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April 12th, 2013
04:03 PM ET
Battle of the sexes at Western WallBy Sara Sidner, CNN Jerusalem (CNN) - A group of women in Israel is again expressing outrage after police detained some of its members for doing two things they say should be perfectly normal and legal: praying out loud and wearing a prayer shawl at the holiest site for prayer in Judaism. The women who were detained on Thursday are part of a group that calls itself Women of the Wall. For more than two decades, its members have been defying traditionalists and the Israeli government. The women say they should be able to pray as they wish at the Western Wall and be given the same rights as the men who pray there. The idea - and trying to make it true by just doing it - has outraged some of the ultra-Orthodox who pray at the wall, where a partition separates men and women. FULL POST
April 12th, 2013
03:47 PM ET
Franklin Graham calls for prayer on North KoreaBy Dan Merica, CNN Washington (CNN) – In light of threatening statements from North Korea, famed evangelist Franklin Graham says prayer is a viable option for cooling tensions between the communist country and the rest of the world. “First of all, I think we need to pray,” Graham, the CEO of Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian humanitarian organization, said in an interview on CNN’s “Starting Point.” “We need to pray for our president, we need to pray that God will give him wisdom as he makes decision at this point. This is a very critical time, right now, for our country and we need to come behind our president and support him with prayer.” Through Samaritan’s Purse, an organization founded in 1970, Graham has visited North Korea four times over the last 13 years. The group’s slogan is “Helping in Jesus Name” and it describes itself as a “Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world.” Tensions with North Korea began to rise last month, as the rogue state began issuing increasingly threatening statement towards its Asian neighbors and the United States. Most recently it was uncovered that North Korea may be able to deliver a nuclear weapon via missile with low reliability, according to the Pentagon.
January 23rd, 2013
05:27 AM ET
Cubans pray for a Chavez recoveryReliant on Venezuelan oil, Cubans worry how Hugo Chavez's health will affect the country. Patrick Oppmann reports.  President Barack Obama's go-to Bible when he takes the oath is the same one used by former President Abraham Lincoln.
January 18th, 2013
02:31 PM ET
Take a listen: God is all over inauguration(CNN) – With President Barack Obama's second inauguration just days away, CNN Radio explores the one figure who has been omnipresent at these ceremonies: God. From the oaths of office and speeches to invocations and Bibles used, religion has been woven into this day since President George Washington made his first address to a fledgling nation. Join CNN's Lisa Desjardins on a journey into God's place in U.S. inaugural history. 
January 14th, 2013
07:06 AM ET
'American Taliban' wins right to group prayer in prisonBy Mariano Castillo The man known as the "American Taliban" won a legal fight that will allow him and fellow Muslim inmates to gather for daily prayers. A federal judge ruled Friday that the warden at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, was violating John Walker Lindh's rights by not allowing the religious activities. Lindh argued that before 2007 Muslim prisoners were allowed to pray together for at least three of Islam's five daily prayers. Since then, with the exception of the holy month of Ramadan, the Muslim prisoners are allowed to gather only once a week. FULL STORY
December 17th, 2012
03:02 PM ET
My Take: Praying for questions about Newtown that go beyond ‘Why, God?’
By Margaret Feinberg, Special to CNN Why, God, why? Why do you allow the horror of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School? Why do you allow the loss, pain, terror, heartache and death? Why do you allow evil to triumph and innocence to be stripped away? Is this kind of evil stoppable? And do we have some role to play? In the wake of so many unanswered questions, what kinds of questions do we really need to be asking? Are you cajoling us to ask how we can prevent this from happening again? Is the answer found in gun regulations, better security or deeper changes in our own hearts and lives?  Stephen Prothero argues that the National Day of Prayer isn't just for Christians.
May 4th, 2012
01:03 PM ET
Your Take: Comments and responses on National Day of Prayer
By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN My public letter to God on how we should pray on America’s National Day of Prayer drew over 4000 comments on Thursday. Many were the online equivalent of the courtship displays the wild turkeys are doing in my yard this week — gobbling on behalf of Christianity or atheism. But some were less driven by impulse and instinct. Many commenters accused me of irreverence. “Bill” called my letter “a cheap literary trick” full of “sarcasm and disrespect.” “I wonder if you would address Him so flippantly if he were standing in front of you?” “Ron from Jersey” said I showed “no respect or understanding of the personal and loving god of Judeo-Christian belief.” It seems to me, however, that those who are showing disrespect for God are those who claim to divine precisely what God believes about politics or prayer.  President Barack Obama praying at a White House Easter event in April.
May 3rd, 2012
09:51 AM ET
My Take: Dear God: How to pray on National Day of Prayer?
By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN Dear Deity, In the Milky Way, on planet Earth, in the United States of America, Thursday is our National Day of Prayer, so I am writing to ask You how to pray. Seventy eight percent or so of U.S. citizens are Christians, so should we pray today to the Christian God? This seems to be the conviction of the folks at the National Day of Prayer Task Force, which pops up first if you Google “National Day of Prayer.” (By the way, do You Google, God? And if so do you ever Google "God"?) The NDP Task Force refers to itself as “Judeo-Christian,” but it sure looks evangelical to me. It has been chaired since 1991 by Shirley Dobson, the wife of Focus on the Family founder (and evangelical stalwart) James Dobson. Its site quotes liberally from the New Testament, and one of its goals is to “foster unity within the Christian Church.”  Alaska Airlines distributed prayer cards like these on flights for more than 30 years.
January 26th, 2012
04:21 PM ET
Alaska Airlines ends prayer cards on flightsBy Aaron Cooper, CNN (CNN) - Passengers on Alaska Airlines will no longer get a free Psalm with their meal. On Wednesday, the airline announced it is ending its more than 30-year tradition of including printed cards with short Bible verses during meal service. “I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name O most high,” was written on one card, over an image of foggy blue mountains. Another card featured these words over a beach at sunset: "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever.” 
November 9th, 2011
01:16 PM ET
'Tebowing' prayer stirs debate, but quarterback is OK with itBy Steve Almasy, CNN (CNN) - Tim Tebow is used to being a lightning rod. While he was the quarterback at the University of Florida, he drew a lot of attention. And we mean a lot. He won the Heisman Trophy (the only sophomore to ever win the award), and his team won two NCAA football titles. Plus, he was very public about his Christian faith. He wore Bible verses on his eye black. He invoked God frequently at news conferences. No one doubted that Tebow was a great college quarterback and a good kid. But all the media attention made some people weary of the name. He's good, they said, but he's no messiah. |
  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: 
Editor's Note: Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of "God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World," is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.
