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MRI Jesus, Bush’s Reading List, Ahmadinejad & the Pope…

By Michael J. Altman

…s computer and that he then told the priest about it during sacramental confession before it was ever discovered by college administration. Because of its sacred context the priest was forbidden from revealing the confession to administrators. Pope Benedict denounced the mafia. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote a letter thanking the Pope for denouncing the planned Qur’an burnings in Florida. In the wake of recent teen bullying, Christian…

The Economy is Sacred, Stupid

By Gary Laderman

…ife and death? This Christmas, the haunting spector of impending economic calamity will compete with the candlelit nativity scenes representing the glorious birth of Christ. Indeed in this light, the recent “shellacking” of Democrats—as President Obama put it—in the midterm elections points to an obvious yet underanalyzed dimension of political life today: the economy is sacred, and “free enterprise” is a religious commitment of the highest order…

Alums Speak Out Against Anti-Gay Christian College

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…n youth visit these campuses to challenge such anti-gay policies. In some places they are welcomed into dialogue. At others, they are banned from campus and arrested if they attempt to enter. Rider Angel Collie has said of the experience: “Over and over I am overtaken by the importance and significance of this Ride and the effect it has in the lives of individual students. So often, we go to schools and find a student body starving for these conve…

Is Pope Francis Yogaphobic?

By Andrea R. Jain

…rmining Church doctrine, yet the letter is fear-inciting insofar as it addresses so-called eastern body practices, which are deemed incompatible with Catholic doctrine as well as destructive of human stability. The letter warns that those engaged in such practices for the sake of anything beyond mundane physical exercise or relaxation are involved in self-destructive activity; that unless the practitioner is an advanced adept no bodily experiences…

Devil’s Bookmark: How Not to Defend God

By Bernard Schweizer

…. by reforming his self-created human race instead of exterminating it wholesale, with the exception of Noah’s family. This curious imbalance smacks of a moral double-standard. Another thing we learn from Copan’s defense of the Bible’s take on slavery is that the Mosaic law really is relative. It has to be taken with a dose of salt. “Mosaic law was temporary and, as a whole, isn’t universal and binding upon all humans and all cultures.” So, it’s a…

Is Norway’s Suspected Murderer Anders Breivik a Christian Terrorist?

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…. Breivik chose July 22, which was the day in 1099 that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was established during the First Crusades. The title of Breivik’s manifesto, which was posted on the internet on that day, is “2083”—the date Breivik suggested would be the culmination of a 70-year war that began with his action. Yet 70 years from 2011 would be 2081; why did he date the final purge of Muslims from Norway to be two years later, in 2083? I found the ans…

Penn Jillette’s Signs You May Already Be an Atheist

By Steve A. Wiggins

…published, to great acclaim. As of October it ranked #273 in Amazon’s book sales category. (Those of us whose books are ranked down in the millions can’t help but feel a little pang of jealousy; it does tell us, however, who is getting read!) Jillette is the vocal member of Penn & Teller, the bad-boy magician duo, and a noted iconoclast. Largely a ramble through his inner monologue, God, No! is the first book to cause me to laugh out loud in years…

Silver Bells and Atheist Billboards

By Steve A. Wiggins

…d down the wrong garden path of a career. The writing’s on the wall for professional religionists. Or at least on the billboard. What do these signs tell us about ourselves? Once the bus reaches the Port Authority terminal and I join the braided streams of Manhattan commuters, I hear piped-in Christmas carols. And not just “secular” ones like “Winter Wonderland.” Pushing through the doors into the chilly New York air with Johnny Mathis singing “Si…

Church Uses Facebook for Sacramental Scrutiny at its Peril

By Elizabeth Drescher

…new smartphone app aimed to support preparation for and the practice of confession ended up generating more confusion than contrition when a not particularly social design invited people to conclude that absolution was granted by way of the Confession app itself rather than, according to Catholic teaching, through the mediation of the priest. No wonder Pope Benedict XVI’s Message for World Communications Day earlier this year highlighted silence a…

The Evolution of Religion, According to Darwin

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ity colleague David Pleins, whose Evolving God: Charles Darwin on the Naturalness of Religion (Bloomsbury) will be released this summer, sees no small irony in rigid ideological polarities that he says Darwin himself resisted throughout his life. Further, Pleins argues that reading Darwin and the theories he developed through the lens of an uncompromising rejection of religion has prevented us from seeing the full scope of Darwin’s genius, which r…