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The religion story dominating the US this week is the , the pastor of one of America's biggest mega-churches (Read the ). Eddie Long is also one of America's most outspoken opponents of gay rights. He once described homosexuality as "a spiritual abortion". The Southern Poverty Law Centre has described him as "one of the most virulently homophobic black leaders in the religiously based anti-gay movement". But now he faces allegations from four young men, all members of his , who say he abused his power and coerced them into sexual relationships.

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This is my list of the top religion and ethics news stories of the week (so far). Use the thread to add your links to other stories worth noting. If they are interesting, I'll add them to the main page. We might even talk about them on this week's Sunday Sequence.

Religion
Panorama: The Secrets of Scientology.
Ed Miliband:
Godless British politics: .
'Atheists and agnostics know more about You can take the
Ayodhya
Anti-gay continues to deny (Watch press .)
Eddie Long (Watch full .)
Faith in Britain
In court: the
I'm a Christian by choice: .
Anglicanism' latest
Prince Charles says
Ruth Dudley Edwards
Australia's first saint to be
Ground Zero Islamic centre developer defends plans.

Ethics
Killing animals: an
Should NHS fertility
George W Bush's campaign

Thinking allowed
Staving Off Despair: On the
When Baghdad was
Where next for
Martin Rees: 'We shouldn't attach any weight

Many thanks to Will Leitch for presenting Sunday Sequence this week, while I was presenting Radio 4's Sunday programme. You can listen again to both programmes on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer, and to the most recent edition of The Book Programme, which was also broadcast on Sunday. While you're catching up on those, why not take a look at this week's Sunday Morning Live on ´óÏó´«Ã½ One, which featured debates on gay marriage, prostitution and whether we are 'soft on Islam'. Sunday Morning Live is produced and broadcast from Belfast and is proving to be a successful vehicle for debating ethical and religious questions on a weekly basis. But then I would say that -- I work on the programme as an associate producer. Click here for the programme website to find out how you can become involved in those debates. You can also watch the final part of our ´óÏó´«Ã½ Northern Ireland documentary series Our Man in the Vatican, which follows Francis Campbell, the British ambassador to the Holy See, as he prepares for Pope Benedict XVI's historic visit to the UK. And there's still time to catch The End of God?: A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion.

This is my list of the top religion and ethics news stories of the week (so far). Use the thread to add your links to other stories worth noting. If they are interesting, I'll add them to the main page. We might even talk about them on this week's Sunday Sequence.

Religion
Pope visit: ´óÏó´«Ã½ receives
Richard Dawkins
Vatican Bank 'investigated over money-laundering'.
Deaf victim of abuse
Yoga poses dangers to genuine
Northern Ireland churches claim banks
Popular creationist writer
The end of
Are Sharia Law and Feminism
Pope 'may visit Ireland in 2012'.
Anglican bishop asked to resign over
Male parishioners allege sex with
Losing your faith
"Rock of Ages" and other hymns

Ethics
Exit Strategy: Choosing a Time to Die.
How much is a fair wage?
"My Lie": a writer explains why she
Third Way interviews the moral theologian
is the internet a moral
Size of UK gay population revealed.

Thinking allowed
The End of God?: A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion.
God² - how science and religion rub along.
Biblical parting of the Red Sea
Robots: an answer
It's good to think - but not too much, scientists say.
Top 10 'unanswerable' questions revealed.
Should we be

Vatican officials can be forgiven this week as they look back on the visit of Pope Benedict to the UK. Yes, there were protests and public debates ahead of the visit, but when the Pope's plane landed at Edinburgh International Airport on Thursday the atmosphere seemed to transform before our eyes. (Read the full itinerary and .)

Then came and a St Ninian's Day Parade through the city, followed by a quick drive to Glasgow for . Friday and Saturday were spent in London: the Pope addressed politicians and civic leaders in Westminster Hall (read his speech, or it in full), where the Catholic (and Anglican) martyr-saint Sir Thomas More was condemned to death; he celebrated mass at Westminster Cathedral; lead worship in Hyde Park; and took part in ecumenical Evening Prayers at Westminster Abbey attended by Protestant and Catholic church leaders from across the UK and representatives of other faiths.

Sunday belonged to the Midlands: the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, the pastoral centre-peice of this papal visit. (We broadcast this week's edition of Sunday Sequence live from Birmingham: you can listen again to that programme, which includes our commentary on the beatification mass and Pope Benedict's homily.) And Pope Benedict , the religious community founded by John Henry Newman.

in which Pope Benedict addressed the influence of "aggressive secularism" in British and European life and made an extended argument for spiritual values in public life. The Pope mentioned the clerical abuse crisis -- not once, but four times during this visit -- and ; and he expressed "deep sorrow" and "shame" at the reality of abuse by some priests and acknowledged that .

The visit ended at Birmingham International Airport with friendly departure speeches by Pope Benedict and Prime Minister David Cameron.

You can on the Vatican website, including video and audio.

Click here to go to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ microsite covering every aspect of the Pope's Visit to the UK.

What were your highlights of this papal visit? Has your attitude to Pope Benedict changed as a consequence of his visit to the UK?

Pope Benedict is in the UK for the first-ever He is only the second Pope to make an official visit to these islands, and walks in the footsteps (though not the shoes) of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who visited Ireland in 1979 and Britain in 1982. He was welcomed at Edinburgh airport by Prince Phillip and formally greeted by The Queen at the Palace of Holyrood House. In his opening address, Pope Benedict paid tribute to Britain's Christian heritage and warned against the tide of "aggressive secularism" in the UK. His opening remarks have already angered some humanists, who accuse him of comparing atheism to Nazism. (Read the Pope's .)

Amongst those who met the Pope at the formal reception in Holyrood were representatives of the three main Protestant churches in Northern Ireland: Archbishop of Armagh Alan Harper, the Rev Donald Ker, a former Methodist president, and the Rev Dr Donald Watts, Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. The Presbyterian Moderator made news this week by explaining why he has refused to meet the Pope in person and shake his hand. On live television a few minutes ago, the Presbyterian Church's General Secretary, Dr Watts, was shown doing just that -- and he appeared to have a very warm and courteous exchange with the pontiff. Dr Hamilton's decision has been criticised by the Prime Minister's representative in chrage of the state visit, Lord Patten. Now that the Presbyterian church's second most highly placed official has met the Pope in person there will be renewed pressure on Dr Hamilton to do the same. The leader of Scotland's Presbyterians also gave Pope Benedict a warm personal welcome to the country on behalf of his church, which is the mother church of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

The most commented-upon political absentees on Day One of the papal visit were Northern Ireland's First and Deputy First Ministers. Peter Robinson said he was too busy welcoming the launch of the New York Stock Exchange in Belfast; Martin McGuinness said he would be happy to attend a papal visit to Ireland but not a visit to Britain.

Meanwhile, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has intervened in the "Third World Gaffe" story that has threatened to overshadow the start of this visit. Cardinal O'Brien (pictured, right) now says he expects Cardinal Walter Kasper to apologise for that arriving at Heathrow airport was like landing in a "Third World" country. Cardinal Kasper, on the other hand, doesn't appear to believe

The official website of the papal visit will be live streaming event moment of the visit 24/7 for the entire four-day trip. Watch live .

Other key moments from Day 1 of the papal visit:

En route to the UK, Pope Benedict gave a press conference in which he acknowledged that the Catholic Church had not been "sufficiently vigilant" over clerical child abuse. (Read a transcript of the .)

In his sermon in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, Pope Benedict urged Scottish and British citizens not to exclude believers from public life. (Read the Pope's .)

Watch a slide-show of the papal visit Day 1.

Our Talk Back phone lines went red hot today with calls from the public responding to the story we broke that the leader of Northern Ireland's largest Protestant church has refused to meet Pope Benedict in person during his papal visit.

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On the eve of the first ever state visit by a Pope to the UK, the personality and record of Pope Benedict is under the microscope in two major TV documentaries. In last night's Panorama, Fergal Keane investigated "the Pope's personal track record of dealing with paedophile priests while an archbishop and top Vatican official. As the child sex abuse scandal continues to engulf the Catholic Church worldwide, he met victims who want an apology for the Pope's personal handling of some notorious cases." (Watch it here.)

In Benedict: Trials of a Pope, the former Dominican friar Mark Dowd looks at the life of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, and makes a journey from the Pope's personal beginnings in Bavaria to the heart of the Vatican itself. (Watch it here.)

And on Channel 4, Peter Tatchell's documentary, The Trouble with the Pope, offered us a depply personal and controversial perspective on Pope Benedict and his teachings. He meets victims of child abuse who want the Pope to release all Vatican files relating to abuse, assesses the Pope's culpability in respect of the global HIV crisis, given the church's opposition to the use of condoms, and asks why Catholicism is so anti-gay. (Watch it .)

In Vatican: The Hidden World, ´óÏó´«Ã½ 4 offered us a lavish tour of the Vatican featuring unprecedented access to the world's smallest sovereign state and the people who live there. (Watch it here.)

On radio, Mark Dowd also investigates how British Catholicism has changed since the last Papal visit in 1982 in the Radio 4 documentary The Pope's British Divisions. (Listen to it here.)

The decision by the Moderator of the to accept an invitation to attend a service involving the Pope has been strongly criticised by the leader of Northern Ireland's Free Presbyterians. The Reverend , who succeeded Ian Paisley as Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church in 2008, was responding to the news that (pictured) has altered his travel plans in order to be present in next Friday for an invitation-only service of Evening Prayer which Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury will attend.

The Free Presbyterian Moderator told Sunday Sequence today: " I was going to say it shocks me, but I suppose it doesn't. I think it is very sad that he would go to such a thing. The Pope claims that the Presbyterian Church in Ireland is a false church. He claims that we should recognise him as the head of all Christians. And surely the Westminster Confession that Mr Hamilton signed is totally opposed to the teachings of Rome. Both can't be right: either Romanism is right or the New Testament is right. And I'm sure a lot of Irish Presbyterians will be shocked that they are represented at a meeting with the Pope."

The Presbyterian Church's General Secretary and Clerk of the General Assembly Dr Donald Watts will also represent the denomination at a state reception in Edinburgh.

The founder of the Free Presbyterian Church, the Rev Ian Paisley, will participate in a protest service in Scotland later week.

52 per cent of British Catholics say the scale of clerical abuse crisis, and the way it was handled, has "shaken their faith" in the Church leadership. That's according to a new ´óÏó´«Ã½ poll conducted by . A random sample of 500 Catholics across the UK were polled between 6 and 9 September 2010, a week ahead of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. Further results from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ poll will be revealed on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4's Sunday programme at 0710 on Sunday morning, with analysis on Sunday Sequence from 8.30 am. Then switch on the TV for further analysis on this week's Sunday Morning Live, on ´óÏó´«Ã½1 at 10am, when Susanna Reid and her guests will examine the case for Pope Benedict as a force for good in the world and ask if the Catholic Church is too obsessed with sex.

Update: Read the ´óÏó´«Ã½/ComRes

Read a ´óÏó´«Ã½ analysis of the poll.

This day next week, Pope Benedict will arrive in Scotland for the start of a four-day state visit to the United Kingdom. In a sense, we've been covering this visit for years. First there were rumours -- that's all the were -- that a visit might be on the cards. Then it was suggested -- again, unofficially -- that Northern Ireland might be part of the trip: would Pope Benedict complete the visit of John Paul II in 1979? The Irish Catholic hierarchy even issued an official invitation to the Pope, but it was not to be. Within weeks of the announcement that Pope Benedict would visit Scotland and England as part of the first ever papal "state" visit, there was the first of a pretty steady flow of PR gaffes, by both the church and the foreign office, as the word "controversial" attached itself to many press reports of the papal visit. Church officials began to whisper allegations of anti-Catholic bias in the medisa and those whispers recently turned into open . Commentators began to ask: Why is this so controversial? Those who were present for Pope John Paul II's visit to Ireland in 1979 or his trip to Britain in 1982 remember those pilgramages as occasions of pageantry; but Pope Benedict's visit was becoming embroiled in polemics.

The controversy continues. Channel Four is about to screen a documentary by Peter Tatchell questioning the Pope's role in the church's child abuse crisis, and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ will be broadcasting "Benedict - Trials Of A Pope", a documentary by film-maker Mark Dowd. (You can also hear Mark Dowd's Radio 4 excellent documentary "The Pope's British Divisions" here.) The newspapers are also beefing up their papal coverage, with large-scale reports on an almost-daily basis in the lead up to the visit, and we can expect blanket TV and radio coverage both before and during the visit.

Here's my question: Why is this visit, and this pope, so controversial?

In exactly ten days, Pope Benedict will arrive in Britain on the first ever papal state visit. Cue lots of commentary in today's papers about whether the trip will be overshadowed by controversy. I'll add links to some of those stories here, along with the other top religion and ethics news stories of the week as they develop. You can use the thread to add your links to other stories worth noting. If they are interesting, I'll add them to the main page. We might even talk about them on this week's Sunday Sequence.

Religion: reporting the visit of Pope Benedict
Benedict: a
Geoffrey Robertson QC:
A church which
Guardian editorial: Pope Benedict is a force
He's not infallible: the
Tony Blair says he has not
The Vatican may intervene
Catholic church accuses
Will the Pope
Cardinal Newman's journey
Peter Tatchell's
Catholic Voices

Religion: other stories
Canon law has allowed abuse priests to
God no longer male,
Nick Spencer: what
Muslims gather in
American Muslims nervous about
Vicar jailed for
Rowan Williams disputes
Burn a Koran protests
Christopher Hitchens asks fans (Read his )
Vatican official warns that
The Blitz commemorated at St Paul's.
Wycliffe Bible Translators
Welsh Presbyterians support
Sistine Chapel frescoes
Hillary Clinton attacks

Ethics
Mary Warnock: we should learn
The ethics of
Can the Ten Commandments

Thinking allowed
Meet the Taliban:
Is the age of
A history of
The Perversion of the
The New Yorker reviews
The 2010
Raphael: Cartoons and

That's the reaction of a former Moderator of the Irish Presbyterian Church to the opening celebrations of his American sister church's , who stepped down as Moderator in June, has posted a video clip of the Opening Worship Processional from this year's (watch it ) on his with this commentary:

"Here is a sample of what went on at this year's PCUSA's General Assembly. People dressed up as animals, and figures from what looks like a Mardi Gras procession, mixed with ministers and others in an attempt to celebrate what apologists for this scene say is just PCUSA's way of paying homage to "native American spirituality". It all looks a bit pagan to me, and certainly out of place in a denomination that claims to be Christian and reformed."

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That's the title of a sermon by of the Way of Life Church in Khayelitsha, near Cape Town, a township with one of the highest rates of HIV in South Africa, who says over HIV by South African churches. The pastor also took an HIV test in front of his congregation and encouraged worshippers to follow his example.

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Three-quarters of Britons object to taxpayers' money being used to pay for Pope Benedict's visit to Scotland and England. That's one of the findings of an online poll of 2,005 adults commissioned by the public theology think tank . The survey also finds that in the papal visit. The findings suggest that the British public is disengaged rather than hostile to the papal visit; and perhaps also that many are unaware of that Pope Benedict is a head of state as well as a religious leader. On this week's Sunday Sequence, we'll discuss the findings with Read more about the Theos-ComRes poll .

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has called on the Ministerial Working Group dealing with the Presbyterian Mutual Society crisis to live up to the Prime Minister's pre-election pledge "to ensure a just and fair resolution of the PMS issue."

Former moderator Dr Stafford Carson (pictured) made the call in a statement issued ahead of the next meeting of the Ministerial Working Group, chaired by the Secretary of State, on 8 September.

Read his statement in full below the fold.

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The Stephen Hawking story is front page news today, with radio shows and news programmes also carrying it. But what is the story? If you trust some press coverage, Hawking claims that modern science forces the conclusion that "". If you read other press coverage, he has concluded that "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going." These are two very different claims. The first claim is as difficult to prove (some would say as impossible to defend) as the claim that God did create the Universe; I suspect Hawking is actually arguing for the latter claim. But notice that the former claim is not logically entailed by the latter.

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In Tony Blair's autobiography, The Journey, which was published today, he says this of the Reverend Ian Paisley:

"He is a genuine and committed Christian, a true God fearing man; he is a passionate Unionist; he is clever, shrewd, occasionally even sly . . . Once, near the end, he asked me whether I thought God wanted him to make the deal that would seal the peace process. I wanted to say yes, but I hesitated; though I was sure God would want peace, God is not a negotiator. I felt it would be wrong, manipulative, to say yes, and so I said I couldn't answer that question, that only he could and I hoped he would let God guide him."

The former Prime Minister also reveals that, during the Northern Ireland peace talks, he often "stretched the truth past breaking point" in order to secure the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

You can read the chapter in The Journey dealing with Northern Ireland .

Andrew Marr's interview with Tony Blair is on ´óÏó´«Ã½ 2 tonight at 7pm.

"You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it." Tony Blair's assessment of his government's decision to introduce the Freedom of Information Act. Read Martin Rosenbaum's Open Secret's blog analysis.