RELIGION

Channel 11 is reporting on its Web site that Frederick Haynes, senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church, says he isn't getting the NAACP presidency.

We'd said earlier that it could come today. Looks like an annoucement won't be made until late tonight, or, more likely, Saturday.

As of this writing, Frederick Haynes, senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church, is still very much in the running.

The story I wrote for the Saturday morning paper -- assuming that developments don't overake it before then -- is after the jump.

Eckhart Tolle was doing fine as a spirituality author without the help of Oprah Winfrey. Their Web partnership is giving him a much, much bigger audience. Christianity Today has the story.

The same-sex marriage decision by the California Supreme Court has found favor with a group of Episcopalians. Episcopal News Service has the story.

Joe Barron, 52, was arrested in Bryan, Texas, after he drove more than three hours to have sex with a person he thought was a 13-year-old girl, according to police.

He is one of about 20 ministers from Prestonwood Baptist Church, the Plano megachurch.

Here's a story from the Bryan College Station Eagle. Read the Dallas Morning News story here.

We're building a monument in Washington to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. This was authorized by Congress in 1996.

But "we're" not really building it at all. In what seems to many to have been a stupefyingly idiotic decision, the sculpture of King is being created by a Chinese artist. In China.

Marc Fisher of The Washington Post writes:

It is simply wrong to have outsourced both the sculpting and quarrying of the granite - and especially to China, a country whose government during Dr. King's lifetime called him a "reactionary running dog" for his advocacy of nonviolent protest.

Moreover, Fisher notes, the foreign sculptor appears to have botched the job. The King he proposes to depict looks like one of those impossibly stiff and imposing figures churned out by Soviet artists during the Stalin era. It shows King standing cross-armed, "in the arrogant stance of a dictator, clad in a boxy suit, with an impassive, unapproachable mien, looking more like an East Bloc Politburo member than an inspirational, transformational preacher who won a war armed with nothing but truth and words."

How, I wonder, did this get so far off the tracks?

A 1954 letter in which the physics genius dismissed religious belief as "childish superstitions" and the Bible as full of "primitive legends" sold at auction in London for 170,000 pounds.

Here's the story from The Telegraph.

That much British poundage is about $331,000. Here's how I know. (Don't say you never got anything worthwhile from this blog.)

Many in Poland are recalling Irena Sendler, a Catholic social worker who saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Holocaust. She has died at 98. Catholic News Service has a story.

As Sam Hodges reported in March, the Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Oak Cliff could be the next president of the NAACP.

The group's board is meeting in Baltimore, and an announcement could come today.

The nation's oldest civil rights organization has slipped in prestige in recent years, troubled by infighting, financial difficulties and indifference on the part of many African-Americans. This story about the election, from The Baltimore Sun, suggests that board members have spent much of their time and energy bickering about the selection process, even as they prepare to announce their new president.

James Ragland wrote in March that many wonder why a pastor as successful as Haynes would even want the job:

I talked to several prominent black leaders, including Casey Thomas, president of the local NAACP chapter, state Sen. Royce West, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk and National Urban League president and chief executive officer Marc H. Morial. They all said the NAACP needs someone who can stabilize the organization and help refine its message and methods for the 21st century.

That's vitally important for an organization whose last president's term was cut short by infighting and whose financial deficits in recent years prompted the NAACP to cut 40 percent of its national staff and close seven regional offices last summer.

There's a growing sense that the NAACP is drifting. And unless someone with a commanding presence and the ability to unite the disparate internal forces takes the rein, the organization may become less and less relevant.

Dr. Haynes shared a story that illustrates that point. When he told his 15-year-old daughter about the opportunity he had to lead the NAACP, she didn't jump up and down with joy. She didn't express any concern. She was ho-hum.

"Fifty years ago," Dr. Haynes said of the NAACP's top job, "that would have been a big achievement, and a danger for whoever was considered for this post."

Now, it draws a yawn in many quarters. Not good.

"Remember, we're all in this alone."

-- Lily Tomlin

Over on his Beliefnet blog, my friend Rod Dreher laments the California Supreme Court ruling that overturned a ban against gay marriage.

"The battle for cultural conservatives," Rod writes, "has been lost."

Well, maybe. But another way to look at it is that the battle has been lost for those who would poke their noses into other folks' business.

I don't want to marry a guy any more than Rod does, but if my neighbor Cedric wants to, how in the world is that my concern? Or Rod Dreher's, or Phyllis Schlafly's, or Pat Robertson's?

The gospel star died last weekend in a bus crash.

In April, the Gospel Music Channel ran an interview with her. It's believed to be the last one she gave.

The interview, re-edited to reflect "her untimely passing," will be rebroadcast as part of the network's "Faith & Fame" series. It will be shown at 2 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, and at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday.

For more information, see the news release after the jump.

The AP has the facts on the California court ruling about marriage:

SAN FRANCISCO - In a monumental victory for the gay rights movement, the California Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved ban on gay marriage Thursday in a ruling that would allow same-sex couples in the nation's biggest state to tie the knot.

After the jump I'll post reax from the Family Research Council, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Advocates for Faith and Freedom, Unitarian Universalist Association, the American Humanist Association and Integrity. These are what I have so far. And guess what? The positions are exactly what you think they'd be.

[Cross-posted at Dallas Morning Views.]

What sense do you make of the news that Bishop Kevin Farrell held a press conference yesterday in which he took no questions, and announced instead that the Mallinson case has been referred to the diocesan review board?

I think Bishop Farrell is buying time.

My informed speculation is this: Bishop Farrell has been gobsmacked by the messes Bishop Grahmann left him to clean up. This Mallinson thing, I'm guessing, blindsided him. And he may not have appreciated Mallison letting his spokeswoman float the easily refuted claim that the St. Sebastian's Angels site was a mere support group for priests struggling with celibacy, and that he (Mallinson) left the group in 2001, after it got pornographic. (As I reported yesterday, the site was never innocuous, and was pornographic and lewd as far back as 1999, when Mallinson contributed and let his photo be displayed there).

So now the bishop, I'm supposing, is trying to buy time to find out who at the chancery knows what.

Had the bishop taken questions, he should have been asked:

1. Why are you referring the Mallinson case to the review board? He is not accused of abuse. No one even alleges that he violated his vow of celibacy.

2. What can the board hope to learn that Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Galante didn't know about Mallinson and his participation in St. Sebastian's Angels years ago, when it became an issue in the local and national media?

3. Why was Bishop Galante satisfied that Fr. Mallinson was able to pursue active ministry despite his participation in SSA, when several other bishops around the country sacked their priests who had been members? Do you share Bishop Galante's confidence?

4. Do you believe Fr. Mallinson's claims about the nature of the SSA website?

5. Will you be personally investigating the SSA website, or contacting those who have copies of the site's material?

6. If the maid finds a Playboy under my son's mattress, and my son tells me he was only reading it for the articles, would you advise me to refer his case to a committee for discernment and adjudication?

OK, I wouldn't have asked that last question. But I would have thought it.

This is a test for Bishop Farrell. Will he handle things the old Grahmann way -- or is there really a new sheriff in town? I hope he doesn't allow himself to get rolled by interested parties protecting turf.

Has a clergy person changed your life? (We mean, of course, for the better.) Tell Beliefnet who and how, and that person could win the Web site's Favorite Clergy Person Award.

The deadline for submitting nominees is June 1. Here's where you go. (You have to fill out a brief registration form to become a Beliefnet member.)

Among the many "sign here" online petitions being created is one on a site called WeGetIt.org. Here's what the news release from the Institute on Religion and Democracy says in my e-box:

Christian leaders have joined with pastors and legislators to put forth a new initiative on caring for the environment. Today marks the launch of www.WeGetIt.org, a website offering visitors the opportunity to sign up and be a part of an historic movement.

And here's the central nugget from the actual petition:

We face important environmental challenges, but must be cautious of claims that our planet is in peril from speculative dangers like man-made global warming.

So environmentalism should follow biblical standards, these folks say, but they are currently certain that the the bible excludes the possibility of human-nudged climate change from what we should be worrying about.

Darfur is still a genocide. It's far away from America which makes it hard for us as individuals to do much about it. But the Washington Post has a story about some high school students who are trying. Here's a nugget:

"We just realized it was so much worse than it was portrayed in the news, and we weren't doing enough," senior Molly Mazuk said.

The Catholic Foundation has presented its latest "Work of Heart" awards to 20 local education professionals for their "tenure and leadership, acts of kindness or charity, Christian example, mentoring and simply going the extra mile for an individual student, family or the community."

Each recipient gets $500.

The list is after the jump.