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Links on R&P from around the web
World’s Oldest Survivor of Auschwitz Dies at 108
posted on October 24, 2012USA Today reports that Antoni Dobrowolski, the oldest survivor of Auschwitz, has died at the age of 108. Dobrowolski worked in an underground effort to continue to teach children lessons in defiance. He was caught by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz in 1942. Dobrowolski died in northwestern Poland on Sunday, according to a spokesperson at the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum.
Heaven Help Us
posted on October 24, 2012At Slate, David Engber provides a humorous critique of Eben Alexander III’s new book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey Into the Afterlife, and the excerpt, which appeared as a recent cover story in Newsweek with the headline “Heaven Is Real.” Eben, a Harvard neurosurgeon and formerly a skeptic, fell into a coma in which he now writes that God talked to him. “The blinding power of neuroscience has been invoked in recent years by marketers and pollsters, by trial lawyers and self-help authors, and now our faith in brain-based explanation has reached its logical conclusion,” Engber writes. “It’s become its own religion.”
Mormon Missionary Applications Explode 471%, Half Are Women
posted on October 24, 2012The Salt Lake Tribune‘s Peggy Fletcher Stack reports on the 471 percent rise in Mormon missionary applications, which happened after the LDS Church announced that men could go on missions at age 18, instead of 19, and women could go at age 19, instead of 21. More than half the new converts are women. “That represents a massive shift,” Fletcher Stack writes. “Typically, women make up fewer than a fifth of the LDS missionary force, which currently stands at more than 58,000 worldwide.”
Election Day Communion Aims to Heal the Partisan Breach
posted on October 24, 2012G. Jeffrey MacDonald writes for Religion News Service on Election Day Communion, a movement that will take place on November 6th at churches in 46 states, representing more than a dozen denominations. In contrast to the recent Pulpit Freedom Sunday, where pastors challenged IRS rules by endorsing candidates from the pulpit, organizers feel Election Day Communion, in which people of different political stripes line up together to receive the sacrament, is “ideal for remembering the church’s nonpartisan mission: to bridge personal divides, refocus allegiance to God (not party) and work for justice beyond the ballot box,” MacDonald writes.
Religious Affiliation in America
posted on October 23, 2012At First Things, Mark Movsesian analyzes the recent Pew Report on religious affiliation, which reported an increase in the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion, and a continuing decrease in the percentage of who identify as Protestants. Movsesian believes that these findings might be more related to generational differences than permanent shifts in American society. Movsesian writes, “we shouldn’t assume that the increase in the percentage of Nones will remain stable over time. Generations typically become more religiously observant as they age.”
State of the God Gap
posted on October 23, 2012Mark Silk reports for Religion News Service that the God Gap is becoming smaller. In 2008, 55 percent of frequent worship attendees supported the GOP ticket, while only 43 percent supported the Democratic ticket. Now that gap has narrowed, with only 51 percent supporting Republicans over Democrats. At the same time Silk finds that the Gender Gap is growing. “Women who are more religious are finding themselves pushed away from the GOP by the Party’s libertarian economics and stricter-than-ever social conservatism,” writes Silk. “Meanwhile, less religious men are moving strongly towards the GOP because they like the tough economics and think Obama’s going to take away their guns.”
In Final Debate, Obama and Romney to Offer Differing Views on America’s Role in the World
posted on October 23, 2012At The Washington Post, Anne Gearan and David Fahrenthold discuss the final presidential debate, focused on foreign policy. Fahrenthold and Gearan assert that attacks in Benghazi, and the Obama administration’s reaction to this event resulting in the deaths of four Americans, has provided an opening for Mitt Romney. While Obama has been praised for his foreign policy successes, most notably the killing Osama bin Laden, Obama’s “commander-in-chief role could make him more vulnerable,” writes Fahrenthold and Gearan.
In Final Debate, Obama and Romney to Offer Differing Views on America’s Role in the World
posted on October 23, 2012At The Washington Post, Anne Gearan and David Fahrenthold discuss the final presidential debate, focused on foreign policy. Fahrenthold and Gearan assert that attacks in Benghazi, and the Obama administration’s reaction to this event resulting in the deaths of four Americans, has provided an opening for Mitt Romney. While Obama has been praised for his foreign policy successes, most notably the killing Osama bin Laden, Obama’s “commander-in-chief role could make him more vulnerable,” writes Fahrenthold and Gearan.
In Texas, a Legal Battle over Biblical Banners
posted on October 23, 2012At The New York Times, Manny Fernandez writes about the controversy in Kountze, Texas, over the display of banners with Bible quotes at the town’s high school football games. The school superintendent, Kevin Weldon, who forbade the display of the banners, has found himself “at odds with the majority of his students … and some in Kountze believe, his God,” writes Fernandez. “Though he has taken a stand that pleases the Anti-Defamation League and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, he is not their ally. Though his action upset the Liberty Institute, a Christian legal group representing the cheerleaders, he is not their opponent. He is caught somewhere in between.”
Barack Obama, Pro-Life Hero
posted on October 23, 2012At Religion Dispatches, Eric Miller examines the findings of a study conducted by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis’ School of Medicine, which have the potential to influence policymaking in regards to abortion (Religion & Politics is a project at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis). The study found that when contraceptives are made available to women free of charge, the number of abortions preformed can be reduced by up to 75 percent. The Affordable Care Act’s hotly debated provision requiring insurance for birth control “may prove the single most effective piece of ‘pro-life’ legislation in the past forty years,” writes Miller.