Praying for other people to recover from an illness is ineffective, according to the largest, best-designed study to examine the power of prayer to heal strangers at a distance... Several studies that claimed to show a benefit have been criticized as deeply flawed... The new $2.4 million study, funded primarily by the John Templeton Foundation, was designed to overcome some of those shortcomings... surprisingly, 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being prayed for experienced complications... Skeptics said the study should put to rest the notion that distant prayer has any effect... The findings are unlikely to change the minds of the faithful, several pastors said... "We welcome and appreciate the involvement of scientists researching faith," said Rob Brendle, associate pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. "But this is just one study. We believe wholeheartedly that prayer changes things. So many of us have experienced that in our lives."

KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity has been released from prison after the case was dropped, the justice minister said Tuesday... Deputy Attorney General Mohammed Eshak Aloko told the AP that prosecutors had issued a letter calling for Rahman's release because "he was mentally unfit to stand trial." He also said he did not know where he was being held... Hours earlier, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan Mazar-i-Sharif to protest the court's decision Sunday to dismiss the case... Several Muslim clerics have threatened to incite Afghans to kill Rahman if he is freed, saying that he is clearly guilty of apostasy and deserves to die.

SELMER, Tenn. - A minister’s wife was charged Friday with shooting her husband to death in the parsonage in a crime that shocked the congregation and shattered the couple’s happy and loving image.

Mary Winkler, 32, was arrested on murder charges and confessed to the slaying after fleeing to Alabama in the family’s minivan with the couple’s three young daughters, authorities said. Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent John Mehr said authorities know the motive for the killing but he would not disclose it.

TIRANA, Albania -- Albania's largest Muslim group said Monday that placing a bust of Mother Teresa in a northern city would not damage religious harmony, rejecting claims from smaller Muslim associations... "We respect the contribution of the distinguished figures of our nation, like that of Mother Teresa, who is the honor of our nation"... Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, has long been revered in this mostly Muslim country. Tirana's international airport and main hospital are named in her honor, and there is a memorial to her at the National Museum... Born in neighboring Macedonia to an ethnic Albanian family, she went to Calcutta, India, in 1929, and began a life dedicated to helping the poor and infirm.

After seven years, ABC decided to cancel the show. The end of the series gave Cameron an opportunity to resolve the tension he felt between the requirements of his profession and the demands of his faith. He started working on the popular Apocalyptic "Left Behind" film series and then met an itinerant preacher, Ray Comfort, who encouraged him to begin a second career — as an evangelist.

Together they formed an organization called "The Way of the Master." Operating as a charitable trust, its intention is to educate and equip the church to preach the message of Christianity to unbelievers. Cameron says he is motivated by a literal fear of hell.

Cameron says that he is producing the show because he objects to the way many churches present the Christian faith. He believes that Christianity has become just another ideology that is used to indulge personal interests and contains little of the original message of repentance and faith.

I am simply trying to be faithful to the God who saved me, who changed me and who has commissioned me to tell you… about the gospel of Jesus Christ and that it has the power to change people's hearts."

ROANOKE, Va. Mar 17, 2006 (AP)— A pregnant teenage waitress got an unexpectedly large tip when a sympathetic stranger left her $1,000 in cash... the woman left Amanda Newkirk ten $100 bills and a handwritten note reading "Keep the change! Have a great day."... Erin Dogan, a 28-year-old widow, called Newkirk's general manager and said she had left the tip... "It involved a lot more than good service at a great restaurant," Dogan told the Times. "I didn't need it. It helped someone who … needed it. God put us there together. God answered my questions."... "It made me feel phenomenal," Dogan said. "It has changed my life."

Sarah Rosenbloom is stuck in a marital netherworld. She and her husband divorced seven years ago in Maryland civil court. But she remains married under Jewish law because he has refused to give her a religious divorce document known in Hebrew as a get. She can't date, let alone remarry, without violating the tenets of her faith -- and the 44-year-old Orthodox Jew is not about to take that step.

"I truly believe it would be a terrible thing if I acted like I had a get ," said Rosenbloom, an English teacher who lives in Baltimore. "Do I question my faith? Sure. Do I rail against God? Sure. I can always question, but I am not going to give up my Judaism, my religiosity."

Her case illustrates a growing debate among Orthodox Jews and members of other faiths over whether ancient religious laws governing divorce need to be adapted to the modern era. Devout people of all faiths are seeking divorce in higher numbers, experts say, which is putting pressure on religious authorities to loosen restrictions.

Catholic Charities of Boston will stop placing children in adoptive homes after a century of doing so, saying it no longer wants to have to consider gay couples as parents, which it must do under the law... "We find ourselves in a conflict, in which the religious and moral principles of Catholic teaching and practice clash with the political and civil regulations of the state," said Rev. Bryan Hehir, the president of Catholic Charities of Boston... Catholic Charities said it's encountered a dilemma "we cannot resolve." And one conservative group said it is easy to understand their decision... But advocates of gay parents point out there are 119,000 children still waiting to be adopted in this country.

Where does spirituality fit into a college experience? The latest findings from a continuing national study of spirituality in US higher education, released Tuesday, reveal that faculty views on the subject diverge some from student perspectives.

While 81 percent of faculty consider themselves spiritual persons (and 64 percent call themselves "religious"), only 30 percent agree that "colleges should be concerned with facilitating students' spiritual development." Nearly half of college freshmen in an earlier survey called it "essential" or "very important" for colleges to encourage their personal expression of spirituality.