Utah's Catholics find unity in being a minority
Salt Lake City When people talk about "The Church" in Utah, they're not talking about the Roman Catholic Church.
Catholicism is America's largest denomination, but it's No. 2 in Utah and represents only about 9 percent of the state's residents, or roughly 200,000 people. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claims 70 percent of Utah's residents around 1.5 million people.
The sheer dominance of Mormonism in Utah where it's not just a religion, but a culture pushes Catholics together and has created a tightly knit minority.
Salt Lake Bishop George Niederauer, the church's top official in Utah, said being immersed in the Mormon culture causes people to look closely at their own faith.
"I think the atmosphere here encourages people to take religion seriously," he said. "When people ask you what (Mormon) ward you belong to, that gets you thinking."
The Mormon influence in Utah runs deep. The state was founded by the faith's pioneers in 1847, who had fled from persecution in the East. Today, it is the home of the Mormon church's world headquarters.
Christian Coalition settles racial discrimination lawsuit
Christian Coalition has settled a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by 10 black female clerical workers. Terms were not disclosed.
The women filed suit last February. They claimed they were denied health benefits and overtime pay, excluded from staff events, forced to use a segregated break room and told to use a back entrance because Executive Director Roberta Combs didn't want "important people" seeing them.
Combs denied the allegations and characterized the lawsuit as an attempt to embarrass the coalition and extort money.
The plaintiffs later charged that the coalition retaliated against them for bringing the suit. Five more employees joined the amended suit, including a white man who said he was fired for refusing to spy on black co-workers.
Conservatives encourage Bush on human cloning ban
Religious and social conservatives have written President Bush commending his "moral leadership" in opposing human cloning and urging the U.S. Senate to pass a House bill outlawing the practice.
The statement came from the Bioethics Project, chaired by editor William Kristol of The Weekly Standard. The religious endorsers included two spokesmen for the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant body, which takes a strong anti-cloning stand.
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