say they're concerned about growing "anti-Muslim hysteria."

Conservatives -- and not a lot of others -- are pushing back against a proposed bill that wouldn't let them hire and fire based on religion if they receive government grants. An "Episcopal" school (that's really conservative Anglican) in Fort Worth, Texas, has denied admission to a 4-year-old because she has two mommies. The strippers are back outside an Ohio church whose members picketed the ladies' strip club.

The U.S. ambassador to Malta, Doug Kmiec -- a Catholic Republican who endorsed President Obamadespite Obama's support of abortion rights -- is said to be in stable condition following a car wreck in California that killed an elderly nun and injured a priest. Speaking of stable condition, a new study says doctors with deep religious beliefs are more likely to take steps to keep you alive, while those who aren't religious are more willing to pull the plug.

Pope Benedict XVI praised Mother Teresa on her 100th birthday as an "exemplary model of Christian virtue." In New York last night, a few hundred outraged Catholics rallied outside the Empire State Building to vent their anger that building managers wouldn't light the iconic spire in Mother T's blue and white (it was red, white and blue to celebrate the anniversary of women's suffrage).

Those 33 trapped miners in Chile have asked for statues of saints and a crucifix to create a shrine in their underground encampment. Egyptian Muslims are steaming (almost literally) about consecutive powers failures at the height of Ramadan. A South African pastor angered his flock for saying "Jesus had HIV" (he was trying to take away the HIV stigma, he says). A Saudi cleric was told to stop issuing fatwas after a recent edict told Muslims to stay away from supermarkets with female cashiers.

Pastors in southeast Nigeria claim illness and poverty are caused by witches who bring terrible misfortune to those around them. And those denounced as witches must be cleansed through deliverance or cast out.

As daylight breaks, and we travel out to the rural villages it becomes apparent the most vulnerable to this stigmatization of witchcraft are children.

More than 70 Christian leaders, including heads of denominations and evangelical heavyweights, say they are "deeply troubled" by the questioning of President Obama's Christian faith. "We understand that these are contentious times," the leaders say in an open letter, "but the personal faith of our leaders should not be up for debate."

The GOP is trying to distance itself from the RNC's new media director, who tweeted that Obama himself might be among the 20 percent of Americans who think he's Muslim. Glen Beck said Obama is "not a Christian." Conservatives are trying to stir up controversy about Obama speaking at Xavier University, a Catholic school, at a Katrina memorial on Saturday.

One of the co-organizers of Park51, the mosque and cultural center planned near Ground Zero, said moving the project is "off the table for now." Park51 got a boost on Wednesday from a coalition of supporters that includes families of 9/11 victims, reports the AP, which also profiled the Muslim real estate developer behind the project.

The NYT looks at world opinion of our raucous debate over Park51 and finds that in almost every country people see the debate as confirmation of their pre-existing feelings about the country - good or bad. I think I'm with Jon Stewart on this one. 

A Muslim taxi driver in NYC was stabbed by a 21-year-old film student in what police are calling a hate crime. A man urinated on prayer rugs in a Queens, N.Y. mosque; another mosque in Calif. was vandalized with signs saying "No temple for the God of terrorism at Ground Zero. ANB." ANB stands for American Nationalist Brotherhood, says the Council on American-Islamic Relations.  

The armed militia group that had planned to protect a Florida church's Quran burning on 9/11 has had second thoughts, according to CNN. The NYT profiles the pastor behind the burning, Terry Jones, who says he has "no experience of (the Quran) whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says." WaPo finds that "shariah" has become a rallying cry for American critics of Islam. 

USA Today profiles Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric who has become the Osama bin Laden of the Internet. 

Denver's Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput said "systematic discrimination" against the church is emerging in the U.S. and Europe. More than 100 religious charities send a sent a letter to Congress protesting a provision in pending legislatin that would prohibit them from receiving federal money if they make personnel decision based on religion.

Disgruntled former members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will be voting to create their new denomination on Friday. ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson asks "how this separation in the body of Christ will serve the ministry and message of reconciliation entrusted to us by God." The Minneapolis Star-Tribune finds that, a year after voting to all sexually active gay clergy, the ELCA remains largely intact. 

Hundreds of Catholic nuns and impoverished Indians are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa's birth today. The Rev. Jim Martin has a nice meditation on Teresa's spiritual struggles over at HuffPo. Pope Benedict XVI will soon announce Oct. 9 as the feast day for Cardinal Newman.

A Las Vegas man is suing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because he hurt his back baptizing fat people. An Italian cobbler has made identical shoes for the pope and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. They are white satin. Benedict's taste runs more scarlet, I hear. 

 

Republican leaders say they were just joking when suggesting that President Obama is part of the 20 percent of Americans who believe POTUS is a Muslim; WaPo's Howard Kurtz wonders if any of this is the media's fault. Two top Democratic strategists who specialize in religion blame "a widespread and constant misinformation campaign by Fox News and right wing bloggers and radio hosts."

A new poll finds that Americans don't necessarily think Islam encourages violence, but their views of Islam have worsened in the past five years. The ACLU and others have filed suit against the FBI over allegations of surveillance of Muslims.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave another impassioned defense of Park51, the Islamic center near Ground Zero, saying American cannot "compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom." New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan is worried about the tenor of the debate in Gotham. The NYT says the area near Park51 was once known as Little Syria. Up in the Bronx, the trial of four men accused of plotting to blow up synagogues in 2009 got underway yesterday.

An amred Christian militia (does anyone else get the irony here?) says it will stand guard outside a church in Gainesville, Fla., that plans to burn Qurans on 9/11. Other Gainesville faith leaders are planning a counter-demonstration. A Muslim member of the 101st Airborne is seeking conscientious objector status so he won't be forced to fight other Muslims in Afghanistan.

The class on gay marriage at (Catholic) Seton Hall University that got the local archbishop all riled up is set to go on as scheduled, the professor says. The White House says it will appeal a judge's ruling that put a halt to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research; the NIH says some current research will continue.

Looks like the Washington Times (owned by leaders of the Unification Church) is being sold to a company affiliated with the Unification Church. Right-wing bomb thrower Ann Coulter blasted the "fake Christians" who disinvited her from a conservative convention after she agreed to speak to gay conservatives.

Accusations of child abuse in a New Jersey Jewish enclave have the rabbis upset after the boy's father went to police instead of the rabbis first. Even though a federal judge has ruled South Carolina's state-issued "I Believe" license plates unconstitutional, the state attorney general has green-lighted similar plates that are sponsored by a private group. A federal appeals court has resurrected a defamation suit against ABC's 20/20 program for selective editing that made a California prosperity gospel preacher sound richer than he really was.

Scottish songstress Susan Boyle will sing for Pope Benedict XVI in Glasgow next month (singing a decidedly Protestant (and Swedish) favorite, "How Great Thou Art.") Meanwhile, craftsmen are busy making the ambo (pulpit) and chair for B16's Mass.

Speaking of the Brits, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was told by Anglican bishops in Africa that "homosexuality is incompatible" with the Bible. And, in case anyone needed further proof of the ginormous cultural gap between Western and Global South Anglicans, Gallup says 55 percent of sub-Saharan Africans believe in witchcraft.

New DNA tests on Adolf Hitler's surviving relatives indicate the Butcher of Berlin had Jewish and even African branches in his family tree. In France, there are serious signs of friction between President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Catholic Church over the mass deportation of about 200 Gypsies. Pakistan says it will clamp down on extremist groups trying to provide aid to the millions of people displaced by flood waters.

The Wall Street Journal posts an architectural critique of the iconic chapel at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (not entirely sure what the news peg is here).

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated televangelist Frederick Price's defamation lawsuit claiming ABC's "20/20" news program used a fictionalized sermon portraying himself as a wealthy braggart out of context.

The clip ABC aired of the prosperity preacher it aired was actually a sermon on greed in which the preacher slips into the role of a fictional character who is wealthy but unhappy.

The American public continues to express conflicted views of Islam.

Favorable opinions of Islam have declined since 2005, but there has been virtually no change over the past year in the proportion of Americans saying that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence.

You may have seen those "...and I'm a Mormon" ads from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, trying to knock down stereotypes about clean-cut blond-hair blue-eyed Mormons.

Now Chad Hardy, the guy behind those "Men on a Mission" and "Mormon Muffins" calendars, has a video of his own, and it's not exactly what the folks in Salt Lake City had in mind:

 

Girls in the polygamous community of Bountiful “were to be treated like poison snakes” and taught that their role was to “have lots of children and obey the men,” says an affidavit filed in the B.C. Supreme Court in connection to a landmark polygamy case.

“The boys were taught not to interact with the girls and that the girls were to be treated like ‘poison snakes,’ ” says the affidavit, filed earlier this month by Truman Oler, 28, who grew up in Bountiful and left the community when he was about 21.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, on the first stop of his 15-nation goodwill tour though Muslim nations, spoke expansively about religious law and Islam, but had little to say about the controversy surrounding his plans to build an Islamic center and mosque two blocks north of Ground Zero in NYC.

A Bahraini man asked Rauf, "Why don't we just change the place, to show that Islam is not there to threaten everybody, that Islam is a religion of peace?"

To which Rauf responded, "The opposition to us has come from outside the community. The fact that there has been this misunderstanding shows the need for the project."

The AP finds that Muslims in the Middle East are pretty indifferent to all the Park51 hubub. Over in Europe, though, President Obama is getting a lot of grief over his position on the project, with a German paper calling his lukewarm support "cowardly."

NY Gov. Paterson and Archbishop Timothy Dolan are meeting today to discuss the controversy. Greek Orthodox Christians wonder why their efforts to rebuild a church damaged on 9/11 haven't received the attention of politicians.

A NYT columnist, noting that there are mosques four and twelve blocks away from Ground Zero, asks how far away Park51 would have to be to appease its opponents.

National Catholic Reporter compares opposition to Park51 to the hostility Irish Catholic immigrants faced 100 years ago in NYC; the Salt Lake Tribune says Mormons' "9/11 mosque" moment also occured a century ago, when the first Mormon U.S. senator was elected.

A federal judge blocked the Obama administration from funding human embryonic stem cell research, ruling that it violates a federal law barring the use of taxpayer money for experiments that destroy human embryos. The Ninith Circuit Court ruled that World Vision, the huge Christian charity, is exempt from laws prohibiting religious discrimination in hiring employees.

In its first-ever report to the UN Human Rights Council, the U.S. said a number of minority groups - including Muslims - face discrimination, but the country's political system has the means to improve the situation. An Alaskan man who compiled a hit list of targets he called "enemies of Islam" was sentenced Monday to eight years in prison. Virginia, which only began hiring non-Protestant prison chaplains last year, doesn't have nearly enough Muslim chaplains to accomodate its inmates.

James Dobson, founder of the Focus on the Family, will form a political action group. The family of a killed U.S. soldier is disappointed that prosecutors and Westboro Baptist Church reached a deal that will keep both sides out of court.

A report says the British government and the Roman Catholic church colluded to cover up the involvement of a priest in a 1972 bombing that killed nine people and injured 30 in Northern Ireland.

A retired Presbyterian minister is facing a church trial (again) for marrying gay couples. A Muslim woman has rejected Disney's suggested compromise that she wear a hat-and-bonnet rather than her veil while onstage.

Britons will not be allowed to bring pets, booze or barbecue at open-air service conducted by Pope Benedict XVI next month. Catholics are split over whether it's worthwhile to protest the Empire State Building's refusal to honor Mother Teresa. 

A country singer has written the worst song evuh about 9/11 and the so-called Ground Zero mosque. Listen here, if you dare. 

About 500 opponents and 200 supporters of the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" protested in NYC on Sunday. Though the rhetoric was heated, the biggest problem was the rain, said a police spokesman.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is on a 15-national State Department-sponsored tour of the Middle East to promote religious tolerance, said all the attention generated by the project is a good thing. His wife and co-organizer of Park51, Daisy Khan, said she may be open to moving the planned Islamic Cultural Center and mosque further away from Ground Zero and that opposition to the project "is like metastasized anti-Semitism."

Both the WaPo and the NYT devote some serious ink to Rauf, including an extensive look at what he has said about Islam-inspired terrorism. N.Y. gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio is running a "misleading" ad criticizing his opponent for supporting the mosque, according to the NYT. 

Among the people opposing Park51 are members of the government-funded U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, raising questions (again) about whether the commission really only cares about Christians' religious liberties.

Some counter-terrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment kicked up by Park51 plays into extremists hands by demonstrating that America is Islamophobic. The NYT explores the religious roots of stoning. A political battle is brewing in Israel over a museum dedicated to tolerance. Muslims say the planned museum will be built over a Muslim cemetery, Israelis say the tombstones are fake and were moved to the site to disrupt the project.

A California school seeks to become the country's first accredited Muslim college, CNN reports. The U.S. military is coercing soldiers to attended "spiritual fitness" sessions, according to a liberal journalist.

A New York-based Zen group is confronting controversy over its founder's sexual misconduct. The United Methodist Reporter looks at what happens when congregations merge. 

American Roman Catholics will begin using a new Roman Missal at Mass next November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced. A spokeswoman for the bishops says Americans are about to "embark on an educational journey" to prepare for the changes. 

The schismatic Bishop Robert Williamson, who was denounced by Pope Benedict XVI for denying elements of the Holocaust, says fellow members of the Society of Saint Pius X will be readmitted to the church without having to accept the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley has blocked archdiocesan employees from viewing a conservative blog critical of him at work. A Catholic priest in Tennessee has apologized and retracted comments suggesting that Catholics do not have to obey the pope and bishops. 

A Time magazine poll released Thursday found that 43 percent of Americans hold unfavorable views of Muslims, far outpacing the numbers for Mormons (29 percent), Catholics (17 percent), Jews (13 percent) and Protestants (13 percent). Twenty-five percent of those polled said most Muslims in the United States are not patriotic Americans.

Although the overall level of anti-Muslim sentiment hasn't shifted much since the uproar over the mosque near Ground Zero, the change in tone has been striking, religious scholars and other experts say.

Australian of the Year Prof Patrick McGorry is among a number of top psychiatrists who have been targeted by the Church of Scientology after they spoke out against the religion.

The University of Melbourne professor, with Monash University's Prof Louise Newman and Prof Ian Hickie, director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney, publicly backed calls by South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon in March for a senate inquiry into Scientology.

Chinese police say they have broken up a sex cult that was advocating free love and group sex in the southeastern city of Xiamen.

Police said that Chen Kyong's cult advertised itself as a social group promoting a natural and organic lifestyle and organized various activities from ecological traveling to organic farming for its registered members.

Bond was set Friday at $250,007 for sect leader Geody Harman, who was arrested Wednesday on a Utah warrant on rape charges.

Harman, describes himself as 'first counsel of the Holy Ghost' of the Church of the Firstborn of the General Assembly of Heaven.

The cult's top man, who claims is the Holy Ghost and the Father of Jesus Christ, has also been arrested.

The Agape Ministries empire has struck back against its detractors, accusing one of conning the controversial group out of $730,000.

Church leader Pastor Rocco Leo and two senior members of the group have launched a counter-claim against former follower Martin Penney.

Evangelist Franklin Graham tells CNN that President Obama isn't a Muslim now (1 in 4 Americans seem to think so) but he was born one.  The White House is in damage control overdrive on those numbers, or denial mode, according to the Washington Times.

Presidential prayer counselor Joel Hunter says Obama's silence on his faith is a problem: "You know what happens with a vacuum?" he said. "It gets filled." Just like the birther rumors, Obama has a way of attracting mistruths that stick, WaPo says.

The so-called Ground Zero mosque continues to generate opposition, and so does one outside Nashville,  but not a Methodist church-turned-mosque upstate in Utica, where it's been welcomed with open arms. WaPo looks at how you view the center depends on what you call it -- is it a mosque? A community center? A secret madrassa? The AP reminds editors that it's not a "Ground Zero mosque," and not to describe it as such.

NPR asks why imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the guy behind the Cordoba House or Park51 or whatever it's called today, has more or less gone underground (he's on a State Dept. junket overseas, saying that extremism at home and abroad is dangerous.).  Some NYC Muslims are more than a little ambivalent about the project, and some New Yorkers are tired of all the controversy. The center has also  become an issue in a hotly contested Missouri Senate race.

Sarah Palin tweeted that Dr. Laura was forced off the radio not because of her use of the n-word but because her First Amendment rights "ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence" her. Muslims' First Amendment rights to freedom of religion, meanwhile, are a "stab in the heart," Palin has said.

U.S. bishops are in a spat with the Catholic Biblical Association over royalties from Bible sales. A South Dakota seminary is looking to be the new training ground for conservative Lutherans in the new North American Lutheran Church. A town in suburban Boston sent a tax bill to a shuttered Baptist church that's on the market but hasn't attracted any bids.

Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet has a sit-down interview before he heads to Rome to take over the Congregation for Bishops.

The eight U.S. imams who made a pilgrimage to Holocaust sites in Europe have issued a joint statement: "We condemn anti-Semitism in any form. No creation of Almighty God should face discrimination based on his or her faith or religious conviction." 

A religious sect leader who claims to be the Holy Ghost and the father of Jesus Christ was arrested after peacefully surrendering to law enforcement officials, a day after a fellow church leader was arrested at their compound.

Terrill Dalton, president of the Church of the Firstborn of the General Assembly of Heaven, was arrested on a warrant issued by authorities in Salt Lake City on two counts of first-degree rape.

Good morning, mosqueteers. Lots of news today.

According to a Gallup poll, 37 percent of Americans disapprove of President Obama's remarks on the planned construction of a mosque two blocks north of Ground Zero. Four in 10, however, don't have an opinion on the matter. Obama said yesterday that he has "no regrets" about his comments. 

More troubling for the White House, though, is a new Pew poll that finds 18 percent of Americans think Obama is a Muslim. That's up from 11 percent last year. Only about 1/3 correctly identify him as a Christian. Nearly half of African Americans say they don't know what religion he practices, up from 36 percent in March 2009. A Time magazine poll says 24 percent of Americans think Obama is a Muslim

Back to the mosque-rade: That Time poll also found that 60 percent of Americans oppose Cordoba House and wonders whether America has become Islamophobic. A Florida church still plans to burn Qurans on 9/11, despite being denied a burn permit by Gainesville officials.

The AP finds that vulnerable Dems are weighing how to respond to Obama's qualified support for Cordoba House project, and that Islam is already very much a part of the World Trade Center neighborhood.

The WaPo investigates the cadre of conservative bloggers and writers who have drummed up opposition to the mosque. An interfaith group is concerned that some prominent Dems have jumped ship and are now opposing the project. Even American Muslims, though, question whether building a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is a good idea. 

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of N.Y. has offered to mediate between critics and proponents of Cordoba House. A church-state watchdog group says Gov. Patterson should not offer public land to relocate the project. CNN notes that Muslims pray regularly less than 100 feet from where another hijacked plane crashed on 9/11 - the Pentagon.

Finally, Politico says the Cordoba Initiative has raised only $18,000 towards its projected $100 million goal, raising serious doubts about whether the Islamic community center will ever actually be built. 

Oh yeah, the State Department says the imam behind the Cordoba Initiative will be paid $3,000 for traveling to the Middle East to promote ... religious tolerance. A Muslim woman is suing Disneyland for telling her not to wear her headscarf while serving customers. 

In other news, Belgian authorities said it was illegal for the police to raid the offices of Catholic bishops and any evidence obtained will not be allowed in court. Six women and one man who say they were sexually abused by a Catholic priest decades ago are suing the Diocese of Oakland.

Mexico City's mayor is suing a Roman Catholic Cardinal for defamation after the cardinal suggested that the mayor bribed the Supreme Court to allow gay adoptions. Britain's last Catholic adoption agency has lost its attempts to continue to operate while refusing to place children with gay couples. 

The U.S. 10th Circuit Court ruled that the Utah Highway Patrol Association violated the Constitution when it put crosses on public land to memorialize officers killed in the line of duty. The Federal Circuit Court held that the Foundation of Human Understanding is not a church because it does not consist of a body of believers who meet for worship. A North Carolina appeals court says a religious college cannot have police officers with the power to arrest suspects and enforce state law.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has started an ad blitz in nine cities to dispel myths about the Mormon faith.The Episcopal Church is leading the way on transgender issues, says Religion Dispatches.

A hearing to consider polygamous church leader Warren S. Jeffs’ request for a new trial has been postponed.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has signed a warrant for Jeffs extradition to Texas where he is facing additional charges, but Jeffs attorneys have said they will fight extradition.

The co-leader of the Church of the Firstborn of the General Assembly of Heaven was arrested Wednesday morning on a rape warrant.

The president of the religious sect, who believes he is the Holy Ghost and the father of Jesus Christ, was charged with two counts of first-degree felony rape. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.

The vulnerability of Christian girls to sexual assault in Pakistani society emerged again last month as a Muslim landowner allegedly targeted a 16-year-old and a gang of madrassa (Islamic school) students allegedly abused a 12-year-old in Punjab Province.

The students at Jamia Islamia Madrassa had been harassing Christians in the villages around Gujar Khan, said the pastor of the church to which the girl’s family belongs, United Pentecostal Church.

Politico says the so-called Ground Zero mosque is driving a wedge between the anti-mosque GOP (some worry that could backfire) and their Tea Party allies who want to keep the focus on taxes and government spending. Some Republicans, meanwhile, are calling President Obama an "elitist" who is "unsensitive" to 9/11 families over his muted support for the mosque.

The NYT's MoDo says Obama "fumbled" the political football that is the mosque, and WaPo's Kathleen Parker says build the damn thing already. Developers say they have no plans to move the disputed project to another site.

A Pennsylvania company has signed drilling leases to hunt for natural gas beneath Catholic cemeteries in and around Pittsburgh. A North Carolina court ruled that state officials were wrong to delegate police powers to security personnel at Presbyterian-affiliated Davidson College because it's a religious institution. Hispanic evangelicals warned the GOP that they risk forever losing Latino voters if they mess with the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship.

The Catholic bishops' film office has given two thumbs down to Julia Roberts' new "Eat Pray Love" for apparently doing more eating than praying during her character's stop in Rome. Roberts, meanwhile, says she's done talking about religion. And Dr. Laura Schlessinger plans to be done talking on the radio at the end of the year.

The NYT picks apart the new book, "The Tenth Parallel", about Muslims-Christian coexistence (or not) by Eliza Griswold, daughter of former Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.

The mayor of Mexico City has threatened to sue Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniquez if he doesn't apologize for implying that the mayor bribed the Supreme Court to uphold gay adoptions. Pope Benedict XVI says heaven is where God lives, not some place up in the clouds. A skateboarding priest in Hungary  has become a sensation on the series of tubes, and some 10,000 bikers made a pilgrimage to western France for the festival of the Madonna of the Bikers.

Hani Nazeer, a Coptic Christian blogger arrested in Egypt on false charges of insulting Islam, then held for almost two years without charge under the country’s Emergency Law, has been released from prison.

During his imprisonment, Nazeer said he was beaten, exposed to constant deprivation and was pressured to convert to Islam by violent criminals.