From The Detroit News:

Thieves pilfered computer equipment and about $4,000 from the Sunday collections at St. John Neumann. The incidents are among 19 burglaries at churches in Metro Detroit reported in the media since 2006, including a fourth burglary this year at the Faith Reconciliation Tabernacle Center on Meyers in Detroit, on Sunday. Clergy and the faithful say they have begun considering sleeping in their churches or conducting nighttime services to ward off burglars -- and that it seems to matter little to the thieves whether the church is an abandoned neighborhood in Detroit or near bustling subdivisions in Canton or Clinton Township.

Some people have had enough. They are getting out of their houses, watching church properties and demanding that police and government officials engage the problem.

Like much in life, the faithful say, it is a story of redemption, of creating good from evil.

News from South Carolina:

The sign in front of a small church in a small town is causing a big controversy in Jonesville, S.C.Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking.

So last Thursday, he put a new message on the sign at the Jonesville Church of God.

It reads: "Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?"

The Colorado Independent reports:

Focus on the Family announced this afternoon [11/17/08] that 202 jobs will be cut companywide — an estimated 20 percent of its workforce. Initial reports bring the total number of remaining employees to around 950.

...

Critics are holding up the layoffs, which come just two months after the organization’s last round of dismissals, as a sad commentary on the true priorities of the ministry.

 

From the Houston Chronicle:

As priests, they’re Catholic clergymen serving parishes in Northern Ireland. As the Priests, they’re a singing trio that a major music company is promoting in dozens of countries.

We are finally back up and running, after a hacker exploited a flaw (now patched) in Joomla. If anyone has any problems with logging in, posting comments, submitting articles, or anything else, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it directly.

I apologize for the delay, but real life intervened with a few issues of her own.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Hundreds of clergy and laity of the Orthodox Church in America wept for joy yesterday as a monk who had become an auxiliary bishop just 12 days earlier was elected to lead their scandal-plagued church into the future.

Auxiliary Bishop Jonah of Dallas, a 49-year-old convert, was chosen by clergy, laity and his fellow bishops to be Metropolitan Jonah of All America and Canada at the All American Council held at the Hilton Pittsburgh.

From Catholic Online:

This past Sunday, during a Worship Service at the Church, a group of loud and intentionally disruptive homosexual activists stood outside of the sanctuary of Mount Hope dressed in strange pink attire. Using megaphones for amplification, they shouted epithets at those entering the service such as "Jesus is a homo".They also mockingly carried an upside down pink cross.

Reports filed with the Eaton County Sheriff’s office indicate that other demonstrators had staged a further action intended to disrupt the Sunday Worship at Mount Hope. Dressed in clothing which would not have indicated their intention, they entered into the sanctuary and were seated with the community. Then, in an orchestrated manner, they left their seats, pulled fire alarms, distributed anti-Christian literature and stormed the Pastor’s pulpit waving a rainbow colored flag and shouting "It’s Okay To Be Gay! Bash Back". 

 

Update  - local coverage from the Lansing State Journal:

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20081 112/NEWS01/811120369/1001/NEWS

From BBC News:

The argument over rights within Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre is as complicated and seemingly intractable as the Middle East conflict itself. [...]

So intense is the intra-Christian dispute that the six communities cannot agree which of them should have a key to the site's main door.

Consequently, two Muslim families have been the sole guardians of the 25cm (10 inch) key since they were entrusted with the task by the Muslim ruler Saladin in 1178.

From USA Today:

Evangelist Billy Graham, who turns 90 on Friday, is frail from multiple falls and ailments, far from the strapping revivalist who roamed the globe for six decades.

Yet before Graham retired in 2005 to his mountainside log cabin in Montreat, N.C., he preached to 215 million people — and changed the course of American Protestantism.

Since the United States is more religious than other Western countries, this research suggests that Fox talk-show host Sean Hannity was on to something when he asserted that the United States is "the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth." In general, you might expect people in less God-fearing countries to be a lot less kind to one another than Americans are.

...In his new book, Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman looks at the Danes and the Swedes—probably the most godless people on Earth. They don't go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don't believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they're nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality. And—even without belief in a God looming over them—they murder and rape one another significantly less frequently than Americans do.