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WASHINGTON (ABP) — Thanks to the Internet, some gullible American Christians can engage in one of their favorite hobbies — digging up the metaphorical corpse of Madalyn Murray O’Hair and rhetorically flogging it — more easily than ever before. Even though the famous atheist’s body was discovered in 1998 and positively identified in Texas — and even though she apparently has been dead since she disappeared in 1995 — patently false rumors about her alleged anti-Christian campaigns continue to spread. Credulous Christians who once forwarded these kinds of rumors in mimeographed chain letters or spread them on talk radio now…
NEW YORK — Bruce Feiler just says it flat-out: "Moses is bigger than Jesus."In U.S. political and cultural history, he says, the Bible’s reluctant prophet, who leads his people out of Egyptian slavery to the promised land, outranks even Jesus.
Religious observance is increasing worldwide and irreligious Europe, not America, is the exception.
Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners and a leading evangelical voice on the religious left, told an overflow crowd on the University of Wisconsin campus that the best kind of inter-religious dialogue occurs in the midst of action that addresses problem issues. "Act together and talk while you’re acting," he said.
NEWS RELEASEIn the year since the national economy faltered, 22,095 Dane County households struggling with poverty received food through the customer-choice pantry the Society of St. Vincent de Paul operates in Madison. That number – for the charity’s fiscal year that ended in September – is a 9.2 percent increase over the prior year’s figure and replaces it as an annual record for service provided by Dane County’s largest and busiest food pantry. Also an annual record is the $1.28 million in food the pantry distributed in the last year.
COMMENTARYAfter being knocked halfway to kingdom come, Tim Tebow knew that millions of college football fans would be paying close attention to his eyes the next time he led the Florida Gators into action.Viewers would be looking for signs that the quarterback was OK after a nasty concussion. Many would also want to see which Bible reference would be written in the patches of eye black that would be visible whenever television cameras focused on the face of America’s most famous muscular Christian.
WASHINGTON — The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural history will open a new permanent exhibit on to the "discovery and understanding of human origins" next March and convene a panel of experts to bridge the gap between religion and science.With input from more than 50 scientific and educational organizations and 70 distinguished scientists and educators, the museum launched a Broader Social Impacts Committee to address the interaction between religion and science.
In our better moments, we recall with the apostle Paul that it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that reaches the world. But we often find ourselves thinking the theology of one character in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, who said, "If you want to get anywheres in religion, you got to keep it sweet."There are various ways that we "keep it sweet"—that is, try to make the gospel inviting to as many as possible. The results have been mixed.
A new so-called “Twitter Bible,” which summarizes the over 31,000-verse Bible into nearly 4,000 short-form tweets, is being released at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. Formally named And God Decided to Chill, the German language book is the compilation of tweets by more than 3,000 German Christians who participated in the church project earlier this year. In honor of the Pentecost holiday, German Christians used the micro-blogging service Twitter to summarize 3,906 Bible sections into 140 character messages.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is long gone; Rick Warren, just an Inauguration Day memory. The hordes of ministers around town who were hoping they’d somehow wind up with the first family in their pews have (mostly) given up. The president has been pastorless for quite a while now. Well, sort of. Seventy miles from Washington’s prying eyes, Barack Obama has been attending church from time to time at Camp David, where services are led by a 39-year-old Navy chaplain with a famous last name, a compelling life story and a fervent belief in a God who works miracles.