Posts made by ravena1

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday canceled legislation exempting Jewish religious seminary students from military service, angering ultra-Orthodox lawmakers who could destabilize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
A panel of nine justices ruled that parts of the conscription law that exempt seminary students from service were “unreasonable and unconstitutional”. It gave the government a year to resolve the matter.

source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/israel-supreme-court-rules-ultra-orthodox-shouldnt-be-exempt-from-military-service_us_59b93694e4b0edff97183b5f?section=us_religion

On Monday, The Satanic Temple delivered oral arguments in front of the Missouri State Court Western Appellate District in an effort to challenge the state’s abortion law.
The organization, which views Satan as a symbol of personal autonomy and promotes compassion and “rational inquiry,” is arguing that Missouri’s abortion restrictions — including its informed consent law and mandatory 72-hour waiting period before procedures — violated the religious beliefs of one of its members

source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/satanic-temple-missouri-abortion-law_us_59bacd6de4b02da0e1403c82?section=us_religion

A new poll in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, finds that while Americans widely say they oppose racism and white nationalism, many still appear to hold far-right, white supremacist views.The Ipsos poll, for Thomson Reuters and the University of Virginia Center for Politics, was conducted online from Aug. 21 to Sept. 5 ― in the weeks following the deadly white supremacist rally on the University of Virginia campus. It sampled around 5,360 American adults, asking questions about race that respondents could agree or disagree with to varying degrees.

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/reuters-poll-white-supremacist-views_us_59bc155fe4b02da0e141b3c8?section=us_religion

1966, just over 50 years ago, the distinguished Canadian-born anthropologist Anthony Wallace confidently predicted the global demise of religion at the hands of an advancing science: "Belief in supernatural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world, as a result of the increasing adequacy and diffusion of scientific knowledge." Wallace's vision was not exceptional. On the contrary, the modern social sciences, which took shape in 19th-century western Europe, took their own recent historical experience of secularization as a universal model. An assumption lay at the core of the social sciences, either presuming or sometimes predicting that all cultures would eventually converge on something roughly approximating secular, Western, liberal democracy. Then something closer to the opposite happened.

source:http://theweek.com/articles/723456/sorry-scientists-religion-here-stay

Mohammad Amin is one of the many people to afford a reception to the Rohingya refugees at Shah Porir Dwip. Instead of a red carpet and garlands, they all come bearing cucumbers, water, biscuits and small sums of cash.
“We are here to help. These people have suffered a lot and we are welcoming them to our country,” Amin, a member of Tablighi Jamaat, said.
He informed that they have had members from their group here since the very first day of the ongoing Rohingya influx from Myanmar. Many of them hail from Chittagong and Cox's Bazar. People in their neighbourhoods gave them whatever they could to help.

source:http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/mayanmar-rohingya-refugee-crisis-blurring-the-religious-divide-humanity-1462891

The story of religious freedom, a core concept of human rights and internationally recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, continues to be eliminated in Russia. The faith of 170,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses was declared illegal on April 20 by Russia’s Supreme Court. The group was labeled a “sect” and “extremist organization” as the justification for a complete ban.

source:http://www.worldreligionnews.com/religion-news/stunning-destruction-religious-rights-russia

t’s easy to capture a kid’s attention with cartoons about Noah and the Ark, Joshua’s laps around the walls of Jericho and other colorful stories from scripture.Phil Vischer ought to know. For millions of Americans under the age of 25, he is best known as Bob the Tomato and the brain behind the original VeggieTales videos. But over time, he realized that he faced a bigger challenge as a storyteller, one symbolized by the sign on his 1990s office wall that proclaimed: “We will not portray Jesus as a vegetable.”

source: https://www.heraldandnews.com/news/local_news/faith/on-religion-passing-on-a-faith-that-s-bigger-than/article_4062f46c-606b-5d39-8061-c6707b243138.html

A set of politicians supporting the call for a separate religion for Lingayats has alleged intervention from the RSS in coercing Siddhaganga Mutt seer Shivakumara Swami to withdraw support for the cause.

They also stood firm on the statement made on September 10 by Water Resources Minister MB Patil, which said the mutt also supported their claim of Lingayats and Veerashaivas not being the same, following a meeting between the seer and the minister. However, MB Patil’s version was rejected by the mutt which issued a statement saying that the Swami had asked both the groups to unite.

source:http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/siddhaganga-seer-retracts-demand-separate-religion-lingayats-did-rss-have-hand-68473

s an evangelical leader, one of the few times I had direct access to the previous Secretary of State, John Kerry, was in a meeting put together by Special Advisor Shaun Casey, then head of an independent State Department office called Religion and Global Affairs, or RGA. Casey brought a group of mostly Jewish, Muslim, and Christian religious leaders to a lunch gathering at Georgetown University. We shared a meal, listened to a briefing from the secretary, and spent more than an hour discussing foreign policy issues related to peace in the Middle East.

source:http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2017/september/secretary-tillerson-dont-downsize-religion-foreign-affairs.html

A Muncie cleric confronted me with this claim: “Our first freedom is a gift from God.” Not so! He made three mistakes at the outset.
The first freedom in the Bill of Rights is freedom from religion, not freedom of religion as Mike Pence has been arguing for years, aka a secular government.

source:http://www.news-sentinel.com/opinion/your-voice/guest_column_government_and_religion_are_meant_to_leave_each_other_alone_20170915

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Some denounce it as a violation of Islamic law, others embrace it as revolutionary: An initiative by Tunisia’s president to make inheritance and marriage rules fairer to women is reverberating around the Muslim world, and risks dividing his country.

The 90-year-old president, Beji Caid Essebsi, argues that Tunisia needs to fight discrimination and modernize. He’s gambling that he could shepherd through such changes because his secular party is in a coalition with an Islamist one, and because his overwhelmingly Muslim country has a history of relatively progressive views toward women.

source: http://religionnews.com/2017/09/15/tunisian-womens-rights-plan-rattles-muslim-traditionalists/

There sat Joseph O’Neill and his 9-year-old daughter, Lilith. Most children Lilith’s age would have been in school, which is where she and her father said they would have liked her to be.

But Lilith hasn’t been in school since last November, when the Rochester City School District rejected O’Neill’s objection to her receiving the chickenpox vaccine on religious grounds.

source:http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/columnists/andreatta/2017/09/15/andreatta-pagan-says-chickenpox-vaccine-against-his-religion/645635001/

(Beirut) – Saudi Arabia’s school religious studies curriculum contains hateful and incendiary language toward religions and Islamic traditions that do not adhere to its interpretation of Sunni Islam, Human Rights Watch said today. The texts disparage Sufi and Shia religious practices and label Jews and C

source: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/13/saudi-arabia-religion-textbooks-promote-intolerance

The concept of religion has been present throughout humanity’s evolution through time, so it’s obvious that the human race has an affinity for connecting to the divine.

The term ‘religion’ has many different definitions, ranging from the service and devotion directed at a divine higher power to following a personal set of beliefs and morals to participating in certain rituals to not eating certain foods.

source: http://www.utdailybeacon.com/opinion/did-we-create-religion-did-religion-create-us/article_89318b16-98fe-11e7-9b4e-f7f40e83c1a1.html

America is in danger of losing one of its core founding principles — freedom of religion.

The Pilgrims settled in the New World to escape religious persecution — 400 years later we’re encountering it again. If the confirmation hearings for a recent judicial nominee are any indication, U.S. Senate Democrats are leading the charge.

source: https://www.newsmax.com/MichaelDorstewitz/durbin-franken-feinstein/2017/09/14/id/813610/

Jeremy Corbyn did it again. He didn’t mention Brexit at Prime Minister’s Questions. The Government was about to bring the EU (Withdrawal) Bill to the Commons, which Anna Soubry, a Conservative MP, had just described as a “power grab” by ministers. The Labour Party recently advocated staying in the single market for a transitional period after Brexit, a policy supported privately by many cabinet ministers. And the Leader of the Opposition asked about McDonald’s.

source:http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-is-really-quite-good-at-politics-a7938221.html

Hillary Clinton says her career as a politician are over, but that she's "not done with politics."

In her first television interview, with CBS News Sunday Morning host Jane Pauley, Clinton said "I'm done with being a candidate."

"But I am not done with politics because I literally believe that our country's future is at stake," she said.

She told Pauley she was "gob-smacked" by her defeat in the 2016 election, but was proud nevertheless of her effort.

source:https://www.newsmax.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-no-longer-candidate/2017/09/10/id/812671/

On the heels of President Trump and Democratic leaders’ deal last week, Congress and the president on Friday enacted a bill to suspend the debt limit, allowing the Treasury Department to issue more debt to meet its obligations.

Such votes are not unusual: Congress has raised or suspended the debt ceiling 79 times since 1960, and every president since Harry S. Truman has signed into law at least one such bill. What was unusual about last week’s votes was this: Democrats provided the lion’s share of votes for the bill — reversing a long-standing pattern. The burden of raising the debt ceiling has historically fallen on the party in power

source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/09/10/this-is-how-trump-turned-the-politics-of-the-debt-ceiling-upside-down/?utm_term=.0e8ea06587b5

LONDON (RNS) — Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor,  leader of the Catholic Church of England and Wales for nine years, died Friday (Sept. 1) after a battle with cancer, church authorities said.

“I am at peace and have no fear of what is to come,” he wrote in a message shortly before his death at age 85 to Cardinal Vincent Nichols, his successor. “I have received many blessings in my life, especially from my family and friends.”

Murphy-O’Connor’s career was marked by his efforts to improve relations between Catholics and Anglicans, but also tarnished by a scandal over his transfer of a priest who had confessed to the sexual abuse of boys.

source: http://religionnews.com/2017/09/01/british-cardinal-cormac-murphy-oconnor-dies-at-85/

The conviction of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim in rape cases has once again turned the spotlight on the damage that the charlatans, who pass off as godmen, do to the spiritual culture of India. Devdutt Pattanaik, writer of modern Hindu mythology, talks to News18’s Eram Agha on this form of ‘crony spiritualism’, which, he says, has nothing to do with religion but with the nature of secular democracy and vote bank politics as practiced in India. Edited excerpts:

Q: Hinduism is said to be a religion with 33 crore Gods. But do godmen have a place in Hindu scriptures?

A: Godmen is a pejorative term created by the media. Every religion, not just Hinduism, has holy men who claim access to an alternate reality — call it spiritual, mystical, magical, or divine. We call them shaman, priest, yogi, guru, mullah. Some are sincere, others are charlatans. Some try their best to help their tribe, flock or followers; others exploit the power they have.

source: http://www.news18.com/news/india/dera-scandal-its-secular-bigotry-to-say-religion-provides-for-sexual-misconduct-1507767.html