Update: Looks like the Darwin biopic "Creation" will be screened in the U.S. after all. Distributor Newmarket Films picked up the movie. Newmarket also handled the release Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."
The film should hit theaters around Christmastime. Hollywood Reporter has more details.
Producers of the film, "Creation," which opens in Britain Sunday, cannot find a distributor in the United States, reports the UK press. It still may land a deal, however.
"Creation" stars Paul Bettany as Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his deeply religious wife and explores the scientist's "battle between faith and reason" as he wrote "On The Origin of Species."
The UK Telegraph suggests that U.S. distributors passed on the movie because it would prove "hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll (published) in February, only 39 percent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution." (For the record, the poll said a quarter of Americans don't believe in the theory, and another 36 percent don't have an opinion either way.)
On Wednesday afternoon, people of faith have been invited to participate in a live webcast call-in with President Barack Obama.
The webcast, called 40 Minutes for Health Reform, is sponsored by more than 30 denominations and religious organizations including Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims.
People of faith who have struggled with the current health care system will share their stories.
Read the press release 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.
NPR religion reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty has concluded a fascinating five-part series on science and God. I'm still listening to it on podcast, but I encourage you to listen.
Bradley Hagerty, who spent a year exploring the science of spirituality for her book "Fingerprints of God," tackles the mystery of near-death experiences, how prayer may reshape the brain and how positive thoughts might help another person, among other phenomena.
"One of the great pleasures was interviewing people who have had spiritual experiences; it's not just the scientists," she says at the NPR Web site, noting that she talked with Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and people who were spiritual but not religious.
"One of the interesting things is what they described as a spiritual experience was basically the same: An encounter with light, an encounter with love, often an out-of-body experience. What that told me is spiritual experience is spiritual experience -- it's a human phenomenon and in fact, it may be divine."
Despite concerns over the Communion chalice used to distribute wine, one study suggests it may not be as unsanitary as expected, RNS reports.
"For the average communicant it would seem that the risk of drinking from the common cup is probably less than the risk of air-borne infection in using a common building," a Canadian cardiologist Dr. David Gould concluded in a 2000 article.
No cases of swine flu have been reported in York County, but state health officials confirmed one case Sunday in Montgomery County. Some churches and denominations are urging caution.
With the swine flu news, it turns out an upcoming forum about how congregations should plan for a flu outbreak of pandemic proportions might be more timely than anticipated:
Local religious leaders are meeting with health officials and emergency responders May 7 to discuss how they and their flocks could help the community at large and adapt their congregational life in such a circumstance.
The Catholic Church today sent out a reminder that those who distribute Communion should be making sure to wash their hands and even use anti-bacterial solution before and after the sacrament. The advisory also says they should instruct people feeling ill not to receive from the cup.
Also today, a national Muslim group called on imams to use daily and Friday congregational prayers as a platform for providing information about preventing the spread of swine flu.
