Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
Episcopal Bishops OK Trial Gay Blessing Prayer; Full Church Affirms Transgender Ordination
posted on July 11, 2012At the Episcopal General Convention in Indianapolis on Monday, a majority of bishops approved a liturgy for blessing same-sex unions, according to the Associated Press. However, the blessing service does not act as a marriage, only a honoring of “lifelong same-sex couples,” says Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. The decision comes at the heels of the convention also approving ordination of transgendered clergy. While some “dioceses already ordain transgendered people or elect them to positions of parish leadership,” supporters “for the amendment argued they needed an explicit statement of acceptance as the churchwide policy.”
Is the Jewish Vote Really Up for Grabs?
posted on July 11, 2012This election year, Republicans are once again vying for Jewish voters, a historically Democratic demographic. But Politico‘s Charles Mahtesian sees “a difficult task” ahead for the GOP. He previews a new report from the Solomon Project, which shows Obama still enjoys a large support among Jewish voters. According to Mahtesian, the “numbers suggest that while Obama isn’t likely to hit his 2008 mark among Jews, the GOP isn’t exactly poised to make dramatic gains either.”
State Dept: Release Pastor Jailed for 1,000 Days, Sentenced to Death in Iran
posted on July 11, 2012“It has been more than 1,000 days since a Christian pastor was thrown into an Iranian jail for leaving Islam and sentenced to death,” CNN’s Ed Payne reports. According to the U.S. State Department, Youcef Nadarkhani was “simply following his faith.” On Monday, the agency called again for the release of the pastor. “Even though the constitution of Iran … guarantees equality to members of religious minorities,” Payne writes, “that has not been the case in practice.”
Assad Aide Joins Ivy League
posted on July 11, 2012Controversy surrounds Columbia University’s admittance of Sheherazad Jaafari into their graduate School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). According to David Fine at Tablet, the 22-year-old is “linked closely to the atrocities” of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Fine, a junior at Columbia, writes that Jaafari helped Assad “reach out to and spin foreign press as his regime murdered over 15,000 of its own people and tortured countless others.” Columbia has stood by Jaafari’s admission. Fine quotes Jay Lefkowitz, a Columbia alumnus and former Bush official, who said, “I would be concerned about imposing litmus tests based on ideology in the admissions process.”
When Evangelicals Were Cool
posted on July 11, 2012At Real Clear Religion, Baylor University history professor Philip Jenkins examines when evangelicals were cool. For him, this was during the “1970s religious revival, which some call a Fourth Great Awakening.” Jenkins traces the beginning of the revival to 1960s music, specifically when the Byrds released Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The album “revived and legitimized Christian themes in music for an audience wholly unaccustomed to them.” allowing young listeners to hear “key evangelical messages, which suddenly became cool and contemporary.”
Black Women are Among Country’s Most Religious Groups
posted on July 10, 2012A new poll shows “black women are among the most religious people in the nation,” reports Theola Labbé-DeBose for The Washington Post. The poll, conducted by The Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, found “that 74 percent of black women and 70 percent of black men said that ‘living a religious life’ is very important.” Only 57 percent of white women and 43 percent of white men said the same. “But in times of turmoil, about 87 percent of black women — much more than any other group — say they turn to their faith to get through,” Labbé-DeBose writes. “Black women, across education and income levels, say living a religious life is a greater priority than being married or having children, and this call to faith either surpasses or pulls even with having a career as a life goal, the survey shows.”
I Sentence You to Summarize the Book of Job
posted on July 10, 2012After Cassandra Belle Tolley pleaded guilty to drunk driving and injuring two people, South Carolina Judge Michael Nettles gave her the unusual sentence of reading the Bible’s Book of Job and writing a summary, The Wall Street Journal’s Chelsea Phipps reports. While the punishment isn’t in the state code, “judges are given a fair amount of discretion to tailor the sentence around the individual.” However, Phipps writes that some “legal experts … decry the use of such ‘creative sentencing’ as an abuse of judicial power.”
Read at The Wall Street Journal
Believers Tout Higgs Boson Discovery as Evidence of God
posted on July 10, 2012After the European laboratory CERN announced evidence of the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle,” some Christians saw the discovery as “evidence that God does in fact exist,” according to The Immanent Frame’s Grace Yukich. However, she notes that the particle’s existence “merely demonstrates that God is not necessary for the processes which gave mass to all that exists,” neither proving nor disproving God’s existence. “[S]cientific discoveries like these do not necessarily challenge faith because, as examples like this remind us, humans are skilled at re-interpreting knowledge through their own existing frameworks.”
Sr. Margaret Farley and Dissent
posted on July 10, 2012First Things’ editor R.R. Reno explores the conflict between Sr. Margaret Farley and the Catholic Church. After the Vatican censured her book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, Sr. Farley maintained her views, saying, “I do not dispute the judgment that some of the positions contained within it are not in accord with current official Catholic teaching.” Reno, a former student of Sr. Farley at Yale, defends her act of dissent, writing, “Sr. Farley believes that her contradictions of Church teaching reflect a continuing loyalty to what she sees as the deeper truths affirmed by the tradition. … While I disagree with her ethical reasoning in Just Love and think the Vatican’s censure entirely fitting, I agree that her dissent is loyal.”
Israeli Draft Pits Secular Jews vs. Ultra-Orthodox
posted on July 10, 2012As the Israeli government tries to revamp its mandatory draft law, deep divisions between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews are being reinforced. “The Supreme Court earlier this year ruled the draft exemptions illegal and gave the government until Aug. 1 to figure out a new, fairer system,” reports Aron Heller for the Associated Press. “In its current form, secular males must perform three years of compulsory service when they turn 18. Ultra-Orthodox men … have special exemptions that allow them to continue studying in their isolated enclaves while collecting government subsidies. … But polls show the vast majority of Israelis, who risk their lives and put their careers on hold while serving in the military, object strongly to the arrangement.”