The violence is spreading to other islands, reports the Associated Press, as Muslim mobs torched seven more churches over the weekend. And calls for a jihad (holy war) are gaining momentum among Muslim groups.

Martyr title "should be reserved for those who die for the cause of the gospel itself," R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told the Washington Post. He's careful to note that he really likes King and that the school has a student fellowship named after him, but he doesn't see "theological significance" in the Vatican's reported plans.

"A religious and spiritual upsurge in China … threatens to surpass political dissent as a corrosive force on Communist Party authority," says the Associated Press, noting that the Dalai Lama's autobiography is more popular than Mao's little red book and that unauthorized house churches are springing up faster than authorities can shut them down.

"With communism gone, Russia's leaders see the church as an instrument of validation. In most cases, faith has little to do with it. In the absence of many other viable institutions or deeply held beliefs, ceremonial Russian Orthodoxy lends legitimacy to the government of the day," the paper says in an unsigned editorial.

M. Thomas Shaw, bishop of Massachusetts, will serve as intern for a month to "discover something of what the role of the ...