Prayer

SALT LAKE CITY — Arnold Friberg, a Utah artist best known for his painting of George Washington in prayer at Valley Forge, died yesterday, his family said. He was 96. Jayna Friberg-Cleamons said her father-in-law died at a Salt Lake City rehabilitation center following hip replacement surgery. Mr. Friberg, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also painted portraits of figures from the Book of Mormon. “He didn’t want to be known as a Mormon artist,’’ Friberg-Cleamons told the Associated Press.

An upstate New York town violated the constitutional ban against favoring one religion over another by opening nearly every meeting over an 11-year span with prayers that stressed Christianity, a federal court of appeals ruled Thursday. In what it said was its first case testing the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled the town of Greece, a suburb of Rochester, should have made a greater effort to invite people from other faiths to open monthly meetings.

The student who successfully sued to have a prayer banner removed from her Cranston high school is to speak at a rally of atheists and agnostics in Washington. Jessica Ahlquist is among the scheduled speakers at Saturday's Reason Rally on the National Mall. Organizers call it "the largest gathering of the secular movement in history. " Sponsors include the American Atheists, the American Humanist Association. and the Secular Student Alliance. A federal judge ruled in January that the prayer banner, which begins with the words "Our Heavenly Father" and ends with "Amen," was unconstitutional and had...

ABOARD MS BALMORAL - With prayers, a hymn, and a moment of silence broken by a ship's deep whistle, passengers and crew on a memorial trip marked 100 years to the moment since the Titanic sent about 1,500 people to ocean graves. As the 1912 disaster was commemorated around the world, the city that built the vessel - Belfast - looked back on the sinking with a mixture of sorrow and pride. In the North Atlantic, passengers lined the decks of the MS Balmoral, a cruise ship that has been retracing the route of the doomed voyage, as the ship stopped early Sunday at the spot where...

CAIRO - Egypt’s top cleric wants Muslims to answer the call to prayer, but not when its ringing on their cellphones. Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa issued a fatwa, or a religious edict, Wednesday urging Muslims to do away with a fad - Koranic verses or the five daily calls to prayer as ringtones. The government-appointed cleric says such ringtones are inappropriate, misleading, and demeaning to God’s words. “God’s words are sacred. . . . He ordered us to respect them and glorify them,’’ Gomaa said.

PHILADELPHIA - A teenage airplane passenger using a Jewish prayer object caused a misunderstanding that led the captain to divert to Philadelphia. A 17-year-old boy on US Airways Express Flight 3079 from New York to Louisville was using tefillin, a set of small black boxes containing biblical passages that are attached to leather straps, said Philadelphia police Lieutenant Frank Vanore. When used in prayer, one box is strapped to the arm while the other box is placed on the head.

RABAT, Morocco - The muezzins' calls echo well before daybreak, summoning the Muslim faithful to daily prayers and reminding foreign tourists in the Moroccan capital how far they are from home. But the rising decibel level is deepening fault lines between a government drive to modernize and a wave of rigorous political Islam. Morocco, a country of 33 million people, gets more than 7 million tourists a year, and there are worries that some may be put off by the five heavily amplified calls a day, each lasting five minutes, to "hasten to the prayer, hasten to the prayer.

DETROIT -- The city held a day of prayer yesterday in response to a wave of violence that has resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people this year, with the mayor asking "the greatest power we all know" to help end the bloodshed. The event came a day after three people were killed when someone fired a gun at a car of partygoers. Less than a week earlier, the bodies of a woman and four of her children were found beaten and strangled in their home. "It's time for us to fix our community -- not by all of us trying to figure out what we can fix -- but...

The New York Post got its hands on an e-mail meant for Gisele Bundchen's inner circle that asks friends of the Tom Brady-Bundchen pack to pray for the Pats. According to the story by the Post's Todd Venezia, the e-mail says, "My sweet friends and family, this Sunday will be a really important day in my husband's life. He and his team worked so hard to get to this point and now they need us more than ever to send them positive energy so they can fulfill their dream of winning this Super Bowl.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican yesterday issued a new version of a Roman Catholic prayer that had long offended Jews, but some said the changes don't go far enough. Jewish groups said they interpreted the new version of the prayer for Jews as requiring members of their faith - and all of humanity - to convert to Christianity in order to find salvation. The prayer for Jews is recited during Good Friday services of Easter Week, the most solemn week in the Christian calendar, in which the faithful commemorate the suffering and death of Jesus Christ...

Police in Rhode Island are investigating a threat sent to a teenager at the center of a dispute over a high school prayer banner. WJAR-TV reported that the handwritten note to Jessica Ahlquist warns that police will not watch her forever and that "we will get you. " The writer encourages Ahlquist, 16, to leave Rhode Island. Police in Cranston are investigating. Ahlquist, who says she is an atheist, challenged the constitutionality of a banner at Cranston High School West which contained the words "Our Heavenly Father" and "Amen.

Happy Monday! Here's a juicy question:  I work for a well-known company and recently we had a meeting with upper level management who arrived from out of state. The intention of the meeting was twofold; to discuss upcoming organizational changes and on a more casual note, a company luncheon. Our group is diverse, there's a couple dozen employees from all backgrounds and walks. Before lunch, our director asked that we bow our heads and pray. He uttered the requisite caveat that he wasn't pushing his faith on anyone explaining that he was a religious man and this is how his cookie crumbles.

The student who successfully sued to have a prayer banner removed from her Cranston high school is to speak at a rally of atheists and agnostics in Washington. Jessica Ahlquist is among the scheduled speakers at Saturday's Reason Rally on the National Mall. Organizers call it "the largest gathering of the secular movement in history. " Sponsors include the American Atheists, the American Humanist Association. and the Secular Student Alliance. A federal judge ruled in January that the prayer banner, which begins with the words "Our Heavenly Father" and ends with "Amen," was...

Seven people are asking a federal court to stay a decision ordering the removal of a prayer banner at a public high school and let them present their case to a judge. The requests filed Wednesday in US District Court in Providence were made by three students at Cranston High School West, three graduates of the school, and a North Providence resident. The banner contains the words "heavenly father" and "amen. " They say those words do not violate the constitution. In January, a federal judge ruled that display of the banner in the auditorium was unconstitutional and ordered it removed.

Officials in a Rhode Island city have agreed to pay $150,000 in legal costs to the state American Civil Liberties Union to end a court dispute stemming from a prayer banner at a high school. The Providence Journal reports (http://bit.ly/zgzunGschool) Cranston school district chief operating officer Raymond Votto disclosed the settlement Tuesday. ACLU lawyers who had sued on behalf of teenage atheist Jessica Ahlquist had sought $173,000 from the city. A federal judge earlier ruled the prayer banner at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional and ordered it removed.

In the story of the Civil Rights Movement, pride of place is often given to religious African Americans like Martin Luther King, Jr., who used the power of religious ideas to-motivate and inspire millions of Americans. Writing for the Religious News Service , Kimberly Winston points out that there were plenty of African American atheists involved in the movement . They're often overlooked, she argues, because their atheism doesn't fit in with the usual Civil Rights narrative.

Prayer for Relief took off with an opening quarter in 24.48 seconds and never looked back, winning the $500,000 Super Derby by 2 ½ lengths at Louisiana Downs yesterday. The victory in the Grade 2 race was the fourth straight win for Prayer for Relief, and third in graded stakes. Awesome Bet edged Populist Politics for second in a photo, while Alternation finished fourth. Prayer for Relief, with Rafael Bejarano up, covered the 1 ⅛ miles in 1 minute 52.29 seconds. The 6-5 favorite, which runs for Zayat Stables and trainer Bob Baffert, paid $4.40, $3.20, and $3.20.

HOUSTON - A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop Governor Rick Perry of Texas from sponsoring a national day of Christian prayer and fasting, ruling yesterday that the group of atheists did not have legal standing to sue. US District Judge Gray H. Miller said the Freedom From Religion Foundation argued against Perry's involvement based merely on feelings of exclusion but did not show sufficient harm to merit the injunction they...

TAGHAZOUT - I was paddling into position to catch my next wave when the call to prayer sounded from the village across the beach. It was a low, mesmerizing moan. "Allah Akhbar!" ("God is great. ") A reminder of our humility. On a barren hillside in the distance someone had arranged enormous white-painted rocks to spell in Arabic: "God. Nation. King. " Dude, I thought, you are a long way from Cape Cod. I had come to Morocco to visit my oldest son, who was spending a junior semester learning Arabic.

A national association that says there's no proof for the existence of God is managing a scholarship fund set up for a teenage atheist at the center of a dispute over a prayer banner at a Rhode Island school. The American Humanist Association says 16-year-old Jessica Ahlquist was targeted with online threats after she challenged the constitutionality of the display at Cranston High School West. It says she stood up against her critics "with class and style. " A federal judge last month ordered the banner removed.