MORRISTOWN, N.J. (RNS) After more than an hour of dramatic testimony from those who knew and loved a longtime Catholic priest, a judge on Friday ordered that troubled church janitor Jose Feliciano, 66, spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole in the priest’s murder.

Judith Ann Conk, who knew the Rev. Edward Hinds for 40 years, found no solace in the life sentence.

“Who will share our sorrows, triumphs and tragedies?” Conk said, addressing the court. “This terrible loss will not go away.”

Feliciano worked at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Chatham, N.J., for 20 years. He admitted to stabbing the priest 44 times inside the St. Patrick rectory Oct. 22, 2009, shortly after the priest fired him.

Prosecutors said the 61-year-old pastor had discovered Feliciano had an arrest warrant in Philadelphia from the 1980s for sexually touching a child and had used aliases and fake identification over the years to hide his past.

Feliciano claimed the killing was provoked, alleging that Hinds had been blackmailing him for four years by forcing him to perform sex acts in exchange for keeping the criminal charges quiet.

In December, after just five hours of deliberation, a jury rejected that defense, convicting Feliciano of murder, felony murder, robbery, hindering and weapons charges.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Manahan told Feliciano he was required to impose life without parole because of the jury’s verdict, but that it gave him no pause.

“It has nothing to do with the fact Father Hinds was a Catholic priest,” the judge said. “This crime was heinous. His conduct deceitful. The court would most certainly have sentenced him the same.”

(Alexi Friedman writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

(RNS) New York Times columnist Ross Douthat doesn’t mince words in his new book “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.”

Since the 1960s, Douthat argues, institutional Christianity has suffered a slow-motion collapse, leaving the country without the moral core that carried it through foreign wars, economic depressions and roiling internal debates.

Meanwhile, myriad heresies have bloomed — from the “God-within” theology of Oprah to the Mammon-obsessed missionaries of the prosperity gospel, says Douthat, a Roman Catholic.

In an interview with Religion News Service, Douthat explains his definition of heresy, why he thinks Mitt Romney and President Obama are both heretics, and why more Americans should argue about religion.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Why did you write this book?

A: The idea for the book came to me late in the Bush presidency, when the debate over religion in America was generally dominated by the clash between the New Atheists — Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett — and conservative Christians. In many ways, the debate over the existence of God is the most important debate there is, but I thought it would be useful to step back and consider what kind of shape American religion is taking.

Q: And what did you see? 

A: In some ways, depending on what kinds of measurements you use — such as belief in God or spiritual experiences — the country might be more religious than ever. But that doesn’t mean that there are more traditional, orthodox Christians. Instead you have heresy: religions that draw on Christianity and yet are still miles away from the historic core of the Christian faith.

Q: How do you define heresy?

A: Looking at Catholics, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians, there is an intellectual core in the Christian faith. Sometimes that core gets blurry in various places, but you have the Nicene Creed, the belief that the Bible is the inspired word of God, that the four Gospels are the best sources of information about Jesus of Nazareth. There are a lot of religious movements and ideas that diverge from that core enough to be heretical but not to be a different religion entirely.

All of this is totally debatable, and people can look at the same landscape and disagree about who a heretic is. But the term is still quite useful in describing the reality of a country that is neither traditionally Christian nor post-Christian in any meaningful way. We are in a zone between those two things.

Q: You’re not going to start another Inquisition are you?

A: (Laughs) Well, controversy is good for book sales. Obviously the hunt for heretics has a long and horrible history. An orthodoxy that doesn’t leave any room for heresy is dangerous and destructive; and a world that is all heresy and leaves no room for orthodoxy is dangerous as well. But I don’t see any particular danger in using the term to describe America today.

Q: I’ve read that you think both Mitt Romney and President Obama are heretics.

A: A lot of evangelicals and conservative Catholics will say straight out that they don’t think Mormons are Christians. If you flip that around, you find that Mormons themselves think that all evangelicals and Catholics are in a state of apostasy, that Mormons have the true Christianity. It can be an endless and pointless argument. They both claim ownership of the same religious tradition.

Q: What makes Obama a heretic in your view?

A: Obama’s personal religious beliefs are a little more opaque than Romney’s. He’s not part of a church or specific denomination. But the church (Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago) where he basically converted, or reconverted, back from agnosticism, is a church whose theology diverges and stands in judgment over the traditional Christian churches. The theology of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons is radical — and that’s the whole point. Black liberation theology is much more explicitly political and revolutionary than traditional Christianity.

Q: But is it heretical?

A: I think using the word just clarifies the distance — the very real theological distinctions — between Jeremiah Wright’s vision of Christianity and what a lot of traditional churches consider Christianity.

Q: Even if heretics are no longer burned at the stake, it seems that many Americans have an aversion to labeling others heretical, no?

A: And I would disagree with that very strongly. The promise of a liberal society is that we agree to a kind of truce where nobody will impose their religion on anyone else and the government will not set up an established church, or the Spanish Inquisition. But part of religious freedom is the freedom to have arguments about religious beliefs. People who take religion seriously should have serious public arguments.

Q: You quote Philip Rieff’s idea of a modern prophet who denounces the rise of a therapeutic, ego-driven faith. Do you see yourself in that role?

A: (Laughs) I don’t think I’m comfortable calling myself a prophet. I’m more comfortable calling myself a critic. Even though I use pretty strong language to criticize trends in contemporary theology, I also want to get at what it is about “Eat Pray Love,” for example, that so many people respond to. It’s very easy to be mocking and dismissive from a more highbrow perspective. But there is a coherent theological core at the heart of the prosperity gospel and the “God-within” schools, and I take them seriously.

Q: Why do you say this book was written in a spirit of pessimism?

A: As a practicing Catholic, I have an obvious bias in favor of institutional religion. But if you look at Christian history, the belief that everyone can follow Jesus on their own is not a particularly realistic approach to religious faith. It is a faith best practiced in community with doctrine passed down through generations. What makes me pessimistic is that all the trends in contemporary American life are toward deinstitutionalization, not just in religion but across the board.

(RNS) Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s top public policy ethicist, apologized Monday  for failing to give proper attribution for material he used on his live radio show in which he criticized President Obama and black civil rights leaders for exploiting the Trayvon Martin shooting.

Land, the president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said, “On occasion I have failed to provide appropriate verbal attributions on my radio broadcast, Richard Land Live!, and for that I sincerely apologize,” in a written statement.

“I regret if anyone feels they were deceived or misled. That was not my intent nor has it ever been.”

In his radio show, Land described activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as “racial ambulance chasers” who, along with fringe groups like the Black Panthers, are fomenting a “mob mentality” in the Trayvon Martin case that is akin to what the Ku Klux Klan used to do to blacks in the South.

“This situation is getting out of hand,” Land said. “There is going to be violence. When there is violence it’s going to be Jesse Jackson’s fault. It’s going to be Al Sharpton’s fault. It’s going to be Louis Farrakhan’s fault, and to a certain degree it’s going to be President Obama’s fault.”

The plagiarism came to light when Baptist blogger and Baylor University Ph.D. student Aaron Weaver posted a partial transcript from one of Land’s shows on his blog, TheBigDaddyWeave.com. The unattributed remarks were made on Land’s March 31 show about media, race and Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black Florida teenager who was shot and killed by a neighborhood security guard.

Weaver discovered that more than half the material for Land’s short segment was quoted nearly verbatim from Jeffrey Kuhner’s March 29 Washington Times Op-Ed, “Obama foments racial division.”

After that discovery, Weaver listened to the third hour of the same program and discovered that Land again used unattributed material, this time from an article in “Investor’s Business Daily.” He discovered a third example in Land’s Feb. 4 show in which Land quoted from a Washington Examiner editorial.

Land said it is his practice to post the articles he uses on his website, and the show for March 31 does include a link to the Kuhner column on the “full show notes” page. Weaver called the link insufficient.

“Land made no mention of Kuhner during the segment,” Weaver said. “Listeners did not know that he was quoting Jeffrey Kuhner word for word.”

In his statement, Land explained that listeners familiar with the show understand his methods.

“While I do not use a script,” Land wrote, “listeners familiar with the program know that both the audio of the program and material I reference during the program are posted on the program’s website during or immediately following the broadcast. During the program I encourage listeners to share these links and content among their circle of influence. This has been standard operating practice for the program since its launch in 2002.”

Weaver said he suspects more examples will come to light. In an interview with The Tennessean, Weaver said “This isn’t someone stealing a few lines. It’s his whole commentary. He was so smooth doing it – it has to be something he has done in the past.”

Land concluded his statement by saying he is grateful the “oversight” was brought to his attention. “One can always do better, and I certainly pledge to do so,” he wrote.

SPOKANE, Wash. (RNS) Archbishop Desmond Tutu is slated to deliver the commencement address next month to Gonzaga University’s graduating class. A group of alumni, however, are saying he isn’t welcome and are urging administrators to withdraw the invitation.

Patrick Kirby, a 1993 Gonzaga graduate, said Tutu is pro-abortion rights, has made offensive statements toward Jews and supports contraception and the ordination of gay clergy and shouldn’t be honored by a Catholic institution.

Retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu (pictured). Religion News Service file photo by J. Carrier

The university plans to give Tutu an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at commencement.

Kirby, a local attorney, said Tutu’s visit violates the U.S. bishop’s 2004 policy, “Catholics in Political Life.”

The policy states that Catholic institutions should not honor those “who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.”

Kirby and his wife, Maureen, who is a Gonzaga alumna, launched an online petition lobbying for the university to choose a different commencement speaker. Nearly 700 people worldwide have signed the petition, which was delivered to Gonzaga President Thayne McCulloh on Friday (April 13).

“I don’t have any realistic expectations that they’ll do that (cancel Tutu’s invitation). The goal for me is to bring attention to it and hopefully remind administrators at Gonzaga about their Catholic identity and how far they’ve wandered away from it,” Kirby said.

He said Catholic institutions all across the U.S. are choosing popularity over morality by honoring and hiring people who do not represent Catholic values, which he said sends an unclear message to students.

Gonzaga administrators are not commenting on the petition. In a February press release, however, McCulloh said Tutu was “a living exemplar of Gonzaga’s historic commitment to the ideals of equality and a free society as a Catholic, Jesuit and humanistic University.”

(Tracy Simmons is editor of SpokaneFAVS.com)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (RNS)  Nothing is sacred about your religion when it comes to getting a state identification card without a photo.

An Amish man at a farm in Nickel Mines, Pa. Religion News Service photo by Christine Baker/The Patriot-News

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation offers ID cards for those with religious objections to being photographed, including the Amish and certain Mennonite groups.

But in order to get a nonphoto ID for religious reasons, applicants must answer a series of 18 questions that delve deeply into their faiths and other personal information.

Now that Pennsylvania has passed one of the nation’s toughest voter ID laws to prevent voter fraud, the scope of the questions is drawing criticism.

The first item on PennDOT’s form asks applicants to “describe your religion.” It is followed by more questions that devout followers might struggle to answer, and some that inquire about the lives of family members:

How many members are there of your religion?

How many congregations?

What’s the process by which you came to the religion?

What religious practices do you observe?

Do other family members hold the same religious beliefs?

Submitting that form, once notarized, is not enough. Applicants must fill out another form. And if they lack proof of identification, yet another form must be completed before a nonphoto ID is issued.

Going through this process is essential if those who hold religious objections to being photographed want to vote; anyone who wants to vote must show identification in the November election.

Two Republican state senators, both of whom supported the voter ID law, have expressed concerns about what it takes to get a nonphoto ID. State Sen. Mike Folmer said the questions seem intrusive, and he wonders why all that information is needed.

“They are going to be keeping them from the polls, keeping American citizens from the polls,” Folmer said. “That’s what I’m concerned about.”

“That form is an overreach in my opinion,” added state Sen. Mike Brubaker. “I don’t want persons for religious reasons not to have a photo taken, to go through a process that is any more cumbersome than absolutely necessary to get the proper identification to be able to vote.”

Mary Catherine Roper, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said some of the questions on the affidavit are relevant to determine if the applicant’s beliefs are sincere. But, “I have no idea what the purpose would be of some of the other questions they have here.”

PennDOT indicates it has issued nearly 4,000 nonphoto IDs that are currently valid to people with religious objections. Pennsylvania is home to 61,000 Amish.

PennDOT spokeswoman Jan McKnight said the questions on the affidavit were created by the agency’s lawyers based on federal and state case law.

“It can’t be too simple because we are talking about a legal ID,” McKnight said. “We are not here to stand in the way of them getting their ID, but we’re just recognizing the fact that this is of such importance to them that they don’t want to have their picture taken.”

The answers are reviewed by PennDOT personnel and not shared with any other agency, a requirement of the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, she said.

Not answering all the questions on the affidavit form is reason for denying the issuance of a nonphoto ID, PennDOT spokesman Craig Yetter said. And there have been denials.

In the past, the Amish have submitted a letter from their bishop affirming their membership instead of completing the affidavit to get the ID card. Those Amish seeking simply to renew a photo ID card once every four years can still rely on a letter from their bishop.

Going forward, new Amish applicants must fill out the PennDOT forms and questions to get an ID. Looking over the questions asked on the affidavit, McKnight agreed that some might seem a bit personal.

“It’s hard not to get personal when you are talking about matters of religion,” McKnight said.

Donald Kraybill, a senior fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, said the Amish objection to being photographed is grounded in their beliefs.

The Amish view it as following the Second Commandment “of not making graven images (idolatry) … focusing on the individual, calling attention to individual, rather than community.”

Asking Amish people to fill out an 18-question survey reflecting their religious views will be problematic for them, Kraybill said.

“‘Describe your religion’ would be difficult for many people, let alone ones with an eighth-grade education,” he said.

G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, said a lot of Amish and Mennonites don’t vote. When they do, they tend to vote Republican.

Democrats voiced most of the opposition to the voter ID law, saying it could hurt turnout among minority groups and those in cities who don’t drive. When the GOP-backed voter ID legislation was being debated, Madonna said at the time that it would be filled with unintended consequences.

“That’s what we’re seeing here,” he said.

Some questions and requirements on the application for a nonphoto ID for religious reasons:

• Does it have sacred texts or commandments? If so, please describe or provide them.
• Does it have ceremonies or meetings?
• Describe three significant requirements or prohibitions of your religion.
• Describe the ways in which your religion affects your daily life.

(Jan Murphy writes for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.)

WASHINGTON (RNS) Americans feel the “Christian faith” has a positive impact on help for the poor and raising children with good morals, according to a new poll, but it gets a bad rap on its impact on sexuality in society.

In a new study conducted by Grey Matter Research, more than 1,000 American adults were asked if the Christian faith had a positive, negative, or no real impact on 16 different areas of society, such as crime, poverty and the role of women in society.

Strong majorities (72 percent) said Christianity is good for helping the poor and for raising children with good morals. Around half (52 percent) said Christianity helps keep the U.S. as a “strong nation,” and nearly as many (49 percent) said the faith had a positive impact on the role of women in society.

Although Christianity has been criticized for its traditional views on abortion, contraception and gender roles, “Americans aren’t buying into it,” said Ron Sellers, president of the Arizona-based Grey Matter Research.

Sellers said he wasn’t surprised that Americans hold their most negative perception for how Christianity impacts sexuality: 37 percent felt there was a negative impact, compared to only 26 percent who felt it was positive.

In six of the 16 areas, sizable numbers of Americans said Christianity had little or no impact, including the environment, business ethics, civility and substance abuse. Americans were roughly split, at about one-third each, on Christianity’s impact on racism.

“What’s real concerning to me, from the perspective of a religious leader,” Sellers said, “is when people say, `Eh, it hasn’t had a real impact.’”

The total sample of 1,011 adults selected at random from all 50 states had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

CENTREVILLE, Va. (RNS) It’s been five years since Celeste Peterson’s only daughter was killed in a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech and she’s finally made peace with God.

Which is not to say it’s been easy.

The five-year anniversary of the nation’s most deadly shooting spree — which claimed the lives of 18-year-old Erin Peterson and 31 other victims on April 16, 2007 — is still too fresh.

“Whether we’re talking year one or year five, it still feels like yesterday,” said Celeste Peterson, noting that it’s been five years “since I heard her voice or held her hand.”

The darkened hours of night are sometimes the worst. When Erin went away to college, the one thing her parents asked of her was a call every night, which sometimes came in as late as 1 a.m. Mother, father and daughter would swap prayer requests or updates from home. Their last call, Celeste Peterson remembers, ended in “I love you. I love you, too. See you tomorrow.”

If Erin’s mother had her way, she’d hear that voice again.

“When someone so close to you has passed, why can’t God allow them to make a phone call home at least once? If I could just hear her voice again, I would love that.”

The attention from the media and the community that finds the Petersons this time of year can trigger the tears that were once in a constant free fall at just the mention of Erin’s name. In time, Celeste Peterson says, finding a way forward in the midst of grief can still weigh her family down. But her lifelong faith has helped her through.

“It is what I knew about who God is and my personal relationship with him that really kept me going,” she said. “I know that people say that all the time in situations like this, but I say it with ease.”

Raised in the church and a lifelong believer, Celeste Peterson learned early to rely on God. But in the days and months following her daughter’s death, she barely talked to God. And when she did, it wasn’t because she really wanted to.

“Thank you for this day. I’m not talking to you. Amen” was how the conversation usually went until she was again ready to talk to God again.

When that day finally came, “I never felt like I had missed a beat. He knew how I was feeling at the time. God was my friend and I told him that I thought he left me high and dry. And he told me that he had a plan.”

On the eve of the fifth anniversary, the Petersons will gather with hundreds of friends, family, and faith groups that have turned out for the past four years to pay tribute to Erin during what they call a jubilant gospel concert and dance celebration hosted at their church here.

“We’ve been celebrating with a gospel concert because Erin was a Christian. She was what I called a cool Christian and a realist. It was an easy thing for her to talk about Christ and to tell people that they needed to pray,” said the mother, who doubts that her own courage and faith could have compared to Erin’s when she was her daughter’s age.

Even as a kid, Erin was comfortable sharing her faith at school, said her elementary school teacher, Francie Donnell. She recalled when Erin came to her with an idea for a gospel medley that her classmates could perform at their eighth-grade graduation. She can still see Erin’s tall brown frame towering over her mostly white classmates as she pleaded with them to stop looking down at their feet when they sang, and instead, feel the spirited music and just clap and sway.

Donnell’s son, William, was a junior at Virginia Tech that fateful April day. And like Erin, he had class scheduled in Norris Hall, where most of the victims were gunned down. Five years ago, both families descended on the campus in Blacksburg, Va., in search of their children. When they met at a hotel, Celeste Peterson’s first question was about Donnell’s son.

“She was concerned about our family even though she had just lost her daughter. That’s the kind of special caring person that she is,” said Donnell, who delivered one of the eulogies at Erin’s funeral.

Last month, a jury awarded the Petersons and another family $4 million each in their wrongful death suit against Virginia Teach.

Celeste Peterson no longer has the daughter she called her “gift” and the 6-foot-1 basketball center her husband called his best “buddy.” In 2007, they started a nonprofit group, the Erin Peterson Fund, in their daughter’s memory to award scholarships to promising high school students.

“Erin accepted no limitations when it came to helping those in need,” her mother said. “I understand, now, how she felt.”