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Good Without God: The Ethics of Atheism

By Becky Garrison

…e in community service projects in many of the cities, as part of “Secular Service Day,” an idea designed “to unite secular groups across the country in the interest of public service, and to demonstrate our commitment to leading full and ethical lives.” I first connected with Epstein while conducting research for The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail. When I met him, I was pretty drained from sitting through one too many Dawkins vs. D’…

Pope’s ‘Joy of Love’ Brings Little Joy To LGBT Catholics; Gay Atheist Malaysian Granted Refugee Status In Canada; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…vided for those who would like to do so. These prayers do not constitute a service of blessing.” Morgan told LGBT people that he knew they had been “persecuted and ostracized” by the chrch and said: “We deplore such hostility, and welcome and affirm the words of the Primates that condemn homophobic prejudice and violence. “We too commit ourselves to offering you the same loving service and pastoral care to which all humanity is entitled, and we co…

Like Azusa Street Baptized into Bureaucracy: Mexico’s Flourishing LLDM Church Loses its Apostle

By Michael Schulson

…replica Ark of the Covenant, sitting on a little lawn of AstroTurf. During services, people sing hymns to God, to Jesus, and to Samuel. They read from special Bibles, in the back of which are printed the key speeches and epistles of Samuel. Pilgrims gathered for the ceremony of Santa Cena, the Holy Supper. La Luz del Mundo has thrived among the poor, and in particular the transient poor, flowing into Mexico’s cities from the country’s hardscrabble…

Pastor David Brooks, Your Sermons Are Growing Stale…

By Peter Laarman

…s a beacon of insight, not only in service to our vast congregation but in service to an entire befuddled and dispirited nation that seems to have lost its way. We are proud that your new book deals explicitly with religious themes. You have been leaning in this direction for a long time, and we are glad to see you make your conviction that good religion is essential to good living ever more explicit. Your own intense and transformative religious…

Does The White House Get It?

By Sarah Posner

…and 43% oppose. In all other religious groups, more than half support open service (except for black Protestants, who favor it 46% to 41%). Even among weekly church attenders (the mysterious gold standard for who the allegedly truly religious are), there’s 49%-40% support for open service. UPDATE: The ruling doesn’t, as Zach Roth suggests at the Upshot, revitalize the culture wars — they’ve never gone away. But the culture warriors quoted here are…

Is New Pope’s Take on the Poor All That New?

By Silvia Alves Fernandes and Manuel A. Vásquez

…t, Francis seems to think of poverty primarily as a virtue, as a marker of service, frugality, honesty, purifying suffering, and loyalty at a time of general indignation toward the excesses and wastefulness of contemporary capitalism. Poverty above all implies a call for moral and spiritual conversion in the midst of a Church that has lost a great deal of its moral standing. This view is clear in his first encyclical Lumen Fidei, co-authored with…

God is Not Interested in Religion

By Peter Laarman

…ffort to get a big chunk of the San Gabriel Mountains protected under Park Service rather than Forest Service jurisdiction. A mix of fairly traditional Christians and a somewhat larger number of nature people (let’s just call them “pagans”—a perfectly good word) gathered high up in a canyon grove next to a roaring wild river, whereupon I shouted out a short sermon about how Christians really need to relax about contaminating the Easter rite with n…

Is Pope Francis Yogaphobic?

By Andrea R. Jain

…rom Northern Ireland, from co-opting and misconstruing Francis’ remarks in service to Colhoun’s own yogaphobic agenda. And Colhoun’s yogaphobia is a part of a much larger conservative movement. There have been many high-profile examples of evangelical yogaphobia (I have written about some of them here and here), but evangelicals are not the only players in the yogaphobic movement. Fr. Colhoun’s comments concerning yoga were not dissimilar from oth…

Fear Not, The IRS Isn’t Colluding With Angry Atheists

By Sarah Posner

…nded “the release of a secret legal agreement between the Internal Revenue Service and a radical atheist organization that portends increased scrutiny and harassment of churches and Christians, potentially infringing upon their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association.” Upon closer examination—surprise!—that turns out not to be the case. Patrick Elliott, a staff attorney at FFRF, told me “there has been a lot of misinformation p…

Spiritual Medicine: Bridging the Gap Between Religion and Psychology

By Gale Bataille

…a variety of innovative approaches to collaboration between mental health service providers and faith-based organizations from around the state; demonstrating how spirituality can be incorporated into mental health services in a way that is client-driven and respects the separation of church and state; and sharing information from research findings on the role of spirituality in trauma recovery and mental health. We’ve worked hard to make the con…