On Monday the Iraqi Army launched a large-scale offensive in Diyala north of Baghdad to wipe out al-Qaeda’s last remaining hideouts in the country. Since the tide of the war turned last winter, thousands of al-Qaeda jihadists have fled Iraq. Some …
BAGHDAD - The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq. It is a rem…
American Jewish leaders yesterday predicted a big turnout among Jews in November’s presidential election in favour of Barack Obama, in spite of suspicions about his views on Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ira Forman, executive director…
Here’s a photo I took this weekend while driving through Lynchburg, the central Virginia town where religious right leader Jerry Falwell ministered and built Liberty University. The sign outside this small church reads, as you can see: “USA TELL OBAMA JESUS CHRIST NEEDED FOR SALVATION READ ACTS 4:12.” Part of the reason this sign caught [...]
Three aspiring Catholic priests will be anointed and prayed over this weekend in an ordination liturgy that will resemble the traditional in most ways but one: The three being ordained are women. The ordination ceremony Sunday, at a historic Prote…
Three aspiring Catholic priests will be anointed and prayed over this weekend in an ordination liturgy that will resemble the traditional in most ways but one: The three being ordained are women. The ordination ceremony Sunday, at a historic Prote…
I always like new ideas, and I relish nothing more than watching big, paradigm-shifting movements overturn the status quo. (This probably has something to do with my birth-order position as a “rebellious” second child, but anyways.) Emergent Christianity has tickled my interest recently because it is just that: a completely new way of doing things. [...]
In the late 1960s, the sexual revolution was in full swing, free love was the order of the day and the widespread use of the birth control pill made experimentation all the easier. For faithful Catholics, who had lived with an absolute ban on arti…
PARIS: There are times when the great events of the day are glimpsed through a prism of small, personal rituals and routines that offer new insights, almost a kind of truth. And so it seemed for some Christians contemplating the convulsions within…
Here’s something I don’t like doing: Writing frankly about my own life. Here’s something I love doing: Reading other people write frankly about their lives. As a result, I love Shalom Auslander’s book, Foreskin’s Lament, in which he writes with a hilarious, tragic clarity about his life as a recovering Orthodox Jew. Luckily, Auslander is [...]
