Religion

A MUSLIM MAN who once worked at the Whole Foods store in Franklintown claims he was heckled by supervisors for praying in a storage area and fired from the supermarket for his religious beliefs. The allegations are especially troubling because Whole Foods had a Ramadan promotion featuring its halal foods this year, said Amara Chaudhry, Philadelphia civil-rights director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is representing the dismissed employee. "We believe that Whole Foods was discriminating against an employee on the basis of religion and it seems to contradict their prior efforts to court the Muslim community," Chaudhry said.

Chris Matthews is the author of Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero (Simon & Schuster) and host of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show We once had a hero for a president. As a young Navy lieutenant, John F. Kennedy saved his crew in World War II. He carried one man on his back for four hours as he swam through Japanese-held waters of the South Pacific. As president, he may well have saved far more lives. Faced with evidence that the Soviets had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, Kennedy faced pressure to attack.

I WISH CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and some others would start running Looney Tunes instead of their campaign coverage. (And save your emails. I know many of you often wish there was a cartoon strip in place of this column.) I'm not talking about supplanting Looney Tunes characters for candidates. Although, I can see that: Porky Pig as Newt; Tweety as Ron Paul; Wile E. Coyote as Santorum; Daffy Duck as Biden; Sylvester (maybe without the lisp) as Obama; Pepe le Pew as Perry; and Mitt as Mitt.

KARACHI, Pakistan - He owns a single set of clothing and often sleeps in a storage room - even though millions of dollars pass through his hands annually. At 83, creature comforts don't matter much to Abdul Sattar Edhi. He is too busy caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, burying the dead. Known to some as Pakistan's Mother Teresa, Edhi is a humanitarian light in a violent and troubled land. The vast majority here struggle daily in a moribund economy. Natural disasters are common.

The Philadelphia Interfaith Children & Youth Festival will host a two-day, outdoor event this weekend at New Covenant Church in Germantown, offering families an opportunity to celebrate and to foster understanding and respect for diverse faiths and religions. Hope is the theme for this year's event, scheduled from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. The theme was selected and festivities were designed by young people 12 to 18. Families can enjoy the Hope Village, where they can learn what hope means and how it is a symbol of many faiths and religions.

MANY GOLFERS who spend their weekends chasing tiny white balls across long ranges of green grass consider the sport an almost religious experience. "Seven Days in Utopia" takes that spiritual approach one step further to show how one man finds true religion through golf. Based on David L. Cook's novel, "Golf's Sacred Journey: Seven Days at the Links of Utopia," the movie follows Luke Chisholm (Lucas Black) as he finally reaches the goal his father has pushed him to obtain: a chance to play professional golf.

I WAS flabbergasted when I learned of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's decision to keep religion and tributes to first responders out of next week's 9/11 commemorations. I don't have his personal cellphone or email, so here's an open letter to Hizzoner. He probably won't see it, but miracles do happen (even for non-believers). Dear Mayor B: This is in reference to your decision to deny God his VIP tickets to the event next week. It's also about your unwillingness to put first responders front and center.

When evangelical Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry said evolution was a theory that has "got some gaps," he showed that if anything, religious and political gripes with evolution are intensifying, even as Darwin's idea remains established in the bedrock of science. Other Republican runners are equally hostile to evolution - Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul support the teaching of creationism. When pushed, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have espoused a sort of mix, Gingrich saying that he believes in both creation and evolution, and Romney saying that he believes God designed the universe but evolution shaped the human body.

Two-hundred and thirty-five years ago, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence separating the American colonies from Great Britain. John Adams suggested that the occasion "ought to be celebrated as the day of deliverance with solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty from this time forward forever more. " Since then there has been a debate over whether the Founders envisioned the United States as a Christian nation. There is no easy answer. The Founders, like the American people, hailed from several religions, the majority being Protestant.

ALBANY, N.Y. - Will the Knights of Columbus be required to open its halls for gay weddings if New York lawmakers legalize same-sex marriage? Will Catholic adoption agencies have to choose between placing children with gay married couples or leaving the business? As New York moves closer to a vote on legislation that would make it the sixth and largest state to allow same-sex marriage, some Republicans are demanding stronger legal protections for religious organizations that object to the practice.