Wednesday’s Religion News Roundup: Shaming the Divorced * Guns and Gays * Faith and Footwear

Forget the gays: Shame the divorced for ruining marriage. A pro-life student group at Johns Hopkins is denied club status because it would make students think about stuff. And North Carolina may get an official religion. Guess which one.

Hester Prynne at the stocks, via Wikipedia. Yes, an adultress not a divorcee, but best I could manage...
Hester Prynne at the stocks, via Wikipedia.

Hester Prynne at the stocks, via Wikipedia.

Ratings from “The Bible” finale rival “The Walking Dead.” Why does that sound weird?

The writers behind the Boston Globe’s landmark sex abuse coverage a decade ago will get to find out if their story can do as well as “The Bible” now that Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios has joined in acquiring film rights to the saga.


It’s unlikely Cardinal Law will return to play himself.

Are the U.S. bishops adopting a new policy or just a new tone toward gays and lesbians? Or is rhetoric as important as policy?

The Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins University has denied official club status to a group that opposes abortion. As one SGA member reportedly said:

“We have the right to protect our students from things that are uncomfortable. Why should people have to defend their beliefs on their way to class?”

Exactly. College is for partying, not thinking. Doh!

Tennessee state legislators are moving to kill a voucher program aimed at helping religious schools now that they realized Islam is also a religion. Which has schools. And could qualify for vouchers.

Lego says its version of Jabba the Hut’s palace is NOT anti-Muslim.

Some North Carolina legislators want the state to have an official religion. Guess which religion?

In South Carolina, Mark Sanford’s trail to redemption keeps getting clearer. Now just Colbert’s sister in his way…

Speaking of Sanford et al, the Dish (Sully is taking a well-deserved vacation) points us to a rockin’ Mark Oppenheimer column in which he says that social conservatives should be targeting the divorced for reprobation, not gays – they’re just the johnny-and-janey-come-latelys to the marriage revolution:

“(Y)ou have to actually try to shame straight divorcés more than you are trying to shame gay people for wanting to marry, because the straights started it … If you aren’t horrified by Rush Limbaugh being married four times—if you didn’t see Ronald Reagan as a less fit leader because of his divorce—then you simply have to shut the hell up about gay people marrying. You can’t ethically go after the marginalized people who try to eat the fruits of a revolution. You have to go after the revolutionaries.”

Discuss.

Think apocalyptic end-timers exist only among the religious set? Numbers-crunching scientists say the data is in, and we are closer to the end than to the beginning … Adam Frank reports at NPR.

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is winning this Month’s Perverse Casuistry Award for an argument that links gun control laws limiting magazine capacity to gay marriage and bestiality:


“There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used, then it’s just really easy to have laws that make them all illegal.”

(No, it doesn’t help to read it twice. I tried. I tried.)

The news for evangelicals in the Mexican state of Chiapas is good, finally.

Duke McCall, a “giant” among Southern Baptists, has died at 98.

Mormons are having some beardage issues, and Peggy Fletcher Stack is all over the ironies.

Peggy is also tracking the online push to have Mormon women ordained as priests. Beards not an issue there.

Secular Britain does have a Christian success story – and The Independent is on the case.

Finally, Erasmus, the Economist’s religion blogger, was inspired by our own Mark Silk’s post on atheists shoes to look more closely at the various traditions on faith and footwear. It’s a good read.

Basta. Time for more coffee. Pass this roundup around to friends and foes and others so everyone can join in the fun and edification. Or at least the fun.

David Gibson

 

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