Daily Kos: Religions in the News: A New Street Prophets Feature

You can?t be a Christian if you Don?t Own a Gun

Recently, a conference was held at the Upper Room Church in Keller, Texas entitled "Deliver Us From Evil" where one of the featured speakers as Gary Cass, head of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

Cass, who normally spends most of his time attacking President Obama, Muslims, gays, and Mormons, spent an hour and a half blasting America for having a "broken moral compass" for electing politicians who support things like reproductive choice and marriage equality. ?Cass went on to declare that the nation's colleges and universities have "now become perverted factories of unfaithfulness," especially Harvard which is now "animated by the spirit of Antichrist," before attacking "progressive Christians" as ones who "have murdered their own souls, destroyed their own churches, and have undermined our nation."

Finally, Cass explained to the audience that "you can't be a Christian if you don't own a gun" ?

Mormon Missionary Applications Soar

SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) Mormon apostle Jeffrey R. Holland predicted that lowering the age limits for young Mormon missionaries would trigger a "dramatic" uptick in their numbers.

Turns out, "dramatic" was an understatement. Try a 471 percent jump in applications -- so far.

Just two weeks since Mormon President Thomas S. Monson announced that young men could go on full-time missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age 18 (down from 19) and young women could go at 19 (down from 21), the Utah-based church has seen applications skyrocket from an average of 700 a week to 4,000 a week.

"Slightly more than half of the applicants are women," LDS Church spokesman Scott Trotter said Monday (Oct. 22).

That represents a massive shift. Typically, women make up fewer than a fifth of the LDS missionary force, which currently stands at more than 58,000 worldwide.

Native American Saint:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (RNS) Sister Kateri Mitchell was born and raised on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation along the St. Lawrence River. She grew up hearing stories about Kateri Tekakwitha, the 17th-century Mohawk woman who will be declared a saint in the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday (Oct. 21).

She has long admired Tekakwitha for her steadfast faith and her ability to bridge Native American spirituality with Catholic traditions. In 1961, Mitchell joined the Sisters of St. Anne, and since 1998 she has served as executive director of the Tekakwitha Conference in Great Falls, Mont., a group that has spread Tekakwitha's story and prayed for her canonization since 1939.

"We've been waiting a long time for this," she said of the canonization at the Vatican. "It's a great validation."

Doug George-Kanentiio, also a Mohawk from St. Regis, was brought up Catholic, even serving as an altar boy. But he left the church at 14 when he began to practice Native American longhouse traditions.

"I had a lot of anger at the church at the things they had done to the Native people and the world and the moral compromises they made," he said.

Yet he, too, will travel to Rome for the canonization.

Hajj: Pilgrims Arrive in Mecca Amid Regional Turmoil

MECCA, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Millions of pilgrims arrive this week in Mecca for Islam's annual haj pilgrimage, which starts on Wednesday, with Saudi authorities warning they will stop any disruptive protests over the conflict in Syria.

The Grand Mosque, the focal point of the Islamic faith, was already teeming with joyful pilgrims at dawn on Monday, wearing the simple white folds of cloth prescribed for haj, many of them having slept on the white marble paving outside.

"I feel proud to be here because it's a visual message that Muslims are united. People speaking in all kind of languages pray to the one God," said Fahmi Mohammed al-Nemr, 52, from Egypt.

Haj must be performed at least once in their lifetime by all Muslims capable of making the expensive, difficult journey, a duty that applies equally to Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims at a time of tension between Islam's main sects.

Saudi leaders have emphasised it is a strictly religious occasion and they are prepared to deal with any troublemaking.

From Street Prophets:

Here are some of the diaries which appeared on Street Prophets in the past week:

Dixie Dawg posted Thou Shalt Not write the word Vagina

Frederick Clarkson posted Todd Akin?s Roots in Anti-Abortion Militancy

Your Turn:

This is an open thread. Please feel free to add comments or links to other news stories about religion.

If you want this feature to continue to be posted here on Saturday mornings, please volunteer to put together and post Religions in the News for one of the following dates:

November 3: Dixie Dawg

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Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/27/1151140/-Religions-in-the-News-A-New-Street-Prophets-Feature

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