White evangelical voters just aren’t as predictable as they used to be. That’s the news out of Iowa – and it’s bound to be reflected in Republican primary results all over the country. The most interesting poll data from the Iowa caucuses are these: Mitt Romney won in the cities. Rick Santorum won in the rural areas. In Iowa, where the vast majority of voters qualify as “white evangelicals,” these results can only mean one thing. Conservative Christians who reside in urban areas may have been taught in Sunday school that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a heretical sect, but they’re willing to look beyond those teachings and cast a vote for a Mormon who was once pro-choice. Their brothers and sisters who reside in the country are not. Because nearly 80 percent of Americans live in or near cities, that’s very good news for Romney. Read full article > >

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The new evangelical vote

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan will be among those elevated to cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church in a Vatican ceremony next month.

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City Room: Archbishop Dolan to Become Cardinal

A pastor in north-eastern Nigeria says gunmen have killed six people in an attack on his church, amid renewed sectarian violence in the country.

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Deadly shooting at Nigeria church

Representative Michele Bachmann took the pulpit at the Jubilee Family Church on Sunday, weaving her own story into parables of redemption.

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The Caucus: Bachmann Makes a Final Pitch to the Faithful in Iowa

A fight broke out at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem after rival groups of Orthodox and Armenian clerics clashed over the boundaries of their jurisdictions inside the church.

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VIDEO: Priests brawl at Bethlehem church

A turf war prompts scuffles between groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian Christian clerics armed with brooms in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

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Rival priests in Bethlehem brawl

Boko Haram, a radical Muslim sect waging an increasingly sophisticated sectarian fight, claimed the attack on the church near Abuja that killed at least 25 as well as a second bombing in Jos.

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Explosion Rips Through Catholic Church in Nigeria

The head of the Roman Catholic Church delivers his traditional Christmas Day message to believers in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican.

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Pope delivers Christmas message

The Archbishop of Wales uses his Christmas message to say the church needs to get its hands dirty to help “overturn poverty, injustice and oppression”.

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Church’s duty to ‘change society’

The Church of England and the National Trust are among organisations telling the government that it is putting community solar power schemes at risk.

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Church and charity warn on solar

A top aide to Newt Gingrich is out of a job after he made disparaging comments about the Mormon faith. Craig Bergman, Gingrich’s political director for Iowa, said in a focus group last week that many Christian conservatives were uncomfortable with Mormonism — GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. are both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Read full article > >

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Gingrich aide out after Mormon comments

Remarks by a prominent Orthodox spokesman appeared intended to get the church back out in front of individual clergy members’ condemnations of election rigging.

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Russian Orthodox Church Joins in Calls for Election Reform

The Church of England will not allow churches to be “approved premises” for civil partnership ceremonies without the consent of the General Synod, it says.

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Church opposes ‘gay wedding’ use

The Rev. Stephen Gentle stood at the pulpit of his historic District church Sunday and urged his congregation to give thanks — for the good and the bad. “We have had to learn to give thanks and praise to God,” Gentle said, “as we have been meeting one challenge after another, after another.” To Gentle and others at National City Christian Church , the past few years have been a never-ending crisis. Like many downtown churches, it has seen its membership and fundraising dwindle. The church was rocked by a former pastor’s plagiarism in 2003. Then, August’s earthquake caused tens of thousands of dollars in unsightly damage that the church cannot afford to repair. Read full article > >

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In crisis, National City Christian Church’s members find strength

A total of 18 Church of England bishops have signed an open letter, criticising the government’s proposed welfare changes.

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Bishops criticise welfare reform