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Religion & Politics (Religion)

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  • Islam: Banned for Blasphemy?

    02/16/2015 7:31:51 AM PST · by Albion Wilde · 19 replies
    FrontPage Magazine ^ | February 16, 2015 | Raymond Ibrahim
    Soon after Muslim gunmen killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo offices..., the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)—the... second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations—is again renewing calls for the United Nations to criminalize “blasphemy” against Islam, or what it more ecumenically calls, the “defamation of religions.” Yet the OIC seems to miss one grand irony: if international laws would ban cartoons, books, and films on the basis that they defame Islam, they would also, by logical extension, have to ban the entire religion of Islam itself—the only religion whose core texts actively and unequivocally defame other religions, including by...
  • Once Fiery Coral Ridge Sermons Hit New Low Key

    02/15/2015 10:56:42 PM PST · by Maudeen · 14 replies
    World Net Daily ^ | February 15, 2015 | John Aman
    D. James Kennedy successor keeps quiet on public moral concerns. . . When D. James Kennedy was preaching at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church – the fastest growing Presbyterian church in the nation for much of his tenure – his sermons and comments to media sometimes sparked fireworks. One time he said: “We hear today that this is a pluralistic nation and that it is not a Christian nation. But Christianity itself, general Christianity, was conceived as the support of all our government.” Kennedy, who died in 2007 after 47 years of ministry at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, church, preached that...
  • Muslim lives matter

    02/15/2015 9:34:41 PM PST · by 2ndDivisionVet · 45 replies
    The Eastern Echo ^ | February 15, 2015 | Mona Beydoun
    Eastern Michigan University students taped their mouths shut in a silent protest Thursday. The students wrote #ChapelHillShooting across the tape in honor of the deaths of three students from the University of North Carolina. Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were Muslim-American students at the University of North Carolina. They were shot Tuesday, Feb. 10, by their neighbor, Craig Steven Hicks, 46. The Chapel Hill police released a statement Tuesday evening citing a parking dispute as Hicks’s motivation. EMU Junior Layali Alsada and senior Zaeem Zafar created a flyer...
  • Shirley MacLaine Says Holocaust Victims Maybe Deserved It for Sins of Past Lives

    02/15/2015 2:35:20 PM PST · by NYer · 82 replies
    Creative Minority Report ^ | February 13, 2015 | MATTHEW ARCHBOLD
    “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” Daily Mail:The veteran Hollywood actress suggests the six million Jews and millions of others systematically murdered in Hitler’s death camps in the 1940s were ‘balancing their karma’ for crimes committed in past lives. She also suggests that cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking may have subconsciously given himself his debilitating motor neurone disease. Really, Shirley? Actress Shirley MacLaine has been denounced by Jewish campaigners and other activists after suggesting that the millions of victims of Nazi death camps may...
  • Did Jesus’ Apostles Get What They Expected?

    02/15/2015 6:40:00 AM PST · by CharlesOConnell · 7 replies
    Sacra Pizza Man blog ^ | 2/15/2015 | Sacra Pizza Man
     How Did James & John Envision Jesus' Kingdom?  They Asked to Sit at His Right & Left Hand; the Other Ten Were Indignant.  What Was This Kingdom They Thought They Would Rule?  What Eventually Became of Them All?  The Apostles Believed that Jesus Would Restore the Kingdom of David, Which Was at Its Greatest Extent and Stability in the Time of his son Solomon.  But Jesus's Apostles Spread His Kingdom Worldwide, Far Beyond the Greatest Extent of Israel's Empire.  The Apostles Never Could Have Imagined Their Eventual Fates.  The Apostles "Get Down to Business", Trying to Establish the Pecking Order...
  • Islamic State announces killing of 21 kidnapped Egyptian Christians

    02/14/2015 3:49:56 PM PST · by NYer · 26 replies
    Catholic Culture ^ | February 13, 2015 | Diogenes
    The Islamic State has announced the killing of 21 Eyptian Christians who were abducted from Libya early in January. A report issued on the internet by the Islamic State said that the Coptic Christians were killed in “revenge for the Muslim women persecuted by Coptic crusaders in Egypt.” The reference was evidently to an incident in which two Egyptian women married to Copts were allegedly pressured to repudiate Islam. The Egyptian government has not confirmed the deaths of the 21 kidnapping victims, but fears that the internet report is accurate. Additional sources for this storySome links will take you to...
  • Exemption from HHS Mandate Reversed for Christian College, Catholic Dioceses

    02/14/2015 10:53:40 AM PST · by marshmallow · 6 replies
    Cardinal Newman Society ^ | 2/13/15 | CNS Staff
    A Christian college and two Catholic dioceses in western Pennsylvania are again under the yoke of the HHS mandate as a federal court reversed the injunctions previously granted to the institutions by lower courts. Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pa., the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Diocese of Erie, and several Catholic charities under the dioceses had all been granted injunctions from the HHS mandate. But on Wednesday, a panel of judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit unanimously ruled to reverse the exemptions. Judge Marjorie Rendell noted in her opinion that the institutions can take advantage...
  • Papacy built on pious fiction and forgery, part 1

    02/13/2015 5:56:00 PM PST · by RnMomof7 · 124 replies
    Beggars All ^ | May 26, 2010 | John Bugay
    Papacy built on pious fiction and forgery, part 1 J. Gresham Machen said, in his 1915 lecture "History and Faith," that "The student of the New Testament should be primarily an historian." And in fact, thanks to the last few centuries' worth of historical criticism, and a couple of “historical Jesus” quests, both the life of Jesus and the history of the New Testament have undergone a thorough historical examination, and in the process, have only had their historical reliability enhanced. On the other hand, what we've been told about the early papacy has fallen away like chaff. Instead...
  • Jared to the Left: Muslim Intolerance and the rise of the Christian Right

    02/13/2015 4:29:33 PM PST · by 2ndDivisionVet · 33 replies
    The CU Independent ^ | February 13, 2015 | Jared Conner
    The recent attack on a French satirical magazine renewed Americans’ pass to keep talking seriously about Islam as a threat. In America’s arena of religious intolerance, Muslims are the easiest targets imaginable. So easy, in fact, that another religious movement can chime in on the bigotry of such attacks while keeping a straight face. In light of the political gains being made by the Christian Right, it’s clear that the religious fanatics who should be stopped can less often be found in a mosque than in Congress. The movement does not deserve our tolerance. It’s fascinated by violence, ferociously intolerant...
  • As church-goers wane, Germany's controversial tax prompts unease

    02/13/2015 2:50:14 PM PST · by NYer · 10 replies
    cna ^ | February 12, 2014 | Jan Bentz
    Credit: fsecart via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). Rome, Italy, Feb 12, 2015 / 04:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- While church attendees dwindle in Germany, questions have arisen once again over the controversial state-imposed church tax – and whether it's time for the country's bishops to address concerns around it. “We are in a time when more and more people realize that the financial apparatus Church works well, that the facade is optimal but what is behind it? Where is the true faith?” asked Martin Lohmann, Catholic publicist, author and spokesperson of the advocacy group Christian Action in Germany. “While we have...
  • A Trap Set for Catholic Conservatives

    02/13/2015 4:18:44 AM PST · by NYer · 23 replies
    Crisis Magazine ^ | February 13, 2015 | AUSTIN RUSE
    Influential Catholics—many of them supporters of Barack Obama—are advancing a proposition that may have the result of sullying the reputations of Catholic conservatives and those Catholics arguing for a robust market economy.They couch their arguments in Catholic Social Teaching; the common good, political community, love for the poor, subsidiarity. They compare this over against libertarianism; a radical individualism where each man sets and makes his own course that—damn all the rest—leads to his flourishing unless the heavy hand of the state interrupts it. Above all—to radical individualists—the State is the Enemy. Except some of what these people call libertarianism,...
  • S.F. Archbishop's Imposition Of Morality Clause At Schools Outrages Many

    02/12/2015 10:14:55 PM PST · by Steelfish · 20 replies
    LA Times ^ | February 12, 2015 | LEE ROMNEY
    S.F. Archbishop's Imposition Of Morality Clause At Schools Outrages Many By LEE ROMNEY San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone sparked a protest last summer when he ignored pleas from public officials to cancel his plans to march in Washington, D.C., against same-sex marriage. Now Cordileone has prompted fresh outrage in the liberal Bay Area by imposing morality clauses on teachers, staff and administrators at the four high schools under his control in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties. A newly released handbook asks the nearly 500 school employees to "affirm and believe" that "adultery, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of...
  • In Defense of Pius XII

    02/12/2015 6:19:47 PM PST · by NKP_Vet · 28 replies
    http://the-american-catholic.com ^ | February 11, 2015 | Donald R. McClarey
    The guy whose behavior during the Nazi occupation converted the chief rabbi of Rome to Catholicism was working with the Nazis? The guy who was supposedly so silent and passive, at best, did enough that EWTN found a dozen paged of quotes from contemporary Jewish sources that were favorable to his behavior? A Pope who is defended from such accusations by a Jewish historian (formerly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America) who not only debunks the claims, but describes Pius XII as the greatest friend to Jews of the 20th century? The man who, at his death, got this...
  • NLRB Makes Inroads at Catholic Colleges

    02/12/2015 2:32:12 PM PST · by NYer · 6 replies
    Catholic World Report ^ | February 12, 2015 | Anne Hendershott
    The federal government is stepping into the void of decades of inattentiveness to religious identity at several Catholic colleges. The chapel at St. Mary's College of California in Moraga is seen in a 2009 photo. (CNS photo/courtesy St. Mary's College of California) While many Catholics have been concerned for decades about professors at Catholic colleges denying core Church teachings on theological issues, as well as about disputes over women’s ordination, same-sex marriage, and abortion on Catholic campuses, few Catholic college leaders have been willing to enforce the requirements of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which mandates that Catholic college faculty teach in...
  • Body Could be Exhumed After Relatives of Muslim Buried Alongside Complain He Was an Unbeliever

    02/11/2015 6:52:17 PM PST · by marshmallow · 48 replies
    The Daily Telegraph (UK) ^ | 2/10/15 | Gregory Walton
    Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, could be dragged into a messy legal battle after a Muslim family demanded that a “non-believer” who was buried next to their relation be exhumed for religious reasons. The unnamed Muslim family raised objections after an 89-year-old Roman Catholic man was buried in a plot adjacent to their relation. Shadrack Smith was buried in the multi-denominational Lychgate Lane Cemetery in Burbage, Leicestershire, following his funeral on Jan 30. Mr Smith had lived in an official gipsy camp in nearby Aston Firs for more than 20 years, and in excess of 400 relations and friends attended...
  • Cruz: 'Mitt Romney Didn't Show Up on Broadway Trying to Blow Up' Book of Mormon

    02/11/2015 5:19:49 PM PST · by 2ndDivisionVet · 40 replies
    CNS News ^ | February 11, 2015 | Melanie Hunter
    At a “Defeat Jihad Summit” hosted by the Center for Security Policy, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) noted Wednesday that former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who is Mormon, did not travel to New York launch a terrorist attack on “The Book of Mormon."“Right now on Broadway, a play is showing, the Book of Mormon, that is ridiculing and making fun of the Mormon faith," said Cruz. "Last I checked, Mitt Romney didn’t show up on Broadway trying to blow up the stage." (VIDEO-AT-LINK)"It is not a permissible response for anyone of any faith to say if you disagree with or...
  • FAMOUS COMMUNISTS AND ISLAM

    02/11/2015 3:06:34 PM PST · by NYer · 12 replies
    First Things ^ | February 11, 2015 | Stephen Schwartz
    For some time, an argument has been made that the liberal left, in refusing to examine the problems of Islam, has betrayed its Enlightenment roots. That is, while secular, feminist, and protective of free speech in dealing with its Western peers, the liberal left has been accused of abandoning its heritage in its quest for political correctness regarding Muslims. In truth, however, the left has a distinguished background of courting Islam as a weapon against Western capitalism. Its most representative figures from the past did so frankly, as the following rehearsal of their statements demonstrates. Karl Marx supported the Ottoman...
  • Sermon from Ellin Jimmerson: 'Joe Arpiao should lose his job'

    02/11/2015 11:50:43 AM PST · by VaeVictis · 15 replies
    Weatherly Heights Baptist Church ^ | July 6, 2014 | Dr. Ellin Jimmerson
    This sermon is titled "What really happen in the Garden of Eden". This is from the female pastor that is conducting gay marriages in Alabama. She uses this sermon talk about the idea of shame and guilt. She states almost every racist slur that exists. Then she moves onto politics from page 4 an on. She compares the incidents at Abu-Ghraib to Joe Arpiao: "Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio forcing his male prisoners to wear pink underwear and swelter in tents. How does one recover from being treated that way? More to the point, isn't there something fundamentally wrong with Lynndie...
  • FReeper University: REL 013: Comparative Studies of the Koran (2:12 - 2:45)

    02/11/2015 6:05:39 AM PST · by ConservativeInPA · 10 replies
    February 11, 2015
    The last read verses deal with non-believers (hypocrites) and continues into today's verses. 'These', 'their', 'they' in the following verses refer to non-believers. 2:16. These are they who have purchased error for guidance, so their commerce was profitless. And they were not guided. 2:17. Their likeness is as the likeness of one who kindled a fire; then, when it lighted all around him, Allah took away their light and left them in darkness. (So) they could not see. 2:18. They are deaf, dumb, and blind, so they return not (to the Right Path). 2:19. Or like a rainstorm from the...
  • ......... Obama Administration Goes After Nuns’ TV Network with Abortion Drugs Mandate

    02/10/2015 3:24:57 PM PST · by Morgana · 9 replies
    bound4life.com ^ | February 10, 2015 | Guest Author
    FULL TITLE: On Losing Streak in Courts, Obama Administration Goes After Nuns’ TV Network with Abortion Drugs Mandate ATLANTA — In the latest federal court case impacting abortion policy, last Wednesday the voice of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) was finally heard as they presented oral arguments against the Obama Administration at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The face of the Obamacare juggernaut, HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, is set on enforcing the highly-contested contraceptive services provision, which mandates coverage of abortion-inducing drugs — despite the federal government racking up a series of recent Supreme Court losses on...