Faith groups are beginning round-the-clock prayer vigils at the state Capitol in Harrisburg today, praying for an end to Pennsylvania's budget crisis, according to an announcement by the regional conference of United Methodist churches. Read it at the jump.
Laws banning religious clothing used to be fairly common, but today Pennsylvania is one of just three states that prohibit teachers from wearing religious clothing in classrooms.
Court rulings in both Oregon and a federal court in Pennsylvania have rejected challenges to these laws by teachers and pointed out conflicts with the Constitution: Teachers have a constitutional right to freedom of religion, but school districts must avoid supporting any religion, according to the AP.
In Oregon, critics have objected to the measure there.
Gerry Stoltzfoos made headlines recently when the Pennsylvania House refused to let him pray using Jesus' name. Rather than edit his prayer, Stoltzfoos pulled out.
"If you pray to no God, it's like a letter not being addressed to anyone," he told the AP.
The state Senate stepped in and invited Stoltzfoos to pray there instead, which he did Wednesday morning.
Check out a draft of his prayer here. Read an entry on the Pentecostal pastor's blog about the media attention the experience attracted. Read more at the jump.
Francis S. Collins, Obama's pick to head the National Institutes of Health, published a piece in the recent issue of Sojourners Magazine about science and faith. An excerpt:
I regularly get e-mails from young people in crisis: Having been raised to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, they encounter overwhelming evidence to the contrary in a university class, and their world starts to come apart. What a terrible and unnecessary tragedy!
The former director of the Human Genome Project, Collins recently launched the BioLogos Foundation, which "promotes the search for truth in both the natural and spiritual realms seeking harmony between these different perspectives."
CT also has a Q&A with Collins on evolution and faith.
That's the question asked by this recent Explainer on Slate.com. Great historical nugget here:
The prayer breakfast got started in mid-1930s Seattle, where traveling preacher Abraham Vereide held morning meetings for politicians and businessmen to pray about -- and try to combat -- poverty and the spread of communism. He decided on breakfast due to the Christian tradition of morning prayers and, it's said, as a nod to John 21 -- wherein Jesus appears to his disciples in the early morning by the Sea of Tiberias and helps them catch fish. Breakfast was also practical, since 7 or 7:30 a.m. meetings didn't interfere with the workday or with family obligations in the evening.
TIME's Amy Sullivan broke the news this morning of the Obamas' choice of church: Evergreen Chapel, the nondenominational church at Camp David.
A number of factors drove the decision -- financial, political, personal -- but chief among them was the desire to worship without being on display.
After a neo-Nazi group adopted a section of highway in Springfield, Mo., to pick up trash, state lawmakers plan to rename that section of road after a Jewish theologian who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
But the daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel objects to naming the half mile cleaned by the National Socialists Movement after her father, calling the plan "highly inappropriate and vulgar," the AP reports.
"I don't want Nazis stomping on a highway named for my father. What are they going to do then if they don't pick up the litter? The whole thing is disgusting," said Susannah Heschel, professor of Jewish history at Dartmouth College.
