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Winston Blackmore, the leader of a polygamous community in southeastern British Columbia who has admitted to having multiple wives, is suing the provincial government for violating his rights when he was charged last year.

Mr. Blackmore and James Oler, both leaders of separate factions in Bountiful, B.C., were arrested in January 2009 and each charged with practising polygamy, two decades after police first starting looking into the community near the United States border.

One Sunday last fall, Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor at the Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago's northwest suburbs, was preaching on the logic and power of Jesus' words "Love thine enemy." As is his custom, Hybels was working a small semicircle of easels arrayed behind his lectern, reinforcing key phrases. Hybels' preaching is economical, precise of tone and gesture. Again by custom, he was dressed in black, which accentuated his pale complexion, blue eyes and hair, once Dutch-b...

The South has risen again, at least in terms of belief in God.

Mississippi is the America's most religious state, according to a Pew Forum study on the levels of devotion in America, which asked respondents whether religion is important in their lives. Eighty-two percent of Mississipians said yes.

"That is not too surprising," said William F. Lawhead, chairman of the religion and philosophy department at the University of Mississippi. "This is the Bible B...

At a sprawling, glass-and-brick office complex in north Scottsdale, a dozen or so attorneys and colleagues gather each morning in a dim, ornate room to pray.

The group of Christians is seeking God's guidance in an ongoing quest to preserve family values and freedom of religious expression.

The group draws strength from prayers and from a well of assets: a $30 million annual budget, paid and volunteer lawyers across the country, and the organization's year...

Authorities moved thousands of villagers from harm's way near the Philippines' most active volcano Tuesday after it oozed lava and shot plumes of ash, and said they probably would spend a bleak Christmas in an evacuation center.

State volcanologists raised the alert level on the cone-shaped, 8,070-foot Mayon volcano overnight to two steps below a major eruption after ash explosions and dark orange lava fragments glowing in the dark trickled down the mountain slope.

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ELDERLY couples are buying each other suicide kits as Christmas presents, says controversial euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke.

Speaking at Tweed Heads yesterday on a new "peaceful pill" suicide method being developed overseas, Dr Nitschke's comments sent right-to-life campaigners and church groups into a frenzy.

Asked whether it was in the spirit of the season to be publicising ways of ending life just a week before Christmas, Dr Nitschke said he ...

"Anti-gay bigots plunge Africa into new era of hate crimes."

Uganda is likely to pass a law within months that will make homosexuality a capital offence, joining 37 other countries in the continent where American evangelical Christian groups are increasingly spreading bigotry

"Learned behaviour can be unlearned," said David Bahati. "You can't tell me that people are born gays. It is foreign influence that is at work."

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