- Hey Preacher, Leave those kids alone.
This week, the final phase of the atheist bus campaign will appear in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – not on buses, but on billboards.

"Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a 'Marxist child' or an 'Anarchist child' or a 'Post-modernist child'. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. Guardian

Julia Duin | Baltimore | Nov 16

Washington Times - Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, defended the bishops' involvement in national health care legislation Monday, saying the church must be "leaven" in the debate.

Speaking at the opening of the bishops' annual business meeting, "to limit our teaching or governing to what the state is not interested in would be to betray both the constitution of our country and, much more importantly, the Lord himself," he said.

Not only did USCCB staff and individual bishops play a vital role in getting abortion restrictions into the recently passed House version of the health care overhaul bill, they served notice Monday they will influence the bill's future.

Everything in Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s sprawling religious enterprise is about family.

His Divine Principle, the core of his religious teachings, posits that Rev. Moon and his wife Hak Ja Han Moon are humanity’s True Parents. They were placed on earth by God to rescue humanity from war and want by creating exemplary families that will through behavior and example show the way to world peace and unification. Rev. Moon claims that Jesus did not succeed in his mission to save humanity, because he did not marry. Jesus has therefore anointed Rev. Sun Myung Moon as the true Messiah. In the heavenly realm, Rev. Moon asserts that evil men like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin have repented and have now declared Rev. Moon as the true Messiah. Rev. Moon’s Unification Church’s proper name is the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

Mr. Moon and his wife have 14 children. As you may expect, they are described on the Unification Church website as having raised exemplary families. They are accomplished religious leaders (many of them are referred to as “reverend”), business executives, community organizers, artists, and of course, peace advocates – though no mention is made of Moon Young-jin, who died of suicide in 1999.

Naturally, with so many talented children, many of them have found their way into employment in the family business. In fact, all the critical management positions in the Moon conglomerate are held by his children – an arrangement as nepotistic as it could possibly be, though conceivably justifiable since the companies are privately owned by Moon.

More after the jump.

Johann Hari writes:

Independent.co.uk - Ever since I started meeting jihadis, I have been struck by one thing – their Britishness. I am from the East End of London, and at some point in the past decade I became used to hearing a hoarse and angry whisper of jihadism on the streets where I live. Bearded young men stand outside the library calling for "The Rule of God" and "Death to Democracy".

Zenit - FACEBOOK, WIKIPEDIA AND YOUTUBE IN THE VATICAN

Nov 13 | Rome | Jesús Colina
There are not a few voices in the Church calling for the message of the Gospel to make better use of the Internet -- Benedict XVI's is among them.

And yet, when representatives of some of the most successful Internet initiatives met in Rome today with the European bishops' Commission for the Media, a great difference in mentality became obvious, even if there was also evidence of a genuine desire for mutual understanding.

The chamber of the former hall of the synod of bishops -- which the producers of "Angels and Demons" rented for millions of euros -- witnessed two views of reality: On one hand, an institution, the Church, founded for 2,000 years on the proclamation of Truth; and on the other, exponents of successful business initiatives, which arose a few years ago, based on giving everyone the chance to express "his own truth."

Lance Mannion writes and I suggest we all read it. Damn fine post.

Columbia, SC | November 11

BBC - A US judge has ordered South Carolina not to issue a vehicle number plate with a Christian image and slogan.

The state legislature had approved a licence plate with a cross in front of a stained glass window and the words "I Believe" written along the top.

After a European court rules against crucifixes in Italian schoolrooms, Italians from across the political spectrum decry an assault on the country's Roman Catholic identity.

Christian Science Monitor, By Nick Squires, November 3

Rome - Italians reacted with outrage on Tuesday after a European court ruled that displaying crucifixes in the country's schools violated the principle of secular education.

Italy's education minister condemned the judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, saying that the Christian cross was a symbol of the country's Roman Catholic religion and cultural identity.

Nick Pisa | Nov 4

DailyMail UK - Catholic convert Tony Blair is among several world leaders being invited to attend a top level summit with Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the role of the Church in politics.

The two-day summit will be held at the Vatican and will include other Catholic politicians from all over the world, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. vice president Joe Biden, former Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Church officials have been quietly working on the conference, which will be called 'Witnesses of Christ in the Political Community', for several months.

Marina Hyde | The Guardian

While Hubbard's cult gets ever more exposed, it's a shame other religions are not forced to justify their own doctrinal lunacies

Draw near, infidels, for these are dark days for the Knights of Hubbard. Do not despair entirely – the Church of Scientology remains insanely rich, has excellent and rapacious lawyers, and according to the International Scientology News, "every minute of every hour, someone reaches for L Ron Hubbard technology … simply because they know Tom Cruise is a Scientologist". So unless the world's supply of troubled fools is melting away quicker than the Arctic ice cap, they can probably hold off trying to lure disaffected Kabbalists into their cultish communion, after the fashion of Pope Benedict and the Anglicans. And yet, all things considered, it has not been the best of weeks for our operating thetans.

In France, Scientology was found guilty of defrauding its followers after a judge effectively debunked the idea of the church's trusty e-meter, a crude polygraph whose readings are used to encourage Scientologists to purchase everything from books to extreme sauna courses. In Los Angeles, the Oscar-winning (even if it was only for the abysmal Crash) director Paul Haggis cut his ties with Scientology in protest at what he branded their tolerance of homophobia, adding for good measure that the church's claim that they do not tell people to "disconnect" from unsupportive family members was untrue – his own wife had been ordered to do so. Meanwhile, Scientology's chief spokesman Tommy Davis stormed out of a television interview with Martin Bashir, after the latter pressed him on what we might delicately term "certain articles of faith". The alien stuff, basically.

What has caused these synchronous events? Naturally, one's initial assumption is that the everlasting battery which provides the force field which holds the intergalactic tyrant Xenu captive in an unspecified mountain here on Earth is not as everlasting as billed, or was perhaps commandeered when the battery went in some vast cosmic remote control. In humanoid households, of course, a TV remote is the appliance for which all other batteries must be yielded up – including those in the smoke alarm – and the same hierarchy holds true on a galactic scale.

Graham Keeley & Richard Owen | Madrid / Rome | October 31

The Times - When Victoria Romero, 6, dressed up as a witch for a Hallowe’en party this week she could hardly have imagined that she was provoking the wrath of God by attending a celebration akin to a Black Mass — at least in the eyes of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain.

Wearing skeleton suits, dressing up as vampires, witches or goblins or slapping on fake blood is not far removed from communing with the Devil, according to the country’s bishops.

However, the bishops, with Vatican backing, have reserved their venom for the millions of parents who allowed their children to celebrate this “pagan” festival.

Whatever else you might say about Yale Political Philosophy lecturer Jim Sleeper, you have to admit he makes you think. I have yet to read an article, jeremiad, or opinion piece penned by Sleeper that did not contain some shimmering jewel of erudition that made me desire, deeply, that I could spend the rest of my mortal days perusing volumes of Thomas Aquinas, Cotton Mather, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Why dawdle, a liberal reader might wonder, with religious traditions that weren’t friendly to republicanism even when they were gestating it and that are now completely alien to the republican tradition?

One answer is that the republic is in trouble for reasons Puritans could have parsed with sophistication even though they bear some responsibility for its travails. They’d have understood that liberalism depends on virtues and beliefs which the liberal state and “free” markets themselves cannot nourish or defend. They’d have understood that, somehow, good liberal leaders have to be nourished and trained all the more intensively, in ways that harness collective responsibility and personal obligation for ever higher common purposes.

@ Hitchens recently down under

many of those who put their faith in revelation and prophecy and prayer are feeling the need to give an account of themselves. This is a wholly good development, and it is part of the pluralism and polycentrism that distinguish the sort of society that we have to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Guy Tridgell | Alsip, IL | Oct 25

southtownstar.com -
The Rev. Dan Willis is passing the collection plate in reverse. He will give you money to go to church.

For the last three weeks, his Lighthouse Church of All Nations in Alsip has raffled a combined $1,000 to attendees at the three Sunday services.

Big surprise, but attendance has shot through the chapel roof.

"It is gimmicky. It is totally gimmicky. I make no bones about that," Willis said. "But if I could get someone who would not normally come to church, why not?"

If the lure of free money has you breaking out the Sunday best, be prepared for some testimony from the preacher on how to spend that money.

You will hear of the glory of paying down debt, the revelation that comes with living on a budget and the miracle of compound interest.

For Willis, the cash is a mere carrot to get you through the doors. By sowing the seeds of the responsible personal finance, he hopes to create a few converts.

"I was worried how people were going to respond," Willis said. "I thought they might be, 'Oh, yeah, a classic preacher.'

"We've been blown away by the response. (read the rest)

Rachel Donadio & Laurie Goodstein | Vatican City | OCtober 20

NYT - In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse, the Vatican on Tuesday announced that it would make it easier for Anglicans who are uncomfortable with their church’s acceptance of women priests and openly gay bishops to join the Roman Catholic Church.

A new canonical entity will allow groups of Anglicans “to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” Cardinal William Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference here.

Nobel laureate Jose Saramago:

The Bible is a manual of bad morals (which) has a powerful influence on our culture and even our way of life. Without the Bible we would be different, and probably better people

at the at the launch of his new book Cain - an ironic retelling of the Bible story of Cain, Adam and Eve's elder son who kills his brother Abel. AP

A friend told me a couple of days ago that she avoids political blogs because most of them are less about dialogue than about spitfire opinion. She is right, of course; most political blogs are online opinion columns. Of those I read, my favorites are those where the writers think hard about issues and where readers and commenters do as well, whether there is agreement or not.

I think my own trajectory about discourse has moved, over the past 10 years or so, more and more toward trying to muster the energy of people of good will toward the pursuit of progressive (generally leftward) social change and away from the notion of more purely even-handed exchange, which is where I think I was when my first book, the original Race Manners, came out in 1999. I guess, like a lot of civil rights and racial justice advocates, I reached a point where I felt my energy was better used in service of those ready to carry out actual social change than in trying to pull in those who are invested in resisting it. To be blunt about it, I think history gives us pretty vivid evidence (abolitionism, women's suffrage, black and gay civil rights) that there is generally a majority that stands around watching while a committed minority doggedly pursues change until it is achieved.

Anyway, just after I had this conversation about blogs and discourse, I received a note from my friend Rob Levy pointing me toward an October 15 manifesto by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, a fiercely liberal church reformer and author of, among other works, Why Christianity Must Change or Die.

Duke Helfand | Porter Ranch, CA | October 11

LAT - The state has more megachurches than anywhere else in the country, with the majority in the suburbs between Los Angeles and San Diego. Their upbeat approach is luring thousands each weekend.

Once again, the Sunday faithful have packed the cavernous sanctuary at Shepherd of the Hills Church in the San Fernando Valley, clapping and swaying for Jesus as a band rocks the hall.

"Come bless the Lord," the worshipers sing. "Praise his name to the ends of the Earth."

Most churches would be thrilled to fill their sanctuaries any day of the year.

Peter Griffiths | London | October 9

Reuters - The Church of England could restrict the powers of some women bishops under a plan designed to end a rift between traditionalists who want to keep the all-male senior clergy, and liberals demanding equality.

The proposal has reignited the long-running debate over a supposed ecclesiastical "stained-glass ceiling" that stops women from attaining the most senior roles in the church.

Oct 9

BBC -

Switzerland's biggest city, Zurich, has allowed the use of a controversial poster which urges a ban on the building of minarets in the country.

The poster shows a woman dressed in a burka in front of black minarets standing on a Swiss flag.

But Zurich city council said campaign posters were protected by free speech.

The advert is being used by the far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP) ahead of next month's referendum on whether to ban the building of new minarets.

The Swiss Federal Commission Against Racism said earlier this week that the poster was "tantamount to the denigration and defamation of the peaceful Swiss Muslim population".

Some media reports have said the minarets resemble missiles.

Zurich city council said on Thursday that although it disapproved of the "negative and dangerous" poster, it had to be accepted as part of political free speech ahead of the 29 November national referendum.

Peter Beaumont | October 8

The Guardian - Islam may be most closely associated with the Middle East, where it emerged in Arabia in the seventh century, but today the region is home to only one in five of the world's Muslims, according to a study of the religion's global distribution.

The world's Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly one in four people practice Islam, according to the US Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which published the survey. This compares to 2.25 billion Christians.

The top five Muslim countries in the world include only one in the Middle East ‑ Egypt ‑ behind Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, in that order. Russia, the survey shows, has more Muslims than the populations of Libya and Jordan combined. Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon. China has a bigger Muslim population than Syria.

The Bible 2.0, now with more smiting! ~ FDL

and

Fighting the 'contraceptive mentality'/ The Quiverfulls

Yano, they are really starting to make the Taliban look moderate ;)

Philip Pullella | Rome | Oct 5

Reuters - An archive negative image of the Shroud of Turin (L) is shown next to one recreated by an Italian scientist and released in Pavia October 5, 2009.

An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.

The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ.

"We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.

A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.

The Shroud of Turin shows the back and front of a bearded man with long hair, his arms crossed on his chest, while the entire cloth is marked by what appears to be rivulets of blood from wounds in the wrists, feet and side.

Carbon dating tests by laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona in 1988 caused a sensation by dating it from between 1260 and 1390. Sceptics said it was a hoax, possibly made to attract the profitable medieval pilgrimage business.

But scientists have thus far been at a loss to explain how the image was left on the cloth.

Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.

Riazat Butt & Anushka Asthana | Sept 29

The Guardian - The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was "busy cleaning its own house" and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger.

In a defiant and provocative statement, issued following a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the Holy See said the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not paedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males.

Alexei Barrionuevo | São Paolo | September 14

NYT - The atmosphere was electric at Reborn in Christ Church on “Extreme Fight” night. Churchgoers dressed in jeans and sneakers, many with ball caps turned backward, lined a makeshift boxing ring to cheer on bare-chested jujitsu fighters.

They screamed when a fan favorite, Fabio Buca, outlasted his opponent after several minutes. They went wild when Pastor Dogão Meira, 26, took his man down, pinning him with an armlock just 10 seconds into the fight.