Bishop Maria Jepsen said she had resigned from her post in northern Germany amid accusations that she failed to thoroughly investigate reports of a sexually abusive pastor.
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Germany: First Female Elected Lutheran Bishop Quits in Handling of Abuse Complaint
In “Hannah’s Child,” by Stanley Hauerwas, the author thanks Alonzo McDonald for his financing. This pairing of donor and recipient may seem odd to many.
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From One Benefactor, Diverse Seeds in Theology
VATICAN CITY — The Roman Catholic Church has brokered a historic deal to release 52 political prisoners in Cuba, following three-way talks between Cuban President Raul Castro, Spanish Foreign Secretary Miguel Angel Moratinos and Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega.
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Catholic Church helps free 52 Cuban dissidents
NEW YORK — For some clergy, it is the problem that dares not speak its name. Affected pastors say they cannot be themselves among their congregations or colleagues, sometimes even with their own families. It’s a huge and burdensome secret with the potential to destroy their careers, they say.
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For clergy, losing faith can be an occupational hazard
This blog, Sunday in the South , is five years old, having begun on July 13, 2005. Please rate SITS With 1,467 posts in five years, that averages to 293.4 posts a year, or 24.45 posts per month over sixty months.
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Happy Birthday, Sunday in the South!
Editor’s note from Paul: After reading this, also check out the companion piece reflecting further on this post, over at Tenured Radical . Janine Giordano Drake It all started this past May with an email composed by an undergraduate student in “Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought,” a course offered in the Religious Studies department at the University of Illinois. The student forwarded to the department chair an email about utilitarianism and Natural Law that his instructor, Catholic theologian Kenneth Howell, sent to the class during the term
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Teaching Sexuality and Religion
After an extraordinary, marathon meeting of Jathedars at the Akal Takht — the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs —the community’s five high priests on Wednesday declared the anti-Sikh riots 26 years ago as ‘genocide’ and demanded justice for the victims. The decision seems to have been motivated by the recent resolution introduced by Indian-origin Sikh MP Sukh Dhaliwal in the Canadian Parliament, where he sought to get the bloodshed declared as a ‘genocide’. Akal Takht Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh, who headed the meeting of the Sikh priests, admitted the move by Dhaliwal had “awakened” them to correct history
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26 years on, Akal Takht declares 1984 anti-Sikh riots as ‘genocide’
A little double entendre in the title. I want to write briefly about sermon series. But this is also another in the series of posts started yesterday. In that post I suggested that we shouldn’t be overly dogmatic about whether we project the text or not. I have my opinions, obviously others have theirs too. But my point was that this is not the main point (even though we are prone to make any preference into a definitive conviction). So today I’ll raise the subject of series, and again I’ll suggest that there are different perspectives, and perhaps again we’ll hear some readers share their reasoned positions. Should we always preach through Bible books, or sections of books? Some would say absolutely yes. God gave us sixty-six books, He did not inspire a thematic table of contents. A balanced diet will best be found by sequential exposition that therefore does not and cannot shirk the tough subjects, tricky texts and the whole scope of the canon. The “whole counsel” is a term often coined in these discussions. It does diminish the time wasting that can go on in selecting sermon texts, or the personal hobby horses that regularly gallop through some pulpits. But others would critique this approach for a variety of reasons. Some would suggest that while “all Scripture is God-breathed and useful” – not all Scripture is equally useful to all listeners all of the time. At a certain level we would probably all agree with that (you would be disappointed to take a friend to an evangelistic event and have the preaching text announced as Nehemiah 7). Some would suggest that varying the preaching text allows for a broader scope of biblical exposure than being tied into a very long series through a book. Others might point out that it is perfectly possible to preach expository sermons without being tied into consecutive passage selection (which must not become a defining feature of “expository” preaching).
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And Now For The Next in the Series
In Jainism “The undercurrent of noncreationism and absence of omnipotent God and divine grace runs strongly in all the philosophical dimensions of Jainism … Jainism shows how a religious and virtuous life is possible without the idea …
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Baha'i vs. Buddhism, Taoism, and Jainism
The 34 caves in Ellora represent an interesting mix of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism faiths.
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Ellora Caves-A beautiful combination of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism