Under God

By Michelle Boorstein

The role of the U.S. Catholic bishops in the health care debate has gotten a ton of attention, with some people believing the church had a powerful role in getting a House amendment passed to limit the availability of abortion in any government-supported plan. I don't think it's that black and white. My sense from talking with people who followed closely the backroom negotiations is that it was the pro-life Democrats (and there are dozens of them) who yielded the power, not the bishops or their lobbying arm, the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops.

Speaking of the bishops, having spent a couple days with them in Baltimore last week, at their annual conference, they are a more diverse group than the average American might realize. Sure, their leadership has made clear that the bishops need to feel comfortable with the abortion language in any health care law. However, the range of views on how prominent to make that issue in the broader goal of getting universal health care passed is wide. Some bring it up right away. Some don't bring it up at all.

By Michelle Boorstein

What will happen next at one of Washington's best-known conservative media institutions? Will the Unification Church continue to run a newspaper? Will it become a blog? Will the church get out of the media business altogether? This latter options seems unlikely, considering what church members have told me about how Rev. Moon views the importance of media as a mission tool. The church may not run the news report each day but the Times simply can't be seen as totally separate from this faith's larger mission. As one longtime church member told me, "every person in the Unification Church sees the Times as their newspaper."

What will happen at the Times is a swirl of gossip, but I hear from people familiar with the paper and the church that serious changes - mass firings, a shutdown for example - may happen as early as this week. As a Washington resident and a Washington reporter, I think the potential elimination of journalism jobs is bad news.

By William Wan

Just wanted to point out some interesting stories over the weekend about Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI), who has become the latest politician to be denied Holy Communion because of his views on abortion.

The news came first from a story yesterday in the Providence Journal, which then inspired a flurry of takes on the whole Communion/abortion brouhaha. All the attention then prompted a strong response from Kennedy's priest, which included a portions of the letter the priest sent Kennedy in 2007 that began the whole thing in the first place.

By William Wan

Leaders of the Church of Christ, Scientist, are pushing a proposal that would help patients pay its spiritual practitioners for prayer by having insurers reimburse the $20 to $40 cost. The provision was stripped from the bill the House passed this month, and church leaders are trying to get it inserted into the Senate version. And the church has powerful allies there, including Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who represents the state where the church is based, and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said the provision would "ensure that health-care reform law does not discriminate against any religion."

Read the story.

By Michelle Boorstein

A highly influential group of conservative Christian leaders are releasing a document today that they have been working on for more than a year, an attempt to unify disparate religious conservatives. Even as political conservatives in the United States are fractured and the Republican Party in a period of soul-searching, you can see some religious conservatives attempting to coalesce, such as Pope Benedict's recent outreach to conservative Anglicans.

The document, called "The Manhattan Declaration," is embargoed until noon (when we'll have it for you) but it calls for Christians to regroup around opposition to abortion (and other "life" issues) and to recognition of same-sex marriage. The document calls for 'religious liberty' but people connected with the document say that is a reference to courts and civil authorities who are allowing gay marriage and abortion availability to advance and expand.

By Elizabeth Tenety

The queen is abdicating her throne.

The little Baptist girl from Mississippi who became one of the most influential people in America will announce today that her talk show will come to an end in 2011, after 25 years on the air.

With millions of viewers worldwide, an XM radio station and a glossy magazine bearing her name, Oprah did so much more than incite audience hysteria over car giveaways. In her years on air, she became a spiritual leader to women around the world. Don't believe that Oprah is a religious figure? Check out the charges her fiercest critics hurl at her: leading her viewers to damnation, creating her own cult and deceiving Christians about Jesus' divinity. One widely circulated YouTube video that denounces Oprah's "trance"-inducing "church" has more than 9 million views. In other words, she's accused of blasphemy. Who knew daytime TV was so existential?

Starting today, Under God is expanding to include more Post-produced religion content, starting with God in Government -- religion news updates from Post religion reporters Michelle Boorstein and William Wan, who will pay particular attention to religion's impact on politics, policy and government in Washington.

We're also going to be adding posts by Elizabeth Tenety, the producer of Divine Impulses and a former blogger for Faithbook. Liz will be keeping us informed about religion's impact on popular culture, especially celebrity, in her Pop Theology posts.

We'll keep you updated on the wide range of religion-related coverage by Post staffers here in Washington and around the world. And we plan to add new blog features as we go.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post topical discussion starters, inviting you to comment on Today's Topics.

We hope the more comprehensive Under God will become your one-stop destination for all religion-related news and views produced by The Washington Post. Please let us know if you have suggestions for topics, stories or other areas of coverage: boorsteinm@washpost.com or wanw@washpost.com.

David Waters
editor, On Faith

By Michelle Boorstein

Another salvo in the battle in mainline Christianity over sexuality and scripture.

Some of you may be following the litigation and infighting in many mainline denominations - Episcopal, Methodist and Presbyterian, among them - over the rights of same-gender couples. As advocates for sexual minorities have pushed harder for equality, conservatives have pushed back with a powerful narrative that intertwines sex, race and power. It says that Christianity in the West is dying, in part because of new ways of interpreting Scripture that allow equal rights for gays and lesbians, and that the new frontiers of Christian power are Africa and Asia.

By David Waters

The 60-page pastoral lecture letter on marriage issued this week by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops defends the sanctity of marriage as a "divine call" while it condemns "fundamental challenges to marriage" such as same-sex unions, contraception, cohabitation and pre-marital sex, and to a lesser degree, divorce.

"The document is meant to strengthen Christian marriage, to prepare people who are going to be married before they enter that bond to appreciate what the commitment is, and also to open a discussion in our culture as to what the differences are today and to try to reach some common ground," said Archbishop Edwin O'Brien told the Baltimore Sun.

The document, "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan," doesn't seem to leave much room for common ground. The bishops define marriage as "a permanent, faithful, fruitful partnership between one man and one woman" that has two purposes: "the good of the spouses" and "the procreation and education of children."

Post media columnist Howard Kurtz writes about a recently dismissed Washington Times editor, who has filed an EEOC complaint against the paper, "saying he was 'coerced' into attending a Unification Church religious ceremony that culminated in a mass wedding conducted by the church's leader, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Read the story.

Washignton Sketch columnist Dana Milbank observes how a group of conservative Christian pastors, "determined to test the bounds of a new law punishing anti-gay hate crimes, assembled outside the Justice Department on Monday to denounce the sin of homosexuality and see whether they would be charged with lawbreaking . . . They're prayers were not answered."

Read the column.