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October 18th, 2012
11:45 PM ET
Billy Graham buys election ads after Romney meetingBy Eric Marrapodi CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor Washington (CNN) - The most famous and revered pastor in America, Billy Graham, is calling on voters to cast a ballot for their faith in full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other newspapers. Graham's picture appears prominently in the ads, next to copy that reads, "As I approach my 94th birthday, I realize this election could be my last." It continues, "I believe it is vitally important that we cast our ballots for candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel. I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God."  Dinesh D'Souza on CNN last month.
October 18th, 2012
05:10 PM ET
Dinesh D’Souza resigns as Christian college chief in face of questions about marriageBy Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor (CNN) – Conservative writer and activist Dinesh D’Souza, who attracted wide attention with his recent anti-Obama film “2016: Obama’s America,” resigned Thursday as president of a Christian college in New York after questions were raised about his marriage. D’Souza had led The King’s College, a small but prestigious evangelical school in Manhattan, for the past two years. His departure appeared to be set in motion by an article on the website of the evangelical magazine World that accused D’Souza, who is married, of sharing a hotel room with a woman whom he allegedly referred to as his “fiancé” at a Christian conference.
September 20th, 2012
01:41 PM ET
September 10th, 2012
10:16 AM ET
My Take: The Mother Teresa you don’t know
By David Van Biema, Special to CNN Fifteen years may be less than an instant in celestial time, but here on earth it's a lot of news cycles. Mother Teresa departed this Earth on September 5, 1997. What more can we say about the woman who became synonymous with love for the "poorest of the poor," picking up a Nobel and tweaking the conscience of millions? What do we know about her now that we didn't know then? A lot, it turns out. Here's a quick Blessed Mother Teresa primer, emphasizing the stuff that you probably don’t know, some of which we only learned recently. 1. She was born a rich girl.
September 6th, 2012
12:27 PM ET
Richard Dawkins: Evolution is 'not a controversial issue'Atheist. Biologist. Writer. Thinker. Richard Dawkins has developed an international reputation of spreading the word that evolution happened and that there is no "intelligent design" or higher being, as you might gather from the title of his book "The God Delusion." But no matter what you think about his convictions, his ideas have gone viral – including the word "meme." CNN caught up with Dawkins while he was passing through Atlanta earlier this year. His next U.S. tour is in October. Here is an edited transcript of part of the conversation. Watch the video above for a more focused look at Dawkins' ideas about evolution vs. intelligent design. Read the full interview with Richard Dawkins More than 1,000 couples participate in a Unification Church mass wedding in the Philippines in 1996.
September 3rd, 2012
11:10 AM ET
My Take: Moon’s death marks end of an eraEditor’s note: Eileen Barker is professor emeritus of sociology of religion at the London School of Economics. By Eileen Barker, Special to CNN With the death of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon at 92, we see the end of an era. Moon was the last surviving charismatic leader of the wave of movements that spread throughout California and the rest of the West in the 1970s and ’80s – other examples included L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, David Berg’s Children of God and Prabhupada’s Hare Krishna movement. In the case of Moon’s Unification Church, hordes of young, well-educated hippies left college and their comfortable middle-class homes to work up to 18 hours a day on the streets, selling flowers or candy and urging others to follow a Korean who declared that he was the messiah.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu says the former leaders of the U.S. and U.K. should face war-crimes charges.
September 3rd, 2012
08:14 AM ET
Desmond Tutu says Blair, Bush should be 'made to answer' for IraqBy the CNN Wire Staff (CNN) – South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Sunday that Tony Blair and George W. Bush should be "made to answer" at the International Criminal Court for their actions around the Iraq war. Writing in an op-ed published by The Observer newspaper, the Nobel laureate accused the former leaders of the United Kingdom and the United States of fabricating a motive to invade Iraq, namely that it possessed weapons of mass destruction, and said that they had acted like "playground bullies." "The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history," wrote Tutu. "In a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague."  Rick Warren decried what he calls a lack of civility in the presidential race.
August 23rd, 2012
06:12 PM ET
Rick Warren cancels presidential forum; mixed explanations as to whyBy Dan Gilgoff and Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editors (CNN) - High-profile pastor Rick Warren has called off plans for a presidential forum that he said was scheduled to include both major party candidates, but there are conflicting accounts about why the event was canceled. Warren told the Orange County Register that he was nixing his "civil forum" because of the toxic political climate. "It would be hypocritical to pretend civility for one evening only to have the name-calling return the next day," Warren told the newspaper in an article published Wednesday. But sources close to President Barack Obama's and Mitt Romney's political campaigns challenged that explanation, saying the event was canceled because of a lack of interest from the respective campaigns.
June 15th, 2012
10:00 PM ET
My Take: How I constructed 'The American Bible'
By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN Over the past year or so, I have been working on a book called "The American Bible." The hardest part was the table of contents. “The American Bible” isn’t a new translation of the Christian Bible. It’s my term for the texts that function like scripture in American public life, the voices to which we are forever returning as we reflect together on what America is all about. In some cases, we refer explicitly to these texts as “sacred” or “immortal.” At a campaign stop in Mesa, Arizona, in February, Mitt Romney implied that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution might be “inspired by God.”
June 11th, 2012
02:58 PM ET
Creflo Dollar latest in long line of top pastors facing allegations of wrongdoingAtlanta area megachurch pastor Creflo Dollar said on Sunday that he neither choked nor punched his 15-year-old daughter, as she claimed in a report to police on Friday. Read about Dollar's popular but controversial prosperity gospel. |
  About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke and Eric Marrapodi with daily contributions from CNN's worldwide newsgathering team and frequent posts from religion scholar and author Stephen Prothero.  |
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Editor's note: David Van Biema, the chief religion writer at Time Magazine for ten years, is author of the illustrated biography "
Editor's Note: Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of 
