He killed two people, including a man who witnesses called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast. Seven adults were also injured but no children were harmed at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Church members said they dove under pews or ran from the building when the shooting started. The gunman was tackled by congregants and eventually taken into police custody. Associated Press Check your heart; because this is a Unitarian Church (cult), are we “less” concerned and upset over this event? I checked myself tonight during the new, it’s a good measuring stick.

Churches across the country have struggled with how to appeal to their memberships for money. Add economic woes like rising gas and food prices and an unsteady job market, and many Christian groups are bracing for an extra financial pinch, if they haven't felt it already. Even the Vatican showed a $13.5 million deficit last year, which it recently blamed in part on the weak dollar hurting its investments. But any movement that calls for a bountiful increase in church giving is bound to stir the ire of skeptics — even some from among the ranks of Christian conservatives. Twin Cities News Of course, most Christians give much less than 10 percent of their earnings, a figure with Biblical significance: According to the research group Empty Tomb Inc. of Champaign, Ill., Protestants donated a smaller percentage of their income in 2005 (2.6 percent) than they did at the depth of the Great Depression (3.2 percent). Because attitudes toward giving have changed as Americans have gotten wealthier and more insulated from the desperately poor. Before World War II, about 40 percent of U.S. residents lived in poverty by today's federal standard. Is this “really the reason”, or is it poor church leadership as it relates to stewardship? People are tired of activating their faith, as they watch the church live lavishly off of the tithes and the offerings.

Contrary to popular notions of Christians as sexual prudes, 15 years of study have convinced a psychologist and professor that "knowing" your spouse "in the biblical sense" can be scientifically verified as a fulfilling and spiritual experience. While many people assume biblical writers used the phrase "knowing" a person as a bashful way of saying "having sex," he believes the writers and translators were tapping into the uniquely intimate sense of knowing God that can be found within married, Christian sexuality. World Net Daily

Here in the gentle hills of north Texas, televangelist Kenneth Copeland has built a religious empire teaching that God wants his followers to prosper. Over the years, a circle of Copeland's relatives and friends have done just that, The Associated Press has found. They include the brother-in-law with a lucrative deal to broker Copeland's television time, the son who acquired church-owned land for his ranching business and saw it more than quadruple in value, and board members who together have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking at church events. Yahoo News Prosperity, property management or proper scheming?

Q: At our staff lunches, my manager always asks someone to say a blessing on behalf of the entire department. Because I feel that my religion is a personal matter, this makes me quite uncomfortable. Praying is fine if people want to do it privately. However, I don't believe that a manager should require employees to pray at work just because he's a Christian. What is your opinion of this practice? And should I talk to my boss about it? Atlanta Journal News

Today polls show that Catholics, at least in the West, dissent from the teaching on birth control, often by majorities exceeding 80 percent. But at the official level, Catholicism’s commitment to “Humanae Vitae” is more solid than ever. During his almost 27-year papacy, John Paul II provided a deeper theoretical basis for traditional Catholic sexual morality through his “theology of the body.” In brief, the late pope’s argument was that human sexuality is an image of the creative love among the three persons of the Trinity, as well as God’s love for humanity. Birth control “changes the language” of sexuality, because it prevents life-giving love. NY Times

When Bruce Bastian of Utah stood up Saturday night at a San Francisco dinner and wrote a $1 million check for the campaign against Proposition 8, he made it clearer than ever that November's ballot fight over a ban on same-sex marriage won't be a California-only affair. Supporters of the effort to ban same-sex marriage already have taken in more than $1.2 million from out-of-state contributors for the fall campaign. San Francisco Chronicle

Boycotts are older than the nation itself, but during the past decade, they've become the weapon of choice for conservative Christians engaged in the nation's raging culture wars. They've used the boycott to try to inflict economic damage against corporate giants that they believe are becoming too cozy with the gay and lesbian community, including Ford, Disney and McDonald's. San Diego Union-Trib

State Attorney General Jerry Brown leads San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other Democrats making noises about running for governor in 2010 - but if Sen. Dianne Feinstein were to jump into the pool, she would swamp them all, a new poll shows. On the Republican side, former Rep. Tom Campbell has a 2-1 edge over other possible candidates - ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and ex-eBay chief Meg Whitman. San Francisco Chronicle Why would anyone leave the US Senate to be the Governor of a state that is $20-billion in debt?

Job losses have hit the San Fernando Valley particularly hard as the economic downturn spreads beyond the poor and begins to affect middle- and upper-class families. Los Angeles Times

He's been portrayed by Democrats as the grumpy old man of foreign policy and the "McSame" candidate. But even after a brutal week that put his competitor, Barack Obama, in a glowing international spotlight, Republican Sen. John McCain is coming to California today with some things to smile about. San Francisco Chronicle

Thousands more California students will have to find their own way to school this fall, as districts slash bus routes to cope with budget shortfalls and high fuel costs. Critics worry that the cuts will increase traffic around schools, shift costs to parents already struggling with rising gas prices and prompt more absenteeism, hurting students' academic achievement. But paramount is the fear that the reductions will endanger students as more walk or drive to school. Los Angeles Times

Banks in San Diego County are increasingly being targeted by desperate criminals who have little aversion to risk. The faltering economy and more typical factors – a constant need to feed drug habits and a handful of repeat offenders – are driving increases not seen in years, law enforcement experts said. There were 171 bank robberies in the county last year, a five-year high and a 20 percent jump from 2006, according to FBI statistics. San Diego Union-Trib Desperate people do, and say, desperate things.

A couple of years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was hailing a booming state economy and implicitly – sometimes explicitly – claiming credit. This is how, in 2006, Schwarzenegger characterized an overhaul of workers' compensation that was saving employers billions of dollars a year: "We have seen businesses coming back again to the state of California, businesses wanting to do business here again. … And what happened was that this money that companies are saving, they are using this money to buy more equipment, to expand their companies, to hire more workers. And what is the result of that? We have created now 577,000 new jobs because of it, and there is a great stimulation of the economy. Because of that, we have created more revenues. When I came in here into this office we had $76 billion of revenues. Now we are up to $94 billion of revenues." Sacramento Bee

Will minority representation in the Legislature decrease if Proposition 11, the redistricting reform initiative on the November ballot, passes? The measure would take away the Legislature's power to draw its own political map and give the job to an independent, bipartisan citizens commission made up of 14 members, whom the state auditor would randomly select from registered voters who apply for the positions. Los Angeles Times One of the bigger ballot propositions coming this November.

Our Legislature took time out from the state budget crisis to pass a bill giving California pet owners the right to set up a legally enforceable trust to care for dogs, cats, horses or other animals. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill, SB685, last week. It takes effect Jan. 1. San Francisco Chronicle

California public students will stick to reading, writing and arithmetic, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided as he vetoed a bill late Friday that would have required climate change be added to schools' curriculum. The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would have required future science textbooks to include climate change as a subject. San Jose Mercury I’m confused here, if we are signing into law new environmental standards and measures, shouldn’t we support the education and research of such measures inside of our children’s education…? Hmm…

Harvey Milk is a lightning rod in death – just as he was in life. Martyred hero or misplaced symbol, take your pick. Nearly three decades after Milk and Mayor George Moscone were fatally shot by a fellow city lawmaker inside San Francisco City Hall, the gay activist's renown continues to grow. Sacramento Bee