Controversy surrounding the arrest of a young Christian girl with Down Syndrome on blasphemy charges may be the start of the end of Pakistan's notorious blasphemy law — at least, such are the hopes of religious freedom groups worldwide.

Today a judge delayed bail for Rimsha Masih, arrested earlier this month on blasphemy charges, questioning the validity of a medical report confirming the girl's age and mental condition. Masih's lawyer is confident she will be released on bail later this week. However, he expects the case will take years to resolve.

A federal judge dismissed Wheaton College's lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services's new contraception mandate on Friday, after the legal challenge — among 23 others — prompted a last-minute rewrite of the mandate's compliance deadline.

The Obama administration rewrote its "safe harbor" policy to include religious institutions, giving Wheaton and other schools one year before they must comply with the mandate.

Wheaton is considering an appeal of the lawsuit's dismissal because "despite qualifying for the 'safe harbor,' not complying with the mandate during that safe harbor period technically places the college in violation of federal law," according to the Becket Fund.

Triune Health Group, a family business run by a Catholic couple in suburban Chicago, filed suit yesterday in a Chicago federal district court, seeking an injunction against the Department of Health and Human Services' contraception mandate. Triune was recently named by Crain's Chicago Business as 2012's Best Place to Work for Women in the Chicago area.

Founders Christopher and Mary Anne Yep, whose Catholic beliefs are reflected in Triune's mission statement that each individual be "treated with the human dignity and respect that God intended," believe the HHS mandate "imposes a gravely oppressive burden on [their] deeply held religious beliefs," according to a press release.

Violence continues to plague South Africa's platinum mines, where a clash between police and miners recently killed 34 people.

The incident is part of a long-fought battle for higher wages, but the most recent violence may be fueled by religion as well. The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), a breakaway union at odds with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), describes the conflict "in terms of Christian compassion for the poor and a sense that Africans have been excluded from the prosperity that mineral wealth should provide."

(Editor's note: CNN reports an alternative explanation to the forum's cancellation: Both the Obama and Romney campaigns lacked interest.)

Megachurch pastor Rick Warren pulled the plug Tuesday on a civil forum featuring President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The forum, which would have been hosted at Warren’s Saddleback Church near Los Angeles, was scheduled to take place later this week.

In his announcement, Warren said the campaign’s current climate, highlighted by “irresponsible personal attacks, mean-spirited slander, and flat-out dishonest attack ads,” is not what a civil forum aims to promote: respect between those with differences. He said he does not expect that climate of incivility to change before the election.

Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas will likely lose state funds following a federal appeals court ruling Tuesday.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas can restrict state Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, due to the clinics’ affiliation with abortion providers, until an October trial is resolved.

The three-judge panel said Planned Parenthood failed to show it is "likely to succeed in demonstrating that the ... restriction on promoting elective abortions violates their First Amendment rights," notes Baptist Press.

After Texas banned funds from the Texas Medicaid Women's Health Program going to groups linked to abortion providers in 2011, Planned Parenthood sued the state, arguing that the clinics do not perform abortions but instead provide family planning and healthcare to low-income women.

The United Kingdom has denied entry to Canadian "punching preacher" Todd Bentley, banning him from attending several revival meetings in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

After hearing reports that Bentley planned to preach at Portadown Christian Centre in County Armagh next month, U.K. officials said Bentley was "subject to an exclusion order" and would be refused access to the country because his shows are "not conducive to the public good." Bentley, a Canadian citizen with ministry ties to Lakeland, Florida, uses controversial "means of physical force," including choking, kicking and punching, to heal people.

Only 1 in 4 Americans has “a highly positive view” of the financial efficiency of nonprofits, according to a recently released study.

Grey Matter Research's “Where’d My Money Go?”, which examines a survey of more than 1,000 American adults, reveals that an almost-equal proportion (22 percent) of Americans view nonprofit management in a highly negative light, believing that the average nonprofit spends 60 cents or more of every donated dollar on overhead costs.

However, the average perception of nonprofit spending on overhead is about 36 cents per dollar -- still 14 cents more than most people said nonprofits should reasonably be spending on overhead.

The Barna Group has released the second and third parts of their recent survey of a sample of more than 600 Christian women, defined as women "ages 18 or older who describe themselves as Christians and have attended a Christian church service within the past six months (excluding holiday services or special events)."

Nearly 8 in 10 surveyed reported feeling at least “pretty close” to God, and more than 7 in 10 said they are filled with “a lot” of joy and “not much” doubt.

Of the 603 participants, more than half say they evaluate their relationship with God on a daily basis, with an even larger majority (75 percent) citing the Bible as having “a lot” of influence in their lives. A “striking” 70 percent claimed the media has “little” influence over their decision making.

However, Barna Group President David Kinnaman questioned whether or not the self-assessments were all believable.

God can continue to receive official credit for Kentucky’s homeland security, according to the Bluegrass State's highest court.

Last week, the Kentucky Supreme Court declined to hear a case that would review a post-9/11 state law “mandating that the commonwealth give credit to Almighty God for its homeland security,” notes Peter Smith of The Courier-Journal. Of the seven justices, only one favored a review of the law that requires the following statement (seen here) to be publicly posted:

The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God as set forth in the public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln’s historic March, 30, 1863, Proclamation urging Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours in American history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy’s Nov. 22, 1963 national security speech which concluded: “For as was written long ago, ‘Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’”

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans do not believe that the Bible tells them who to vote for this presidential election, according to the American Bible Society’s "State of the Bible 2012."

This year’s annual report, conducted by Barna Group, indicates that Americans’ views of the Bible’s role in politics vary largely by generation, but that Americans still perceive themselves to be relatively pious – if "not always knowledgeable" about the Bible itself.

Are Christians across the United States really tithing 10 percent of their income?

A new report suggests they may not be. According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Americans in Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina gave the highest percentages of their discretionary income to charity. Of these, only Utah averaged more than 10 percent.

In an interview published by the Washington National Cathedral, President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney answered new questions about their personal faiths, favorite Scripture passages, and religious diversity in public life.

Both candidates agreed that their personal faiths help ground their convictions and their politics. They also agreed that faith motivates citizens to act in love and service to society. But their answers differed when they described the exact form that action takes.

Following complications from open-heart surgery, Beeson Divinity School professor Calvin Miller died on Sunday, August 19. He was 75.

Miller was currently serving as writer-in-residence at Beeson, having retired from his duties as a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary five years ago. He previously pastored Plattsmouth Baptist Church and Westside Church in Nebraska.

However, Miller may have been best known within the evangelical community for his writing. In Beeson dean Timothy George's estimation: "Like C. S. Lewis, [Miller] harnessed the power of imagination in the service of the Gospel."

Editor's note: This post has been updated with a press release from Pat Robertson.

It's not unusual for comments by Pat Robertson to provoke heated reactions. But this time, what's unusual is the subject matter: adoption.

Robertson recently expressed affirmation on The 700 Club for men who don't want to date women who have children adopted from foreign countries, notes Associated Baptist Press. His comments -- including, "You don’t have to take on somebody else’s problems" -- provoked a strong rebuke from Russell Moore, a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dean who has become a prominent advocate for adoption.

"This is not just a statement we ought to disagree with," wrote Moore on his blog. "This is of the devil."

Canada’s largest Protestant church elected its first openly gay moderator at its 41st General Council on Thursday.

After nearly eight hours of voting, the 350 members of the United Church of Canada selected Gary Paterson from a pool of 15 nominees, including three other openly gay candidates. When Paterson begins his three-year term as moderator on Aug. 18, he will become the first openly gay leader of a Christian denomination.

The leader of Ethiopia’s largest Orthodox church died Thursday after receiving treatment for an illness in recent weeks.

The pope of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abune Paulos, was 76 years old and had served as the Fifth Patriarch of the Ethiopian Tewahdo Orthodox Church since 1992. Paulos previously led Ethiopia’s 40 million Orthodox Christians, who constitute half of the country’s population.

Comments on expanding the list of possible website endings (.com, .org, etc.) to include faith-based domain names such as .church and .bible will now be accepted until late September. One of the biggest objectors so far? Saudi Arabia.

The Islamic nation's Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC) recently objected to 31 web-domain extensions, filing 166 comments with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The CITC disputed many applications for domains associated with items forbidden by Islamic law, including .gay and .tattoo, but also opposes the .bible application from the American Bible Society and the .catholic application from the Roman Catholic Church.

Many other commenters have entered the fray surrounded religiously affiliated domain names.

As fans and critics wait to see what Rob Bell does next after leaving Mars Hill Bible Church last October in the wake of all the hubbub over Love Wins, his website gives a fresh glimpse of what the pastor and author is up to now: offering fellow pastors (and others) the chance to pay $500 to pick his brain.

Christian women today are just as likely as Christian men to self-identify as "leaders" (1 out of 3). And of those who do, more than half say their primary outlet for leadership is in their church, according to a new research series from the Barna Group.

The President's Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships has decided to tackle the issue of human trafficking this year after consulting with, among other groups, International Justice Mission and World Relief.

The council, a group of "diverse religious and nonprofit leaders" including National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson and Lynn Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church, will produce "a formal report of recommendations" to President Barack Obama and his administration.

Fallout from an Associated Press story has forced an Air Force chaplain to leave the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) after 30 years and affiliate instead with a more-moderate Baptist denomination.

In the continuing saga of whether or not Christian student groups violate college anti-discrimination policies, the State University of New York at Buffalo has re-recognized InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) as an official student organization, just in time for the start of the 2012-13 school year.

After being de-recognized as a club amid a leadership scandal earlier this year, IVCF regained official status on July 27. SUNY Buffalo’s Student-Wide Judiciary ruled that it is "common sense, not discrimination” for a religious group to want its leaders to agree with its core beliefs.

Although nearly three in four Christians say they feel comfortable sharing the gospel, the majority do not do so.

New findings from LifeWay Research -- self-described as "distressing results" -- indicate that 61 percent of evangelical Christians fail to share their faith on a regular basis, even though they believe it is their responsibility to do so. Moreover, nearly half of those respondents said they have not invited a non-Christian friend to church in the past six months.

CT just received this update:

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made the following comments after an FRC security guard was shot this morning:

"The police are investigating this incident. Our first concern is with our colleague who was shot today. Our concern is for him and his family."

The guard was shot in the arm, was conscious and breathing after the shooting, and police has taken one person into custody, the Associated Press reports.

"A man entered the FRC offices, was confronted by a security guard and opened fire. The guard and others wrestled him to the ground, MPD says," a Washington Examiner reporter tweeted.

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson founded the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, which was a division of Focus at one point. It became its own entity in 1992 and promotes social conservative policies.

In Colorado Springs, Focus faced a hostage situation in 1994 when a man walked into the building with a handgun, wore a vest he said contained explosive with a message on his chest in red marker. Kerry Steven Dore was a construction worker who was severely injured in 1992 when he fell from a Focus building.

As told in Dale Buss's Family Man biography of Dobson, employees and visitors were evacuated as Dore took two female receptionists hostage. Two male security guards offered to substitute themselves for the women, but he took them hostage as well. Four hours later, Dore gave himself up and was eventually sent to prison for 32 years for kidnapping.

In 2010, FRC and several conservative leaders protested the decision by the Southern Poverty Law Center to designate FRC as a hate group. CT has previous coverage of Family Research Council.

This post will be updated as soon as more information becomes available.

Update (March 5): The Associated Press reports that Amish-Mennonite pastor Kenneth Miller has been sentenced to 27 months in jail after being convicted for assisting in international parental kidnapping last year.

However, the sentence will be "stayed pending an appeal on whether the case should have been tried in Virginia instead of Vermont," according to Religion Clause.

A man who claims that God told him to kill his pregnant girlfriend cannot plea religious insanity as a defense, according to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

The court’s recent State v. Singleton decision reverses an appeals court ruling to give Boyce Singleton a new trial because original jurors were not instructed to consider an insanity defense based on his religious views. In New Jersey, this "deific command" defense is known as the Worlock charge, a modified insanity plea from “a defendant who claims he committed an illegal act because he was commanded to do so by God.”

Despite the reversal, the six justices were highly divided on the ruling, splitting into three different opinions as highlighted by Religion Clause.

Nellie Gray, a leader in the pro-life movement, died Monday night. She was 88.

Gray was best-known for her role as founder of March for Life, a pro-life organization that sponsors an annual rally in Washington, D.C. However, she also helped influence a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution and mobilized support for the pro-life movement in the late twentieth century.

Today’s budding pastors and theologians are entering and exiting seminary with more debt than ever before, according to new research from The Center for the Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological Seminary.

Auburn research reveals the number of master of divinity graduates who borrow money is surging, as well as the total size of their loans. Debts of $30,000 to $80,000 are now common — with little hope of a high-wage job to repay them, given that Department of Labor statistics estimated a clergyman’s average yearly wage to be about $44,140 last year.

Update: Graham has returned home after two days in the hospital. Press release is after the jump.

Famed evangelist Billy Graham, 93, has been hospitalized since Sunday in order to treat a bronchitis infection.

Personnel at Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C., have told reporters that Graham's bronchitis is "responding well to treatment" and "the prognosis is very positive."

This is Graham's third hospitalization over the past year, notes The Asheville Citizen-Times. The previous two hospital stays, in May and December 2011, were for pneumonia.

CT has extensive coverage of Graham's life and ministry, including his reflections on "death's destination" from his latest book, 2011's Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well.

Aronofsky gave USA Today the first look. The newspaper wrote that the director "has taken to his Twitter feed to give daily updates on Noah for his followers, including casting news—confirming Anthony Hopkins as Noah's ageless grandfather Methuselah, for example—and teasing to the existence of angelic Nephilim in the film."

Aronofsky wrote on one recent tweet, "Nephilim wuz here," while another included a picture of a puffin; no word yet on whether puffins will actually board the ark.

The film is slated to release in the spring of 2014.

A group of 35 Ethiopian Christians were finally deported from Saudi Arabia last week after being arrested and detained since December 2011 for holding a prayer meeting.

The 29 women and six men were arrested after Saudi security officials raided the home of one of the Ethiopians while they were holding an "all-night prayer vigil."

International Christian Concern and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom report that the Christians were physically and sexually "assaulted, harassed, and pressured" to convert to Islam while imprisoned for more than seven months, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Missouri voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment this week that will permit students to refuse school assignments that violate their religious beliefs.

Supporters of Amendment 2, which was expected both to pass and to be challenged in court, argued that it protects religious expression in schools and other public forums and hope it becomes a model for other states. Critics argued that the amendment duplicates existing legal protections and will prove a "nightmare for school districts."

An Illinois federal district court relied on the ministerial exception -- given national attention by last year's U.S. Supreme Court Hosanna-Tabor ruling -- in deciding that a former Lutheran school teacher could not sue for discrimination after being terminated.

Janet Herzog filed a lawsuit against St. Peter Lutheran Church, which owns a Lutheran elementary school, claiming her employment was terminated based on age, sex, and marital status. The church claims Herzong was let go because of "budgetary reasons."

After 14 years of debate, the Philippines' congress voted this week to move forward on a controversial health bill that would mandate sex education in schools and use government funds to subsidize the cost of contraceptives.

The Reproductive Health Bill calls for the Philippines' Department of Health to provide “medically safe, legal, accessible, affordable and effective reproductive health care services nationwide,” as well as require “age-appropriate reproductive health and sexuality education” from the fifth grade through high school.

Country music veteran Randy Travis, who has been outspoken about his Christian faith in the last decade, was arrested late Tuesday night in Texas, charged with driving while intoxicated and retaliation or obstruction, according to an Associated Press story. He was held overnight and released Wednesday on $21,500 bond from the jail in Sherman, about 60 miles north of Dallas.

An Austrian pastor in the Church of Sweden has given up his license to preach after being exposed as a former spy for a once-feared Communist intelligence agency.

Aleksander Radler admitted that he was recruited to East Germany's Ministry of State Security, popularly known as Stasi, after studying theology in the Communist nation. When Radler moved to Sweden in 1968, he continued his work as a Stasi agent for 24 years, denouncing students planning to escape from East Germany among other tasks.

An English nobleman has apologized to his neighbors for allowing thousands of evangelical Roma, commonly known as "gypsies," to hold a convention on his property.

The week-long Light and Life Gipsy Church convention, held annually since the 1950s, changes location every year and features Bible studies and prayer meetings under a tent. The event usually "attracts hostility" between local villagers and visiting Roma, reports The Telegraph.

Former Moody Radio personality and Angola missionary Don Cole died on Saturday, August 4, from complications due to Parkinson's disease. He was 89.

A recent survey suggests that white evangelical Protestants are "significantly more likely than other major religious groups to use technology for religious purposes." The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) study also suggests that few Americans use social media to interact with faith communities online, though critics say the survey does not accurately measure online religiosity. Case in point: evangelical dominance of Twitter engagement.

Austria's Justice Ministry has cleared the nation's doctors to resume infant circumcisions without risk of criminal charges.

Amid concerns that such circumcisions might become illegal after an appeals court in neighboring Germany recently ruled that religious parents do not have the right to circumcise their sons, the governor of an Austrian province had advised doctors to stop the practice.

A British judge has ruled that a 10-year-old Jewish girl is mature enough to convert to Christianity -- even against the wishes of her mother.

The somewhat complicated backstory: The girl was raised by Jewish parents, but her father converted to Christianity after the couple divorced in 2010. Her mother filed a court order last November after the girl requested to be baptized in her father's Anglican church after having an "encounter with God" at an evangelical festival.

The U.S. State Department has released its 2011 International Religious Freedom Report, highlighting the abuse of blasphemy and registration laws and the treatment of minority religious groups as security threats.

"The world is sliding backwards," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, noting that "more than a billion people live under governments that systematically suppress religious freedom."

"It’s particularly urgent that we highlight religious freedom," she said, "because when we consider the global picture and ask whether religious freedom is expanding or shrinking, the answer is sobering."

A federal judge has granted the owners of a Colorado heating-and-cooling company a temporary injunction against the new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requirement that businesses cover emergency contraception in their insurance plans.

DreamWorks Animation has purchased Classic Media, the parent company of Big Idea and the VeggieTales brand. Big Idea will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year.

Jars of Clay frontman Dan Haseltine is resting at home in Nashville after undergoing a procedure “to correct a coronary issue after experiencing a cardiac event” on July 25, according to the band’s Facebook page. “He is doing well and recovering.”