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Thursday Religion News Roundup: Prayer Breakfast * Muslim Antichrist * Pope App

(RNS)- Today is the National Prayer Breakfast; President Obama and Vice President Biden are attending.

Show Caption |

A Boy Scouts of America postage stamp.

In case you missed it, the Boy Scouts of America postponed any change in policy about gay membership while religious groups that comprise the majority of the Scouts’ chartered organizations duke it out.

David Mason, a professor at Rhodes College, says the BSA’s delay has less to do with the ethical matter of abandoning an outdated policy than with the legitimate fear that the organization will come apart at the seams.

To Protestant Reformers, it was the papacy. For American colonists, it was King George III. Cold War Christians suspected the Soviet Union. Now, as Daniel Burke shows, a growing group of American evangelicals say the Antichrist will be Muslim.

Some conservative Christians may want to read Eric Seibert’s recent blogs, in which the Messiah College Old Testament prof says Christians have a moral duty to critique Scripture and condemn what’s immoral.

Who’s responsible for the new Pope App? Turns out, it’s the CEO of a Spanish company called 101. And it all started with a very un-digital exchange: a handwritten note.

Downton Abbey is Catholic, stolen by the Anglicans just as Northern Ireland was, says a British blogger. Discuss.

And while you’re pondering that, George Weigel says the future Catholic Church will be more evangelical than ever before. It’s about offense, not defense, he says.

Lauren Markoe examines the argument  raised by those in the evangelical community who argue that the Holocaust would not have happened — or at least would not have been as catastrophic— had Jews had guns.

Have we come to this? A Lutheran pastor in Newtown, Conn., has apologized after being reprimanded for participating in an interfaith vigil following the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Lowering expectations: President Obama’s visit to Israel this spring will focus on Syria and Iran. He will not initiate new peace moves, the Forward says.

Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera will be named Man of the Year by the New York Board of Rabbis and will be given a guided tour of Israel.

A man who served in the 1980s in youth ministry at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., the former flagship congregation of the now-Louisville-based Sovereign Grace Ministries, has been arrested on criminal sexual-abuse charges.

Egypt’s Coptic patriarch delivered a cautious but unusually sharp criticism of the nation’s Islamist leadership in an interview with The Associated Press.

And finally, we want some criticism — well, actually, feedback on how we’re doing. Be an RNS friend. Fill out the survey on the right. It won’t take more than a minute. And you might just win an iPad mini.

Topics: Culture, Politics
Beliefs: Christian - Catholic, Christian - Orthodox, Christian - Protestant, Interfaith, Islam
Tags: boy scouts, muslim, pope, potus

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