Someone told me that they were in town. They were protesting at the Twitter HQ. Glad to see the Bay Area respond with an “in kind” protest.  Apparently they were going to protest in front of the theater where Fiddler on the Roof was being performed. Sometimes I wish I could get inside their twisted theology, but I’d rather not go there. Laughing Squid posted the details:

Westboro Baptist Church showed up to protest in front of Twitter’s San Francisco office on Thursday, but found themselves severely outnumbered by a crowd of absurdist pranksters, including guest blogger EDW Lynch above.

Ha! That grabbed your attention. What I’m excited about is how well the PHIL 500 Death, Dying, and Immortality class is going.  (Sorry, non-SFSUers, it’s only available for those enrolled.) Read the rest of this entry

Well, I’d rather have them do this than be guilty of the intense Christian proselytizing they were doing.

Time to get those Sun Salutations going kids!

In case you need to see it with your own eyes. I probably should spend a moment figuring out why this surprised me. I’d feel the same way if I saw Sharpton and the Pope.

There is more to Sharpton that his political showboating and hyberbole.  Sharpton has used his position as a religious leader to worthy ends. It may be the lack of action on social justice issues, or at least the perceived lack of action, on the part of these particular heads of Christendom, that is somehow unsettling.

I met Archbishop Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at one of the annual religion conferences held at the Claremont Graduate University through the School of Religion. I believe it was DZ Phillips‘ first or second year holding the Danforth Chair of Religion. Haven’t met the Pope. Yet.

I don’t know if I could possibly listen to this and focus on the text. Denzel Washington’s version was done in 2006. Haven’t listened to that either. And then there’s the classic with “himself“. Maybe I’m just a stickler for reading the text without help from famous actors.

Over at Religion Dispatches, there’s an assessment of the current trial and the absence of “religion” by Candace Chellew-Hodge. Nancy Cott, a Harvard University historian, dismissed the notion that marriage should be reserved for procreation. When Cott was cross-examined, “Jesus” makes an appearance. What follows is a summary of what transpired in court. The summary is on the local Silicon Valley newspaper, the Mercury News. See the heading, “11:02 a.m.: Witness appears impatient with cross-examination”.

Thompson is challenging one of Cott’s ideas that modern marriage laws are shaped now by civil law and social developments; the defense attorney is pushing hard on the anti-gay marriage thesis that heterosexual marriage is tied to history and religion restricting unions to men and women. He repeatedly suggested in his questions that marriage laws are tied to Christianity. At one point, asking Cott about monogamy being the result of the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, the professor got a little impatient. “I know very little about Jesus Christ and his apostles,” Cott shot back at Thompson.

How this tension will work itself out is a mystery. The Anglican communion is “this” close to schism because of a fundamental difference on the issue of homosexuality. Evangelical churches are going through their own convulsions on the issue, too. I found this article on MSNBC:

But with younger evangelicals and broader society showing greater acceptance of homosexuality, many evangelical churches can expect, at the least, a deeper exploration of the issue.”Highlands Church represents a breakout position, where you have a gay-affirming stance that moves beyond the traditional kind of liberal-conservative divide,” said Mark Achtemeier, an associate professor at University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). “I’m finding lots of moderate conservatives just think there’s something wrong with a default position of excluding gays from the life of the church.”

I brought up the topic of social justice and gay marriage in my PHIL 101  Intro to Philosophy class. Would King, for instance, think the different treatment of same-sex couples would be similar to a segregationist discrimination? I think on the civil front things are much fuzzier than on the religious front. And by that I mean only that the “battle lines”, if I can put it that way, are very clearly drawn, in many adherents’ views, and on both sides of the issue, on scriptural grounds.

CNN has a segment on the faith of Haitian parishioners at a Georgia church and Haitians in general.

I found this article on Copyblogger.com some time ago. It’s by Jonathan Morrow. It caught my attention because of the “dying” keyword. As some of you know, the theme of this semester’s PHIL 500 Philosophy of Religion class is Death and Immortality. I’m very excited about it. And, yes, apprehensive, too. But such is life. One of my students, Daigan Gaither, a Zen monk, will be a co-facilitator. I say “facilitator” because I have a feeling we’re going to be doing mostly that.

It’s difficult to say that I hope you “enjoy” the article. So I’ll just say that I hope it inspires you.