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Monthly Archives: December 2009
The closet Christian
I grapple with this every semester. Should I or shouldn’t I? Some semesters I announce to my religion classes that I’m a “thinking theist”. I’m not ashamed of being a person of faith, but I realize that I take the … Continue reading
Posted in Religion Blog, Religious Belief
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Forgiveness and prayer
New study on prayer and forgiveness. Here are the experiments: The new study, published in the journal Psychological Science, draws data from 119 people over two experiments. In the first, participants assigned to say a single prayer for their romantic … Continue reading
Posted in Prayer, Religion Blog
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Don’t bank on them
Churches defaulting on their mortgages. Mortgages on houses of worship once seemed like safe bets for lenders, but with parishioners tithing less and less in these tough times, many churches are now struggling to stay current on loan payments. I … Continue reading
Minarets of Marseille
This in contrast to the recent Swiss ban on building any new minarets: The minaret of the new Grand Mosque of Marseille, whose cornerstone will be laid here in April, will be silent — no muezzin, live or recorded, will … Continue reading
Posted in Church and State, Islam, PHIL 525, Politics, Religion Blog, Religious Pluarlism
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Asking a doctor for prayer
When do doctors or other medical professionals enter into prayer with their patients? In a study published in a recent issue of the Souther Medical Journal sociologists from Brandeis and Rice Universities examined patient requests for prayer. The researchers conducted … Continue reading
Posted in Death and Immortality, PHIL 500, Prayer, Religion Blog
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Prisons and religious freedom
Huh? The warden allegedly turned inmates away from church services for punitive reasons, such as their hair being too long. The warden at Virginia’s largest women’s prison is retiring amid allegations the prison discriminated against gay inmates and denied others … Continue reading
Religion and the impulse for ritual
This article from ABC News, discusses the findings of Oxford anthropoligist Harvey Whitehouse’s study of religion. He was drawn to a puzzle when comparing different religious rituals. On the one hand there are the extreme cases such as sacred fire … Continue reading
Posted in Religion Blog, Rituals
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St. Elijah’s in Iraq
[Photo: Eros Hoagland for The New York Times] From the NY Times, a wonderful photo-documentary on the rebuilding of a Christian monastery in Iraq, St. Elijah’s. I hope that when the dust settles and the bullets stop (or mostly stop), Iraq … Continue reading
Homeless spend Christmas at Temple
From the NY Times: Newly homeless families will bunk here for two weeks before moving to another house of worship — and then another and another…. In the Oneg Shabbat room at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, children hooked angels on … Continue reading
Doubting and religious belief
This is a topic that interests me a great deal. There was a thread on Andrew Sullivan’s blog that I found intriguing. It was prompted by Pope Benedict’s recension of the prior excommunication of a schismatic bishop. (More posts on … Continue reading
Posted in Churches, Faith versus Reason, Holocaust, Religion Blog, Religious Belief, World War II
Tagged Andrew Sullivan
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