Calls for a return to basic banking and an economy propelled by values other than greed have been made in London, one of the world’s financial capitals, at a conference of Christian thinkers examining the current economic crisis. "We face today a choice between a political economy based on greed and consumption and a way of life which is based ...

The USA’s premium cable channel, HBO, has expressed regret for not broadcasting an invocation by openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson for the televised Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday. However it seems that it was the Obama team not TV executives who were responsible for the decision, and HBO says it will be included on all ...

U.S. president-elect Barack Obama has defended his selection of evangelical leader and best-selling author Rick Warren to deliver the prayer at his 20 January inauguration, a move criticised by some gay groups and supporters of abortion rights, saying Warren opposes what they stand for. "I am a fierce advocate of equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something that ...

Patriarch Alexei II of the Russian Orthodox Church, who died on 5 December at the age of 79, will go down in history as the cleric who presided over Russia’s "second baptism" – the post-communist era which saw the liberation of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as the restoration of battered church buildings and, even more important, of the ...

Great Britain’s top toilet habit is reading, with more than 14 million people choosing to look at books, magazines and newspapers to pass the time while they are on the porcelain throne, according to a survey published to mark World Toilet Day today. The research, commissioned by aid agency Tearfund, reveals that more than eight million people talk while they ...

The general secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Rev. Samuel Kobia, has said during a visit to India that "one of the greatest problems facing the world today is religious extremism." Kobia expressed his concern following a recent outbreak of violence against Christians in Orissa state in eastern India, and while he was visiting the national headquarters of ...

Church leaders in India have said an inquiry ordered into the case of a young nun allegedly raped in Kandhamal province, amid anti-Christian violence in the state of Orissa, had been instituted only because of media criticism of government inaction in the case. Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Bhubaneswar, whose diocese covers Kandhamal, said that what he described as belated action ...

Christians and secular groups in India have commemorated the 2 October anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, but attacks against Christians continued on a day that marks the Indian independence campaigner’s message of non-violence. More than 100 Christian houses were torched in the troubled city of Kandhamal and nearby district of Boudh in the Orissa district as the nation ...

ON A GLOBAL scale the United Nations figure is that one in six people live on less than US$1 a day. When faced with this statistic it is possible to forget the extent of poverty on our own doorstep. According to the Australian Human Rights Commission life expectancy for Indigenous Australians is almost twenty years less than it is for ...

The global financial crisis should not derail progress that has been made on fighting poverty worldwide, religious leaders have said, adding that the current financial market turmoil makes attempts to tackle deprivation all the more urgent. "When the powers that be declare there is an emergency, there is mobilisation," said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of the Washington-based anti-hunger group ...