Religious Diversity - period ended 6.15.2006

Religious Diversity/Outreach///Picnic to help bring all faiths together/ic Huddersfield.co.uk/Huddersfield/England/UK/7-Jun-06//... The event is being organised by Huddersfield Inter Faith Council and takes place at the Quaker Meeting House, Church Street, Paddock, from 12.00 noon until 2.00 ...

Religious Diversity/Woolman Hill//Gina-Louise Sciarra, William Scher/New York Times/New York/NY/USA/10-Jun-06//The Rev. Dr. Peter B. Ives, a minister of the United Church of Christ, officiated at Woolman Hill, a Quaker retreat in Deerfield, Mass. ...

Religious Diversity///Spiritual acquisition/St. Petersburg Times/St. Petersburg/FL/USA/5-Jun-06//... The Old Southeast, also home to the Quaker Society of Friends house and the Vedanta Center, is more eclectic than other neighborhoods, Crumley said. ...

Religious Faith/Homosexuality/O'Donnovan, Connell/Petitioner Angry Over “Celestial” Polygamy/KUTV/Salt Lake City/UT/USA/8-Jun-06/AP/....Nelson, 81, “is married in the temple ‘for time and all eternity’ to two women,” petition author Connell O’Donovan, who claims he was excommunicated from the church for being a gay activist, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press..... “It is deceptive of Elder Nelson to sign a petition that defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman when he practices a theology that extends the name ‘marriage’ to a union between a man and multiple women,” O’Donovan’s petition states.

As of Thursday, the site listed 140 names of supporters from across the country. Not all included a religious affiliation, but among those who did, 29 identified themselves as Mormon and 24 said they were former Mormons. O’Donovan, who is now a Quaker, said he’s hoping to get 500 names on the petition before sending it to the coalition, Nelson and the Mormon church.

The coalition did not respond to an e-mail request for comment from The AP.
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Religious Faith/Homosexuality//Gay rights vs. religious liberty/Dallas Morning News/Dallas/TX/USA/5-Jun-06//... Might sexual harassment law be used as an instrument for suppressing religious speech? A few days after I interviewed Mr. Stern, an Alliance Defense Fund news release dropped into my mail box: "OSU Librarian Slapped with 'Sexual Harassment' Charge for Recommending Conservative Books for Freshmen." One of the books the Ohio State librarian (a pacifist Quaker who drives a horse and buggy to work) recommended was It Takes a Family, by Sen. Rick Santorum. Three professors alleged that the mere appearance of such a book on a freshman reading list made them feel "unsafe." The faculty voted to pursue the sexual harassment allegation, and the process quickly resulted in the charge being dropped.

In the end, the investigation of the librarian was more of a nuisance – you might call it harassment – than anything else. But the imbalance in terms of free speech remains clear: People who favor gay rights face no penalty for speaking their views but can inflict a risk of litigation, investigation and formal and informal career penalties on others whose views they dislike. Meanwhile, people who think gay marriage is wrong cannot know for sure where the line is now or where it will be redrawn in the near future. "Soft" coercion produces no martyrs to disturb anyone's conscience, yet it is highly effective in chilling the speech of ordinary people.

What's more, religious bodies may be as simple as the small, independent congregations that exist all over America, but often they are large and complex institutions with extensive property and multiple missions, notably saving souls. Even a slight risk of anything so damaging as the loss of tax-exempt status will persuade many such groups to at least mute their marriage theology in the interest of preserving the rest of their activities. Such a self-imposed muting on the part of faith communities would change our culture of marriage and our understanding of the free exercise of religion, without necessarily creating visible martyrs. ...

Religious Faith/Unity///Current system entrenches old divisions/Irish News/Dublin/Ireland/E.U./15-Jun-06//... The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in response to such considerations rejected majoritarianism in favour of agreement reached after prayerful ...

Religious Faith////Celebrate the feast of Pentecost/Hexham Courant/Hexham/England/UK/2-Jun-06//... It is open daily. FENWICK Kirton-Darling from Hexham Quakers (Religious Society of Friends), provides a commentary based on the week's Bible reading. ...