Most Americans are religious–just not all in the same way. An international study of holiday shopping and religion finds that dominant religious groups are likely to experience discomfort at all the "consumption mass hysteria" they encounter in shopping malls, while shoppers who are part of minority religions may see them more central meeting places that can play an active role in the creation of a sacred event.
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…on controversial issues – In a political season, we hear statements about the Catholic church that don’t reflect what has been historically true: it has in the past sanctioned both gay marriage and abortion.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden is telling the Catholics in his audiences that St. Thomas Aquinas had a different teaching on abortion than the current pope and his immediate predecessors. Many Catholics are saying, “He simply cannot be right.” Well, the short answer is: Biden is right. The news media are saying that American bishops are giving him a theology lesson on abortion. Mr. Biden is in a position to give them one right back.
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The place where St John the Divine, in Revelation 16:16,prophesied the “war to end all wars” is now thehigh-security prison of Megiddo, where the Israelis send thehardest Palestinian cases. Could this fortress be the siteof an incredible war in the future?
Eric Silver writes in the Independent that underneath theconcrete fortress, Israeli archeologists have discovered oneof the earliest known Christian chapels. It has a beautifulmosaic tile floor inscribed with a Greek dedication to “theGod Jesus Christ,” and discovered when a new wing was beingbuilt on the prison. The chapel is believed to date to thelate third or early fourth centuries, when the Romanconquerors still outlawed Christian worship.
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A company in the U.K. has produced the world’s first inflatable church. You could blow it up and use it as a temporary place to have a wedding. It could also be handy for congregations that can’t afford a church building; they could blow it up in an empty parking lot on Sundays and deflate it the rest of the week.
It’s 47 feet high from ground to steeple, 47 feet long and 25 feet wide, has a blow-up organ, altar, pulpit, pews, candles and “stained glass” windows, and holds 60 people. The inventor, Michael Gill, says, “I wanted to launch it at the Christian Resource Center so I could get the stamp of approval of the Christian sector?It could have been easy to have upset a large part of the human race with this but the reaction so far has been absolutely phenomenal.” read more