You can hear it here.

How is this for understatement?

Congress, which has final say over Washington’s laws, could veto gay marriage in the nation’s capitol, but Democratic leaders have suggested they are reluctant to do so.

DC City Council votes to legalize gay marriage
By JESSICA GRESKO
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Washington, D.C., City Council voted Tuesday to legalize gay marriage in the nation’s capital, handing supporters a victory after a string of recent defeats in Maine, New York and New Jersey.
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My mom liked Oral Roberts. When he announced that God had told him to build a hospital in Tulsa, she got out her checkbook and she sent him a donation. I think she sent $15, but those were 1970s dollars. She had to work at least two hours, probably three, to come up with the money, but she gave it cheerfully. If a 300-feet-tall Jesus was telling Oral Roberts to build a hospital, mom wanted to help.

Later, of course, God threatened to kill Oral Roberts unless he raised a bundle of money for medical missions. At least, that’s how Oral Roberts told it. Money poured in, briefly, and Oral lived. But the hospital died soon thereafter.

Roughly 15 years ago, I saw Oral Roberts do his Faith Healing Ministry at a Portland, Oregon church. I’ll never forget the anguish on the faces of the people — crippled, maimed, deformed, desperate — who came and left without receiving a miracle.

His son, Richard Roberts, has his own Faith Healing Ministry now.

Mom encouraged me to consider Oral Roberts University. I ended up attending elsewhere. But driving through Tulsa, roughly a decade ago, I made a detour so that I could see the school, the Jetsons’-style Prayer Tower and the City of Faith.

The school is what Roberts will be remembered for, in the years and decades to come…

Oral Roberts, the faith healer, televangelist and university founder has died at age 91, the Tulsa World reports.

An Oral Roberts memorial Web site is here.

More information is also available atoralroberts.com

A new U.S. Census Bureau poster featuring Joseph and Mary and the Star of Bethlehem is “blasphemous,” according to one leading evangelical.

It’s also being denounced as a violation of the “separation of church and state.”

Writes USA TODAY:

“The Rev. Miguel Rivera, chairman of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, says invoking the name of Jesus to promote the 2010 Census is ‘blasphemous’ and ‘violates the concept of separation of church and state.’ Using the name of Jesus for ‘a political and secular intention, it is definitely an assault against our Christian faith,’ Rivera says.

What do you think? Does this poster improperly mingle church and state? Is it blasphemous?

‘Let he who is without sin cast the stone.’ Not in Somalia. Huffington Post reports that a man caught in adultery was recently stoned to death in this African nation. WARNING: Disturbing images.

They also believe schools should celebrate Christmas, according to Rasmussen.

An atheist has been elected to the City Council in Billy Graham’s backyard — Asheville, N.C. But North Carolina’s constitution prohibits atheists from holding elected office. So is a constitutional showdown looming? All the answers are here.

Once the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, Rowan Williams is now simply the Episcopal Archbishop, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports…

The Los Angeles Times says that the Archbishop of Canterbury has issued “an unusually sharp and swift rebuke to Episcopal Church leaders over the election of an openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.” Well, I’ve read the Archbishop’s statement and it is, by Anglican standards, swift. But I’m not spotting any “rebuke” — let alone an unusually sharp one.

Read the Times’ story for yourself and see if you can spot the sharp, swift ‘rebuke.’

Here are the details.

Anglican Communion News Service
Archbishop of Canterbury’s Statement on Los Angeles Episcopal Elections
Posted On : December 6, 2009 9:54 AM (London Time)

The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.
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Beliefnet has a list of ‘Inspirational’ gifts. By and large, it’ll appeal to Californians and New Agey types (vegan brownies, beeswax candles, Deepak Chopra’s anti-stress IPhone application…).

But one ‘Inspirational’ gift leaped out at me. It’s a quote that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy Veigh thought was inspirational. So inspirational, in fact, that he had a copy of it distributed as his “final words” when he was executed in 2001.

Can you spot it? To see, click here.
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Fifteen people dead. Dozens more injured. It’s been called the Bible Riot and it happened in the United States. For more information, click here.

Katharine Jefferts Schori wants another Episcopal bishop to step down and renounce his orders. This time, the target is Bishop Mark Macdonald, who served in the diocese of Navajoland and is now the Anglican Church of Canada’s National Indigenous bishop.

George Conger of The Living Church has all the details.