Friday’s Religion News Roundup: Calvin 101 * Define ‘onanist’ * Fracking the Amish

John Calvin would say I'm totally depraved for making naughty-word references in today's Roundup. And he'd be right.

For a guy who recently turned 500, John Calvin still knows how to shake things up — this time for the Southern Baptist Convention. You can take our handy little Calvinism 101 quiz here.10054956l

(Even his bobblehead is pretty dour looking)

The WSJ examines the surging popularity of Amish romance novels. To wit: In the last 10 years, the number of new titles each year has grown from 1 to 86.


Speaking of which, the New Republic says Amish families are getting “fracked” by natural gas drilling companies because the Amish are notoriously reluctant to sue when things get all fracked up.

Support for gay marriage is growing across all religious groups — even evangelical support has inched up from 13% to 23% — and about six in 10 Americans see it as “inevitable.”

Remember all those fights over creches on courthouse lawns and 10 Commandments monuments at state capitols? Atheists will unveil their first monument to unbelief on public land in Florida, later this month.

Want to understand the two competing strains within American Catholicism? Look no further that Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Philly Archbishop Charles Chaput, says our pal Tom Roberts over at NCR.

Religious minorities welcomed the FBI’s decision to track hate crimes against Hindus, Sikh, Mormons — Mormons? Really? — and others, but say it’s just a first step.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is neither Evangelical, Lutheran nor a Church (but it’s still in America). Discuss.

Our own Jonathan Merritt dissects the larger societal debate over working moms, and what evangelicals might have to bring (or not) to the discussion.


You gotta love the Brits: an Anglican priest got into trouble for calling Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby a “wanker” over his stand against gay marriage; Welby’s spokesman told the priest it’s not cool for a priest to refer to his boss as an “onanist.” (see Genesis 38:9)

While we’re still in jolly ol’ England, the established Church has more or less thrown in the towel on the gay marriage bill, saying the handwriting on the wall is pretty clear.

The upcoming Miss World pageant will be bikini-free in a nod to modest-minded (and majority Muslim) host country Indonesia.

Uncle Frank says he’s going to stick around the Vatican this summer rather than escape to the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo. I hear Rome is just lovely in August.

Israel is asking ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews to “share the burdens” of citizenship, and that means doing more than hand-writing your resume on a piece of fax paper.

And because it seems the NSA is monitoring your phone calls and maybe your emails, too, give them something good to snoop through when you get the RNS Religion News Roundup every day, for free, by email.


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