Here's your Religion News Roundup excerpt for today.

By Yonat Shimron
c. Religion News Service 2012
Reprinted with permission

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney mispronounced Sikh during a fundraiser Tuesday. He mistakenly said "sheik," an Arabic term, which typically refers to an elder or religious leader. Romney was, of course, referring to the tragic shooting in Wisconsin.

A new mosque in Tennessee that had been the subject of a lawsuit, arson, vandalism and a bomb threat will open for prayers for the first time on Friday.

But members of the Joplin, Missouri, mosque will have to pray elsewhere. A suspicious fire destroyed their mosque, but they remain resolute in their plans to stay in the area.

Stephen Prothero says he’s not surprised the mosque was destroyed or that a gunman walked into a Sikh temple and sprayed bullets. “The United States,” he writes, “has a long history of religious bigotry.”

The most dangerous enemy is the one who most resembles you, said Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, professor at Chicago Theological Seminary. That is why the danger of white supremacy is so underestimated as a severe domestic terror threat.

But if the U.S. has a history of religious bigotry, it also has a history of prophets. One of them briefly made the news today.

Duke University acquired a collection of the papers of the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, including correspondence, publications, documents and photographs that have never been available to scholars.

Heschel is recognized as one of the most influential religious leaders of the 20th century. He was involved with the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements and marched alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala. Heschel is credited with coining the civil rights slogan, “We pray with our legs.”

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