The Christian Century

c. 2012 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) Compared to Hispanic Americans, black Americans are far more likely to believe abortion should be legal in most circumstances, even when they personally reject the procedure as immoral.

c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) Devout Muslims pray five times a day, facing the holy city of Mecca.

But what if you don't know what direction Mecca is?

Try the new illuminated prayer mat.

Invented by London-based Turkish designer Soner Ozenc, the mat lights up when facing the Saudi city.

The Supreme Court’s split decision on the new health-care law was mirrored days earlier by divided public opinion, according to a national survey.

A poll taken days before the high court’s ruling upholding most of the Affordable Care Act found that 43 percent of Americans said the court should not overturn the law, and 35 percent hoped it would.

c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) Nearly a decade ago, Dan Cohen set out to make a film about the Holocaust and dead astronauts, a story some told him would be too depressing to tell.

Released last year, "An Article of Hope" unflinchingly delves into two tragedies -- one almost too massive to contemplate, the other fresher in our minds.

c. 2012 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) A Sikh security officer at New York's largest airport won a $30,000 settlement against the Department of Homeland Security, which had forbidden him from displaying his kara -- a wristband that Sikhs wear to remind them of the divine.

c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) Muslim civil rights groups are calling a new Kansas law that bans Shariah in state courtrooms an expression of Islamophobia that is vulnerable to a legal challenge.

c. 2012 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) U.S. Catholic bishops have used the Obama administration's contraception mandate as Exhibit A in their high-stakes defense of "religious freedom." But it's not just the bishops who are fuming, and it's not only over contraception.

c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) The small stack of envelopes that arrives at Grace Community United Church of Christ in St. Paul, Minn., each day are filled with good will and small bills -- ones, fives and tens mostly.

The donations lift the spirit, said Rev. Oliver White, but they likely won't be enough to save the church.

c. 2012 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) After nearly four years in the Oval Office, President Obama is incorrectly thought to be Muslim by one in six American voters, and only one quarter of voters can correctly identify him as a Protestant, according to a new poll.