Some interesting law and religion news stories from around the web this week:
- Leaders of the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Syrian Orthodox Church urged Christians around the world to remember and reflect on the 1915 genocide of Armenians and Syriac Christians in Turkey, where up to 2 million people were killed or disappeared without a trace.
- The President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops emphasized that the report issued Monday during the Pope’s two-week Synod on the Family is a working draft and encouraged both liberals and conservatives to temper their responses.
- An overview of the issues addressed in the draft report can be found here.
- Houston officials subpoenaed sermons given by five local pastors who oppose an equal rights ordinance that contains provisions concerning the LGBT community.
- See here for Professor Movsesian’s discussion of the issue.
- Egypt’s Court of Urgent Matters is expected to issue a verdict this week in a lawsuit that demands the disbanding of all political parties with a religious platform.
- Germany’s Roman Catholics are launching a campaign to reinstate references to God in the preamble to the newly drafted constitution of the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein.
- About a dozen imams from mosques in all five of New York City’s boroughs gathered outside City Hall to denounce violent extremist acts around the world.
- The Canadian Supreme Court heard arguments on whether prayers before city council meetings discriminate against non-believers.
- Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate has been receiving threats, including that of violence against the clergy, as radical nationalist movements try to take over churches and force them under the Kiev Patriarchate.
- On Tuesday, Seventh-day Adventists delayed decision on the divisive issue of women’s ordination until next year.
- A new bus ad campaign promoting the right of girls to celebrate their bat mitzvah at the Western Wall, which only boys can do currently, is the latest push by the feminist group Women of the Wall to prod Israel’s Orthodox religious establishment to expand opportunities for women at one of Judaism’s most sacred sites.
- A California atheist has won a settlement of nearly $2 million after being sent to jail on a parole violation for objections he made to participating in a faith-based rehab program after his 2007 conviction of methamphetamine possession.