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Elephant Orphans and Ecological Spiritualities: An Earth Day Reflection

By Jacob J. Erickson

…easons, doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. In a history of millennia of the destruction of elephants, saving a few hundred seems utterly insignificant. Yet, I remind myself, fragments of care quite often become the sources for deep hope, deep societal change. The floor opens to questions from the crowd and the questions pour out—not about poaching or the ivory trade, but a list of questions that I might very likely hear in any one of the…

None Means None (Not Atheist, Agnostic, Unbeliever…)

By Elizabeth Drescher

…lection brought to the fore the voting patterns of the “religiously unaffiliated”—a designation some Nones also find distasteful because it makes religious participation the basis for identification rather than… rather than what? “Even ‘agnostic’ or ‘atheist’ carry a lot of cultural baggage that I just don’t want to take on,” explained an undergraduate at a liberal arts college in Ohio who periodically joins fellow students at a Friends meeting ac…

Hell, in Rob Bell’s Own Words: State of Belief Radio

By The Editors

…the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus refers to the renewal of all things; in Colossians 1, the apostle Paul talks about the reconciliation of all things. Peter in Acts 3:21 talks about the restoration of all things. This phrase “all things” comes up again and again and again in the Bible. It’s as expansive a term as you could come up with. And what really struck me is, I didn’t hear that many Christians talking about this biblical idea of all things being…

Pussy Riot Members Sentenced to 2 Years for Offending Russian Orthodox Church

By The Editors

…ed on distorting facts and words, which has appeared in nearly all the Russian media, apart from the few independent media there are in this political system. Even so, I can now state—despite the fact that we currently have an authoritarian political situation—that I am seeing this political system collapse to a certain extent when it comes to the three members of Pussy Riot, because what the system was counting on, unfortunately for that system,…

National Review’s Kevin Williamson Comes Out Against Daughters, Misunderstands Science

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ed by many as espousing virulent, mean-spirited sexism; There is a non-trivial number of men who actually love their daughters and are neither disappointed they exist nor convinced that it means they’re low-status males; There is a non-trivial number of human beings who are unrepentant daughters and/or fallopian tube havers and/or cardigan wearers; There was a Republican president in recent memory who had two daughters; There are social conservati…

The End (of Religion) is Near, Scientists Say

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…o extrapolate from data on religious affiliation in nine countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland. Turns out, every case of self-reported religious affiliation is trending downward: 40% self-identify as religiously non-affiliated in the Netherlands, as do 60% in the Czech Republic. The mathematicians seem far more surprised by these numbers than most religionists would be. Th…

LGBT Editor In Bangladesh Murdered by Islamists—and More, In this Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…o LGBT individuals and with violent homophobic messages being posted to social media. The rise in intensity of anti-LGBT sentiment comes after the homophobic comments of actor Ahmed Landolsi on Tunisian television channel Al Hiwar Ettounsi… The pressure on Germany to change the designation of Tunisia and its neighbors comes just weeks after the largest ever deportation to a Maghrebi country, when German authorities sent home 24 Tunisian asylum see…

Creeping Shari’ah… Ahem, Excuse Me… Biblical Law

By Julie Ingersoll

…that restitution is the Biblical way to deal with crime: Restitution includes compensating a person for stolen or damaged property or physical harm done to someone. Restitution laws cover a variety of circumstances: assault (Exodus 21:18–19); bodily injury (21:26–27); liability (21:33–36); theft (22:1–4); property damage (22:5–6); irresponsibility (22:7–13); and the loss or damage of borrowed items (22:14–15). Later in the article DeMar continues…

Marriage equality and ‘the end of Catholic Ireland’; Gambian Prez vows to slit gays’ throats; Colombian govt affirms support for marriage and adoption; global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…. Red C’s survey only confirms what is obvious anecdotally: that a substantial number of Irish people have ditched the religion of their ancestors because they think it no longer applies in an age of scientific rationality; because they rebuff “control” by ecclesiastics; because they are disgusted by the clerical scandals – indeed, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin is himself disgusted by what he has had to read in the archives; or because sex,…

Why the Church is Struggling to Hold Onto Millennial Catholics

By Kaya Oakes

…s in interviews about how much her Catholic faith influences her work. Partially as a response to the dwindling number of young Catholics, the campus ministry group FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students), similarly to Opus Dei, sends missionaries – many of whom are recent college graduates themselves — out to secular college campuses, where they run bible studies and other group activities. A version of the FOCUS handbook on Wikileaks…