CNN offers story on professional Christian Soccer teams, proving once again that God is probably the only entity that can make Americans care about soccer:

“The team was established in 1993 after a ‘sports junkie fell in love with God,’ Eagles co-founder Brian Davidson says. But if he was going to continue being involved in soccer – where he saw players cheating and sneaking fouls past referees – he needed to find a way to live out his faith on the field.

He had two goals for his ministry. First, teach men to live for God on the field by playing fair. The second: Send team members into the community – both locally and ‘to the ends of the earth’ – to teach impoverished children and refugees about soccer and to use the sport to attract people who wouldn’t normally visit church.”

Julia Galed at Religion Dispatches asks, “Does Atheism Have a Misogyny Problem?”:

“By the time The Amazing Meeting rolled into Vegas, nerves were raw. It seemed like everyone was both sick of hearing about Elevatorgate, and still nursing at least a little irritation toward what they perceived as either the sexism and insensitivity or the political correctness of their fellow atheists. Those of us in attendance dealt with it the best way we knew how-by joking about it. When that got old, we resorted to jokes about how bad our jokes were. Underneath the layers of meta-humor, however, it was clear that the heated argument had taken a toll on the atheist and skeptic community.”

Huffington Post Religion offers a report of the Catholic World Youth Day in Madrid:

“I arrived with the group of college students I am leading to World Youth Day a week and a half ago to participate in the Jesuit-sponsored program called Magis. After meeting for a few days in Loyola, the home of the founder of the Society of Jesus (or ‘the Jesuits’), nearly 3,000 young people from Jesuit universities and parishes from around the world were sent out into 99 different experience groups to participate in various service projects or walking pilgrimages.”

Finally, Relevant – a cool, hipster magazine – argues that Christianity should never be cool or hipster … Because then it would be, you know, popular, which would mean it was cool. Which is, of course uncool, because…wait…My head hurts.

“There are two iterations of the idea of cool. In bike culture, there are people who genuinely enjoy riding fixed gear bikes; then there is a second group who enjoy the idea of and association with fixed gear culture. The same is true for the Church. There are communities who pursue being simply and honestly themselves-and churches who try with all they are to be ‘cool.'”

Finally, the Tweet of the Day gets filed in the “Wait, he really said that?” category.

@beliefnet – “There’s only one king…and that’s Jesus Christ.” – Elvis

Uh-huh-huh. I guess he did.