Faith Digest: Tweet the Wailing Wall

‘Tweet’ prayers to Western Wall. People of all faiths can now send their prayers to the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s most sacred sites, by Twitter. Since the beginning of July, more than 1,000 people have sent tweets to Alon Nir, the Israeli who came up with the Wall Twitter initiative. Nir prints out every message and brings them to the wall, a remnant of the Jewish Temple. Many Jews and others believe their prayers will be answered if they are placed in the narrow cracks between the ancient stones. Twitter is just one of the ways believers can send their prayers. It also is possible to fax, e-mail and text-message to services based in Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s main post office also receives thousands of “snail-mailed” prayers every year that are hand-delivered to the wall. Nir reportedly is seeking a sponsor to help maintain the service.

Anglicans offers ‘hatch and match’ service. The Church of England has begun promoting a “two-for-one” service that allows cohabitating couples to combine a marriage ceremony with the baptism of their children born out of wedlock. Guidelines for the controversial “hatch and match” liturgy were distributed to the church’s 16,000 parishes recently. In Britain, new government figures show about 44 percent of children are being born to unmarried mothers. The Church of England said its own research found “one in five couples who come to church for a wedding already have children, together or from a previous relationship.” But in a report in The Times of London, Bishop John Broadhurst of Fulham appeared considerably less pleased, commenting sarcastically, “It is a pity they have not put in a funeral for grandma as well.”

Identity theft concerns trump religious exemption. A group of Hutterites in the Canadian province of Alberta have lost their bid to be issued special driver’s licenses without photographs. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 4-3 to uphold provincial rules making a digital photo mandatory for all new licenses. Two Alberta Hutterite colonies had argued for an exemption for religious reasons, claiming that being photographed violates the Second Commandment, which prohibits graven images. Combating identity theft “is a pressing and important public goal,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the majority, and trumps religious beliefs. The Hutterites, spiritual cousins of Mennonites and the Amish, are an Anabaptist Christian group that fled from Russia to the United States in the late 1800s and finally to Canada in 1918. Today, they number about 30,000 in Canada.

Bad time to be a Christian retailer. Attendance dropped by one-fifth at this year’s CBA—formerly Christian Booksellers Association—convention. Attendance of Christian retail professionals totaled 1,903, a drop of 20 percent from 2008 figures. International visitors at the Denver convention also dropped by 28 percent, to 534 attending from 56 countries. The organization also reported overall Christian retail sales plunged 10.75 percent from the previous year. During 2008, at least 91 stores closed, while 54 new ones opened.