A 20-year-old woman in Massachusetts undoubtedly sought penance after striking down the Lord Jesus Christ with her car in a marked crosswalk. Local police, adamant about the separation of church and state, merely cited the woman for a crosswalk violation. Christ was released from the hospital after being treated for minor injuries.
According to one of Toronto’s mayoral candidates, “God hasn’t left city hall—city hall has left God.” In an apparent competition to see who is the most religious, four major candidates in the election have promised to work closer with faith-based groups and to “acknowledge religious and cultural events as important in the broader community.” The Toronto Star reports candidate Rocco Rossi as saying “he was confirmed a Roman Catholic, went to an evangelical Christian Sunday school, has studied with a rabbi and spent a year in a Zen monastery in southern California.”
In the United States, faced with the dangers of severe weather, officials in Miami, Oklahoma have turned to a group called Emergency 911 for help. The group’s purpose? Praying for divine intervention. Although some have pondered whether this could violate some sort of church-state separation, the city manager insists “You need to always be prepared in both the secular and spiritual sense.” Just in case you were wondering, Miami’s emergency management coordinator has stated “We don’t pray for it to hit anybody else.”
Six young high school girls caused a controversy when they showed up at one of the largest powwows in North America dressed in caricatured “feathers, braids, and warpaint.” Shocked attendees weren’t sure whether to get upset or to feel sorry for them. The American Humanist Association, a philanthropist, and Green Day worked together to give Constance McMillen and her classmates a “Second Chance Prom” after members of the local community prevented her from attending the real prom because she was a lesbian.
Comedy Central is considering a new show starring Jesus as the main character. The show, JC, will feature Jesus moving to New York City “to escape his father’s enormous shadow” and to live a normal life. Jesus’ father “is presented as an apathetic man who would rather play video games than listen to his son talk about his new life.” The Swedish artist who depicted Muhammad as a dog in 2007 was attacked while speaking at Uppsala University in Stockholm. Lars Vilks hopes to return to speak again, but the university says that it is “not very likely.”
Two countries technically at war with each other are experimenting with a new type of warfare: Israel and Lebanon are setting Guinness world records for cooking literally tons of falafel and hummus, which both countries claim as national dishes. Faced with cemeteries so overcrowded that relatives are forced to exhume dead family members after three years to make room for new burials, Greece has decided to allow bodies to be cremated in spite of conflicts with their Orthodox religious tradition.
Kendall Gibson has spent 10 years of his prison sentence in isolation for refusing to cut his dreadlocks. A measure of his Rastafarian faith, Gibson says that his punishment is “not for his crimes but for a crime he will not commit against God.” After being outed as a gay anti-gay activist, Dr. George Rekers decided to cover all his bases by seeking help to “understand” his “weaknesses” while simultaneously threatening to sue those who claimed he was a homosexual. Right Wing Watch singled out an op-ed by a senior fellow at the Family Research Council for its particularly sensitive approach to the employment of transgender individuals: “It is simply inevitable that when they see a brawny 6’2” man with broad shoulders, large hands, large feet, a protruding Adam’s apple, facial stubble, and a deep voice wearing high heels, pantyhose and a skirt, many customers or clients may be put off. An employer should not be forced to ignore this risk.”
