The Christian Century

Former president Jimmy Carter says he doesn’t doubt that President Bush has a sincere faith, but says he and Bush practice their Christianity differently.

“I have a commitment to worship the Prince of Peace, not the prince of preemptive war,” the former president told reporters at a breakfast sponsored this month by the Christian Science Monitor.

One of the nation’s largest gay churches has voted overwhelmingly to affiliate with the United Church of Christ, in part because of the UCC’s vote last July to support civil marriage rights for gay couples.

Religious groups are claiming victory in the fight to preserve funding for food stamps after a key Senate panel voted to keep $574 million for the program.

The Senate Agriculture Committee in mid-October rejected proposed cuts that Bread for the World, an ecumenical antihunger group, said would have removed 300,000 people from the program.

Canada’s two largest Protestant denominations say they are satisfied with a decision by the country’s Supreme Court that stipulates how religious groups and the federal government should divide the cost of compensating tens of thousands of native Canadian sex-abuse victims.

Hundreds of clergy, scientists and academics have launched a grassroots campaign to oppose religious conservatives, beginning with concerted opposition to the teaching of “intelligent design” in public school science classes.

Less than a week before he was announced as the new president of Mennonite Mutual Aid, Terry “Skip” Nagelvoort filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, unbeknownst to those who selected him for the position. As a result, Nagelvoort’s position at the helm of the church-affiliated financial services and stewardship agency lasted less than eight weeks.

Philadelphia’s two most recent cardinals came under blistering criticism in a grand jury report released last month, but prosecutors said limitations in state law prohibit the filing of charges.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina received enough votes during the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI to have blocked the pontiff’s election, according to a detailed report published in Italy.

As a teenager in a Catholic high school and church, Lauren McCormick of Toms River, New Jersey, was taught to look at the world in ways that revolved around Jesus. That was a dozen religion courses ago, including six in an esoteric field she now hopes to study for the rest of her life—ancient Near Eastern pagan religions.