July 28, 2008

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Obama says Muslim issue is 'no-win situation'
Gromer Jeffers Jr./Dallas Morning News (07/28/2008)
CHICAGO — Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday that responding to incorrect assertions that he's a Muslim has put him in a "no-win situation." If he allows the Internet rumors and other misleading information to go unchallenged, it's an affront to his Christianity and could cost him support from voters who don't want a Muslim in the White House. But if he aggressively confronts the rumors, it could suggest to some that there's something wrong with being a Muslim.

DENOMINATIONS
Uninvited, Gay Bishop Attends Conference Anyway
Mary Jordan/Washington Post (07/26/2008)
More than 200 bishops, many from Africa, have boycotted the conference, held once every 10 years. But 650 of the 880 bishops invited did come. Robinson, with no invitation, showed up, too, though he cannot go to the official meetings. On Monday, he worked the sidelines as his fellow bishops -- nearly all wearing shirts of the same deep purple -- quietly strode across the campus of the University of Kent toward discussion and prayer meetings.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
Census reports more unmarried couples living together
Sharon Jayson/USA Today (07/28/2008)
The number of opposite-sex couples who live together, less than a million 30 years, hit 6.4 million in 2007, show federal data released Monday. Cohabiting couples now make up almost 10% of all opposite-sex U.S. couples, married and unmarried.

POLYGAMY
Children of God
Sara Corbett/New York Times (07/27/2008)
On a humid Wednesday in late June, as she waited to be summoned by a grand jury, 16-year-old Teresa Jeffs hitched up her navy blue prairie dress and hoisted herself into the crooked arms of a live oak tree that sits in front of the Schleicher County Courthouse in Eldorado, Tex. For a few minutes, she was not — as has been speculated about many of the young women of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. — a possible child bride, or a sexual-abuse victim, or a member of an out-of-touch, polygamous religious sect. She was just a kid in a tree, perched serenely above the heads of all the lawyers, reporters and sheriff’s deputies — a moon-faced girl with an auburn coxcomb of hair and a mischievous grin.

DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE
Groups To Pray For Lower Prices At Gas Stations
CBS News (07/28/2008: cbsnews.com)
Two prayer services will be held at St. Louis gas stations to thank God for lower fuel prices and to ask that they continue to drop. Darrell Alexander, Midwest co-chair of the Pray at the Pump movement, says prayer gatherings will be held Monday afternoon and evening at a Mobil station west of downtown St. Louis. Participants say they plan to buy gas, pray and then sing "We Shall Overcome" with a new verse, "We'll have lower gas prices."