The Christian Century

(RNS) The Obama administration is taking heat from religious groups, particularly Catholic leaders, upset that new federal health regulations may force them to pay for employees' birth control, a violation of church tenets.

In the weeks since North Carolina's legislature laid off most of its prison chaplains, Betty Brown, director of prison chaplaincy services, has been crisscrossing the state searching for volunteers who can attend to the religious needs of Native American, Wiccan and Rastafarian prisoners.

Sydney, August 5 (ENInews)--Australian church leaders are criticizing a government solution to deport hundreds of asylum seekers to Malaysia as a "swap" to settle 4000 refugees from Malaysian detention centers.

A member of the Harvard Divinity School faculty for more than three decades, Gordon Kaufman, who died July 22 at 86, had a profound influence on rethinking theology in naturalistic terms, arguing for a vision of God as the "profound mystery of creativity," according to his colleagues. He died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

(RNS) Mormon founder Joseph Smith may have declared all churches to be wrong, even apostate, but he also defined Mormonism as "an inclusivist faith that not only sees and appreciates goodness and truth in other religious traditions but is willing to acknowledge divine action in those other traditions."

HOUSTON (ABP) — A Baptist church will serve as host site to an ecumenical event formed in response to “The Response”—the prayer rally Gov. Rick Perry initiated at Houston's Reliant Stadium.

Geneva, August 3 (ENInews)--Christian advocacy groups are among a 28-strong international coalition calling for North Korea, criticized by many for its human rights abuses and nuclear threats, to step down from the presidency of the United Nations Conference on Disarmament (UNCD).