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Welfare reform worked, just not for the people who need welfare
This week marks the 15th anniversary of welfare reform, in which a Republican Congress and a re-election-focused Democratic president got together to fulfill the latter's promise to "end welfare as...
This Is Only a Test, by Smoking Popes
Since recently reuniting, the Smoking Popes have been a different band from their 1990s heyday.
Activists meet to push change in Methodists' gay policy
CLEVELAND (RNS) Hundreds of United Methodists are meeting in Huron,
Ohio, this week in an uphill bid to make their 12 million-member
denomination more gay-friendly....
Armed civilians heighten Tripoli danger, cleric says
Nairobi, Kenya, August 25 (ENInews)--Thousands of small arms and light
weapons distributed to civilians by the government in Tripoli are adding to...
Fiji government again cancels Methodist conference
Wellington, New Zealand, August 25 (ENInews)--The annual conference of
Fiji's Methodist Church, due to start 23 August, was cancelled by Fiji's...
Churches are losing the less educated
A recent study reports that white Americans without college degrees
are dropping out of church faster than their more highly educated...
Mexican Presbyterians cut ties to PCUSA over gays
The National Presbyterian Church of Mexico has voted to end its
139-year relationship with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in...
College adds query on sexual orientation
An Illinois college affiliated with the United Church of Christ is
poised to become the first school in the U.S. to ask prospective...
About that Bible-and-Playboy photo illustration
This post by GetReligion editor Terry Mattingly is a classic specimen of the genre: some great media criticism, with sprinkled asides of conservative boilerplate.
Practical liberals and moral conservatives
Here's an interesting clip in which Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry struggles to respond to a question about the effectiveness of abstinence-only education.
Dry country
If ever the phrase "unintended consequences" applied to a situation, it
does to the epic story of the 18th Amendment and its undoing by the 21st.
Kaivama, by Kaivama
Lutheran rocker Jonathan Rundman is nothing if not prolific. Here he teams with violinist Sara Pajunen to form Kaivama, a folk music duo that yields tasty instrumentals with a Finnish accent.
Mixed motives: Why people join a church
Do people join a church because they share its members' beliefs? This has become the putative
ideal, the only pure motivation for church affiliation. But I have seldom heard it voiced at our new members' class.
10 years later, Muslims divided on improving negative image
(RNS) After all the books, speeches, seminars, Facebook posts and mosque
open houses to teach Americans about Islam in the wake of 9/11,...
9/11 gives birth to new generation of assertive Muslims
(RNS) Under a cloud of suspicion and distrust after the 9/11 attacks,
there were stories of men named Muhammad who started going by "Mo,"...
The peaceable senator: Mark O. Hatfield, 1922–2011
In the midst of today's rancorous politics and the
trivialization of religion in the public square, the death of Mark O. Hatfield calls to mind a different kind of political style and a different
kind of Christian witness.
Quake-damaged cathedral faces millions in repairs
The iconic Washington National Cathedral, already struggling with
financial problems, faces millions of dollars in repair costs from the...
Are atheists basically just like liberal believers?
The title of this post is intentionally provocative. It reverses the
similarity that some conservative religious believers (and some atheists) will at times use polemically, claiming that liberal believers are, for all practical purposes, no different from atheists.