CNN.com Gets Religion

At least for today, CNN.com seems to have found religion. While browsing their home page this morning I noticed something I haven’t seen before on the site, a prevalence of religious news.

From Director's book disputes birth of Jesus:

Film director Paul Verhoeven has written a book that contradicts the Bible by suggesting that Jesus might have been fathered by a Roman soldier who raped Mary.

An Amsterdam publishing house said Wednesday it would publish the Dutch filmmaker's biography of Jesus, "Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait" in September.

Verhoeven is best known as the director of blockbuster films including "Basic Instinct" and "RoboCop," but he is also a member of "Jesus Seminar," a group of scholars and authors that seeks to establish historical facts about Jesus.

RoboJesus, coming soon to a theatre near you.

From Florida considers Christian license plate:

Florida drivers can order more than 100 specialty license plates celebrating everything from manatees to the Miami Heat, but one now under consideration would be the first in the nation to explicitly promote a specific religion.

The Florida Legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a Christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words "I Believe."

Rep. Edward Bullard, the plate's sponsor, said people who "believe in their college or university" or "believe in their football team" already have license plates they can buy. The new design is a chance for others to put a tag on their cars with "something they believe in," he said.

Those poor Floridians. Now they have to choose, God or football.

From Exhumed body of saint goes on display:

The body of Padre Pio, a hugely popular 20th century Italian saint, went on public display Thursday in a southern Italian town where thousands gathered to pray.

Padre Pio, who died in 1968 at age 81, was a mystic monk who many Catholic faithful believe bore "stigmata," or wounds like those Jesus suffered at his crucifixion, on his hands and feet. He was made a saint in 2002.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Vatican's sainthood office, lead an open-air Mass for thousands of faithful before the unveiling of the saint's body in a church in San Giovanni Rotondo, where the saint had lived.

Because statues and portraits are so passé.

From Texas tries to ease polygamist kids' culture shock:

Many of the children have seen little or no television. They have been essentially home-schooled all their lives. Most were raised on garden-grown vegetables and twice-daily prayers with family. They frolic in long dresses and buttoned-up shirts from another century. They are unfailingly polite.

The 437 children taken from the polygamist compound in West Texas are being scattered to group homes and boys' and girls' ranches across the state, plunged into a culture radically different from the community where they and their families shunned the outside world as a hostile, contaminating influence on their godly way of life.

Another stone thrown at due process of law as we witness its long agonizing death.