The Christian Century

Geneva (ENInews)--Health ministers and officials from Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan said here on May 24 that support from Islamic leaders is helping efforts to eradicate polio.

The three countries are the world's only remaining polio-endemic nations, where transmission of the paralyzing disease has never stopped.

c. 2012 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) The Anti-Defamation League is taking issue with a new, broadly supported pamphlet on balancing anti-bullying policies and religious speech in public schools.

c. 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. LOUIS (RNS) When Adil Imdad's 28-year-old cousin died of cancer in Ohio two years ago, the family's grief was compounded by the absence of Muslim ritual following her death. There was no imam nearby to handle the religious customs, no Muslim funeral director to supervise the washing of the body, no Muslim cemetery where the family could lay her to rest.

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 CHICAGO (RNS) Every year, some 100,000 pilgrims trek to the Taize ecumenical community in France where the biggest attraction is the music, a throwback -- way, way back, about 1,500 years or so -- to repetitive plainchant.

New Testament theologian Walter Wink, noted for relating the biblical phrase “principalities and powers” to the dominating sociopolitical structures of the modern era, died May 10, leaving a legacy of books, teachings and nonviolent resistance to apartheid in South Africa. Diagnosed with dementia, he died at home in Sandisfield, Massachusetts, at age 76.

c. 2012 Religion News Service NEW YORK (RNS) Elke Thompson and Sam Quinn got engaged the old-fashioned way: their parents arranged it.

Quinn, 23, a quiet engineering student from Springfield, Mo., wanted to settle down, and asked his parents to play matchmaker. Through church friends, they found Thompson, an apple-cheeked 17-year-old from Manhattan, Kan.