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• Pakistan cabinet split on religion and passports | A heated dispute over whether new Pakistani passports should specify the bearer's religious affiliation has underlined the problems President Pervez Musharraf faces in projecting Pakistan as a moderate Islamic state (Reuters)
• Consultations to reform Christian inheritance law | The Committee for Justice and Peace (CJP), a minority rights NGO, is holding consultations to amend the Succession Act of 1925 that governs how Christians in Pakistan inherit property, money and goods (Integrated Regional Information Networks)
• Bishop suspends priest over Mugabe row | The Bishop of Harare has suspended a parish priest for allowing an opponent of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to worship at his parish (The Church of England Newspaper)
• Also: Kunonga leans on priests | The Bishop of Harare, the Rt Revd Nolbert Kunonga, has suspended one priest and asked for the resignation of another from his diocese (Church Times, U.K.)

Church and state (U.S.):

• Atheist sues to thwart inauguration prayer | An atheist who sued because he did not want his young daughter exposed to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance has filed a suit to bar the saying of a prayer at President Bush's inauguration (Associated Press)
• City officials differ on right to banish monument | The Ten Commandments monument now stands in front of the Fraternal Order of Eagles' post in West Warwick (The Providence Journal, R.I.)

Politics:

• Rap Kid Rock inaugural pick | Conservative Christians are flabbergasted about reports that raunchy rock-rapper Kid Rock will perform at a youth concert at the presidential inauguration (New York Daily News)
• Why holy silence on torture? | The religious right opposed Gonzales during discussions of his possible nomination to the Supreme Court, but it has been strangely silent about his alleged role in allowing U.S. interrogation of some terror detainees with techniques that critics say is torture (Michael Kirkland, UPI)
• Town rescinds health benefits for partners | Eastchester Board voted 3 to 2 to approve new union contracts and to end a town policy of providing coverage for domestic partners (The New York Times)
• Pragmatic PM proves a Christian contradiction | Is God welcome in the House of Commons? Is government about making choices between good and evil? Is there room for morality in politics? (James Kirkup, The Scotsman)
• Getting to know your 'enemy' may show you share common ground | The Christian right is not anything like the group I imagined (Linda S. Wallace, Houston Chronicle)

Courts:

• Courting trouble | Liberal overdependence on the courts, combined with an obsessive preoccupation with church-state symbolism, has reached its limit (Burt Neuborne, The American Prospect)
• The God squad | What's the difference between a politically conservative Supreme Court and a Court dominated by religious conservatives? (Susan Jacoby, The American Prospect)
• The gentle people | Impressed by their piety, courts have permitted the Amish to live outside the law. But in some places, the group's ethic of forgive and forget has produced a plague of incest—and let many perpetrators go unpunished (Nadya Labi, Legal Affairs)

Life ethics:

• Parents: Keep Schiavo on feeding tube | parents of a severely brain-damaged woman at the center of a bitter right-to-die case asked a judge Thursday to allow Terri Schiavo's feeding tube to remain in place over the objections of her husband (Associated Press)
• China to make sex-selective abortions a crime | China implemented the one-child policy in the early 1980s to curb its massive population -- which officially hit 1.3 billion Thursday -- but the restrictions have bolstered a traditional preference for baby boys (Reuters)

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January (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49