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Breivik’s Religious Pluralist Vision: A COEXIST Bumper Sticker Without the Crescent

…urdered more than 300 million individuals,” going so far as to divide that number up: “3/4 Hindu/Buddhist, Animist/Pagan 1/4 Christian/Jewish/Zoroastrian.” So, while it’s true that he borrows a lot of imagery and language from the Christian crusades, such a list of world religions indicates that Breivik also thought in terms of modern religious diversity. It wasn’t merely Christendom versus Islam, it was a world of peaceful religions defending the…

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Data-Mining The Denominations: The Southern Baptists in Four Charts

…on isn’t without its difficulties, either. Unless Southern fertility rates change drastically, a new baby boom isn’t going to lift the boat. By now, new church start-ups in the base states run the risk of cannibalizing already-established communities. And while the South changes more slowly than the rest of the country, it’s not immune to the rising tide of disaffiliation. That leaves reaching out to black folks and learning Spanish. The Southern…

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Forget Right or Wrong

…(ARIS)—and several follow-up reports have tracked a rapid increase in the number of people who do not identify with any particular faith tradition. However, the so-called “Nones” have been shown in both studies to be moving not so much from belief to unbelief, as from institutionalized expressions of faith in community to all kinds of “something else.” The “something else-ness,” if you will, of American faith practice is likewise tracked in a rec…

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Wesolowski Sexual Abuse Case a New Approach or Same Old Same Old?

…theo-politically—perhaps just a good party host. I suspect he was like any number of career Vatican diplomats whose suave ways get them these cushy assignments but whose accountability to the larger church is nil. Hey, afternoons free for drinks and a little action, I bet there’s no trouble finding applicants for these jobs. Second, who pays for this kind of busy work? This nuncio is reported to have had a “stately residence and access to a beach…

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Why Religious Exemptions Matter

…ations, it clearly looks like the administration is trying to maximize the number of women who have coverage. Women who work for religious employers, such as universities and hospitals, that have a separate tax-exempt existence from a church, will have access to contraception coverage separately from their employer’s plan. But Catholics for Choice is raising a broader, long-term question: under what circumstances should religious exemptions be gra…

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Elephant Orphans and Ecological Spiritualities: An Earth Day Reflection

…ysteries of these creatures. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. A large number of the “spiritual but not religious” crowd in the West are self-proclaimed ecologists or naturalists. A large number of atheists and agnostics are deeply passionate about ecological ethics, or how we might be more “in tune” with nature. Culturally, they become fascinated in the personalities of cats and cat videos, the companionship of dogs who offer a kind of faithf…

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Atheists Ignore Islamophobia at their Peril

…criticism can easily devolve into unthinking prejudice. I can think of any number of examples from atheist conferences I’ve attended, such as the time I watched with dismay as attendees shouted “show us some ankle” at women wearing burkas for a satirical musical performance, or when a group of fundamentalist Muslim protesters was encircled by a crowd of hundreds of atheist conference attendees shouting things like “go back to the Middle East, you…

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It’s Not About Cake: Anti-Gay Vendors Want a Constitutional Right to Discriminate

…e-providers like bakeries and florists, dress-shops, hair salons, and “any number” of other businesses could claim that their services are in fact a form of constitutionally protected artistic practice. “The claim at issue here sounds as if the business can put up a sign in its window that says, ‘We sell cakes for heterosexuals only,’” Melling explained, taking ADF’s logic to its natural conclusion. “There’s an immediate consequence of that, and t…

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Why the Church is Struggling to Hold Onto Millennial Catholics

…be able to recruit enough young Catholics to counterbalance the increasing number of Nones, however, is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the more young Catholics start to embrace marriage equality, safe and legal abortion, access to contraception, and the liberal side on many other issues in the culture wars, the more of those same Catholics will also drift away from a church they perceive as incapable of change. Perhaps they’ll attend mas…

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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

…priests have even come out in support of it… Paradoxically, the high poll numbers are making Yes campaigners even more nervous. Irish voters have a history of abandoning proposed constitutional changes in the final days of the campaign. And the shadow of California’s Proposition 8 — when voters rejected marriage equality in the state in 2008 after a win seemed likely — looms large… Until recently, the leaders of Ireland’s Catholic Church had done…

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