FPL Daily News Reel: August 6, 2012
The FPL News Reel is a daily round-up of the top faith and politics stories in the news. You can sign up for the email version of the News Reel here, subscribe to the RSS feed here, and follow it on twitter at @FPLNewsreel.
Interfaith groups offer support to Sikh community
By Annysa Johnson — Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Representatives of Milwaukee’s interfaith community issued statements condemning the mass shooting at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek Sunday and offered their support and prayers for the community.
A community mourns a senseless act of violence
By Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Editorial
Out of Sunday’s tragedy, perhaps, can be born a better sense of this community’s richness, its faith and its people.
Trust Act seeks to end trivial immigrant arrests
By Samuel Rodriguez — San Diego Union-Tribune, Opinion
…I am constantly confronted with families that have been torn apart when a parent is deported, often times after minor contact with police. The long-term consequences for the children are devastating.
Rabbis aim to inject more morality into business
By Lauren Markoe — Religion News Service
In an age when the phrase “business ethics” can seem like an oxymoron, a group of rabbis has designed a course to use age-old Jewish teachings to help infuse some morality into economics — from the household budget to the stock market.
This Week in Poverty: ‘Respect the Worker’
By Greg Kaufmann — The Nation
“If we had a medical appointment, we were afraid to take it. If we wanted to set up an interview with a social worker for help, we couldn’t do it because we didn’t want to lose our jobs,” said Maria. “If I did make an appointment they would question what it was about. I always had to bring some kind of proof of what I was doing.” By November 2011, the Palermo workers had had enough.
Education ‘today’s civil-rights issue’
By Bob Allen — Associated Baptist Press
Statistics says half of the 8 million students in urban America will never graduate from high school. The 50 percent who do are on average academically four years behind their suburban peers, and just one in 10 will graduate from college.
Shariah Controversy
By Kim Lawton — Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
There’s been a contentious shariah debate across the country. In 2010, voters in Oklahoma passed an initiative to ban state courts from considering shariah. But a court challenge has so far prevented it from taking effect. Activists are now supporting bills that don’t explicitly mention shariah, but instead ban courts from considering any foreign law. Four states have now enacted such laws, and similar bills have been taken up in more than 20 other states.
AIDS remains an epidemic in US, especially in minority communities
By Paul Jeffrey — Catholic News Service
Miranda explained that the response of HIV workers in the faith community has been challenged by cutbacks in institutional funding as well as a shift in focus among church leaders from social action to orthodoxy. Yet Miranda has found that encouraging exceptions exist, pointing to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops…
Minors getting life sentences
By Suevon Lee — ProPublica
But Epps’s brother is unlikely going anywhere soon. A few weeks after the ruling, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad announced he would commute the life without parole sentences of 38 juvenile offenders, and make them eligible for parole after 60 years. David Epps would be in his mid-seventies when he could first be released.
Florida Amendment Could Remove Restrictions On Funding Religious Schools
By Casey Michel — Talking Points Memo
Amendment 8 would overwrite the Blaine Amendment, named after a 19th-century Speaker of the House James Blaine, who attempted to pass a federal amendment blocking the use of funds for “sectarian” schools.
Muslim Women Olympians: ‘This Is Legacy’
By Cathleen Falsani — Sojourners, God’s Politics
These women are vanguards, shattering stereotypes, subverting cultural-religious mores, and creating a legacy that will benefit female Olympians of all creeds for years to come.
Mormon a Mormon, Mano a Mano
By Joanna Brooks — Religion Dispatches
Within Mormonism, there are class divides, and status divides, and regional differences, and cultural differences between converts like Reid and elite multi-generational ethnic Mormons like Romney. But rarely have these differences been so heatedly on display.
