Faith Digest: Court rules against student group

Court rules against Christian legal student group. A federal appeals court has upheld an “open membership” rule for student organizations at a University of California law school, making a Christian student group ineligible for recognition because the group requires adherence to a faith statement and denies membership to gays. The Christian Legal Society at the university’s Hastings College of the Law had sought official recognition and school funding as a student organization but was denied because of its membership requirements.

Democrats stake claim on Robertson’s campus. A Democratic student group has formed at Regent University, the school founded by conservative televangelist Pat Robertson, who sought the Republican nomination for a White House bid in 1988. “Here, it is definitely a startling idea,” said Kalila Hines, a government major and one of the founding members of Regent Democrats. Regent, where Robertson is president and chancellor, has long had a student Republican group. The university approved Regent Democrats as an official student organization in late January, and the group now counts about 30 members.

Study Bible wins publishers’ award. The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association named the ESV Study Bible the “Christian Book of the Year,” marking the first time the honor has been given to a study Bible. The English Standard Version Bible includes study notes from evangelical Christian scholars and other reference materials. Published by Crossway, it also won in the best Bible category. The award was announced at the 2009 Christian Book Expo in Dallas. The Christian Book Awards, which previously were known as the Gold Medallion Book Awards, were established in 1978 to recognize Christian books for excellent content, design and literary quality.

French physicist wins Templeton Prize. Bernard d’Espagnat, a renowned French physicist whose research has centered on hidden realities “beyond our possibilities of description,” has won the 2009 Templeton Prize, valued at $1.42 million. D’Espagnat, 87, becomes the latest in a series of physicists and cosmologists whose work at the intersection of religion and science has won the Templeton Prize, the world’s single largest annual award given to an individual. A professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Paris-Sud, d’Espagnat is perhaps best known for his research into what he terms “veiled reality”—a domain that underlies energy, matter, space and time—and the ways science can help reveal the nature of reality. The Templeton Award honors a living person “who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery or practical works,” according to the John Templeton Foundation, based in West Conshohocken, Pa. Previous winners include evangelist Billy Graham, the late Mother Teresa and the late Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.