He knows the interview was a setup because he is an expert who has been doing this "long enough to know that [the exchange]... wasn't natural" and just has really good journalistic instincts in general, OK?

h/t Right Wing Watch

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But, as the New York Times reports, the controversy over the inclusion (or, possibly, the continued exclusion) of gay scouts isn't likely to die down after the final ballot is cast:

Last week the Connecticut Yankee Council promised it would defy national policy in either case, saying it intended to accept gay leaders and would be “open to all youths and adults who subscribe to the values of the Scout Oath and Law regardless of their personal sexual orientation.”

The vote Thursday is expected to be close. Prospects for passage improved when the Mormon Church, the largest single sponsor of scout units, indicated support for limited change, and the Roman Catholic Church, another major sponsor, also said that it would not abandon scouting so long as any new policy applied to youths and not leaders.

Glaad, formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and other rights groups as well as internal advocates said that allowing openly gay youths would be a step in the right direction, but only that. They vowed to continue with a public campaign against any discrimination.

Evangelical conservatives, the public spearhead of opposition, said that even the limited opening being voted on would expose youths to immoral behavior and pro-gay politics, ruining a rare bastion of traditional America.

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After spending hours in the personal growth section at Get Lost bookstore, I splurged on a hardback edition of “How to Get a Life That Doesn’t Suck” to add to my already enormous self-help book collection. I also unearthed my dusty deck of Louise Hay’s “Power Thought” cards from my nightstand drawer, buried under mismatched jewelry, the TV remote, miscellaneous receipts to file, and a lubricant that promised to be warming and tropical but was neither.

I sat at my desk writing down affirmations just like Wayne Dyer told me to do:

I, Kirsten, never have to worry about money again. Ten times. Then I looked up to see my parents staring back at me from a silver Pottery Barn frame. My mom wore a silk mango-colored blouse that complimented her complexion; my dad sported a grey suit with a crisp white dress shirt and a navy and green striped tie.  The photograph appeared in the St. Peters Episcopal Church Directory. One of the reasons I refused to call them to borrow money: They would tell me to go to church. The more obvious reason was that it would make me feel like a complete loser.

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As reported by USA Today:

The religious expression case, which comes to the court from the town of Greece, N.Y., focuses on the first 10 words of the First Amendment, ratified in 1791: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

That Establishment Clause was violated, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year, when the Greece Town Board repeatedly used Christian clergy to conduct prayers at the start of its public meetings. The decision created a rift with other appeals courts that have upheld prayer at public meetings, prompting the justices to step in.

Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian non-profit group, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.

In a press release entitled "Prayer will be heard on high," the group noted the high court affirmed the practice of prayer before public meetings in the 1983 case Marsh v. Chambers, in which it cited an "unambiguous and unbroken history" of such prayers.

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The latest, from FRC's Cathy Ruse, is a real doozy. In an editorial for Real Clear Religion, Ruse defends the ban by arguing that gay scouts are already welcome in the organization. That is, as long as they stay in the closet:

[An] important distinction has been lost in the current debate. The Boy Scouts’ long-standing policy does not, by its terms or in practice, exclude people who experience same-sex attraction. Rather, the prohibition is on “open and avowed” homosexuality, and it is that prohibition which will be lifted if the resolution passes.

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And yet Georgian police and government officials have been slow to condemn, and hold accountable, those responsible for the violent mob attack, as the New York Times reports:

On Friday evening, with crowds of men still roaming downtown Tbilisi in search of gays, [Georgia’s prime minister, Bidzina] Ivanishvili promised a quick response to the violence. Yet on Sunday, at a parade for a local police force, he made no mention of either arrests or an investigation. Instead, his comments celebrated the role of the police in preventing worse injuries to the marchers...

Zviad Koridze, a veteran local journalist at the Tbilisi-based Council of Ethics for Journalists, called the slow pace a reminder of the church’s influence.

“The government is acting very carefully, one could say ineffectively,” said Mr. Koridze in a telephone interview. “Everyone is simply waiting. Because in three days they should have made arrests and given some sort of answer to the events in Tbilisi.”

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A graduation is a momentous occasion for graduates and their families, and such a major rite of passage tends to evoke some kind of effort on the part of high school, college, and graduate school leaders (and commencement speakers) to reach for rhetorical profundity.

But what kind of profundity is acceptable in our pluralistic public space? Can a public high school organize a graduation service that appeals to religious themes? Can a religiously diverse private college invite a commencement speaker representing only one of the many religious traditions represented in the room? Or, given religious diversity, should schools try to maintain an air of resolute non-religiosity?

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1) Mitt Romney would win in 2012 and go on to be a two-term president. One week before the 2012 election, Pat Robertson assured viewers that Romney would not only beat Barack Obama for the presidency, but go on to be a two-term president. “Because the Lord told me,” he confidently explained to his guest. So either the Lord is lying to Robertson or Obama is more powerful than God. Or, I suppose, it could be that Robertson himself is a liar, though it’s considered impolite to say so directly.

2) If Obama wins in 2008, the Bible will be classified as “hate speech” and banned from the airwaves. In 2008, Focus on the Family sent out a letter from a fictional Christian in 2012 describing the decrepit, destroyed America that would be sure to exist in four years if Obama won in 2008. Some predictions, such as gays in the military and universal healthcare legislation, came true, but somehow the predicted arrests of people reading the Bible on the airwaves have not come to pass.

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No, the new pontiff will not personally be directing you around his old stomping grounds in Buenos Aires, but you can walk where he once walked, sit where he once sat, oppose gay rights where he once opposed gay rights, undermine women's access to basic health care where he once undermined women's access to basic health care, etc ad infinitum, as the Associated Press reports:

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Speaking to a human trafficking forum at Johns Hopkins University last week, Smart recalled that it was not only fear for the safety of her family that kept her from running but also a sense that rape had ruined her:

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Congressional efforts to pass a measure legalizing gay marriage have faced strong opposition from the country's religious conservatives, but, according to a statement from the judicial council, that is no reason the country's licensing offices should wait to recognize gay marriages.

As reported by Agence France Presse:

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From the Guardian:

The video also stars Oscar-winning French actor Marion Cotillard as a woman with blood spurting from stigma-like wounds, as well as Oscar nominee Gary Oldman as a priest condemning Bowie.

A spokeswoman for Google-owned YouTube said the video was pulled then returned with a restriction for viewers aged 18 and above.

"With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call," she said. "When it's brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it."

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The lyrics echoed in the background as he shouted about STDs and unplanned pregnancy from the pulpit. Cause I am waiting for you, praying for you darling, wait for me too, wait for me as I wait for you. One by one we each placed a ring on our fourth finger and made vows to an apparently bi-curious Jesus who took teenage husbands and wives by the dozen that night.

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A new edition of the LDS scriptures released in March featured a new, more historically specific account of the faith’s historic ban on black ordination. New headnotes to Doctrine and Covenants Offical Declaration 2 read:

“Throughout the history of the Church, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church. During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, a few black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. Early in its history, Church leaders stopped conferring the priesthood on black males of African descent. Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice.”

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It's the story of Colville and Francine, each around 30 years old and former childhood friends. Francine has married, and is expecting her first child in suburban Boise, Idaho. Colville lives in a trailer but turns up on Francine's doorstep when a news story about a neighbor's missing child mysteriously inspires him to seek her out.

What Colville and Francine share, and what Francine's apprehensive husband, Wells, can begin to fathom, is their past as members of a reclusive religious sect planning for the imminent end of the world. Francine's father helped build the underground compound where the sect expected to ride out a nuclear holocaust, and Colville's beloved younger brother was regarded as a chosen one, destined for some great mission. (Instead, he became a soldier and was killed in Afghanistan.) How exactly the sect fell apart is revealed gradually, and the novel's action culminates in striking passages describing a visit to the groups now-deserted subterranean shelter.

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The offending tweet? (Get ready to be scandalized): "Congrats to Jason Collins."

Butler says he was contacted by a member of the church and told that he was in violation of his contract's "moral clause," and was no longer welcome to speak at the church. But, Butler went on to say, the member told him he would be welcomed back to speak if he would delete his pro-Collins tweet and "ask God for forgiveness." An offer that Butler, thankfully, declined.

More here:

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h/t Raw Story

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In the last century, no one icon has improved the Catholic brand as much as the small woman who founded the Missionaries of Charity, whose image aligns beautifully with that of the new pope. In March a team of Canadian researchers noted the opportunity: “What could be better than beatification followed by canonization of [Mother Teresa] to revitalize the Church and inspire the faithful, especially at a time when churches are empty and the Roman authority is in decline?”

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Terrence Malick’s typically beautiful new film, To the Wonder, does exactly that, yet its depiction of the divine love/human love parallel is so elliptical as to flirt with inscrutability.

To be sure, Malick’s screenplay does telegraph the main theme of the work explicitly, usually in voiceovers (there are a lot of voiceovers) by a doubt-ridden priest played by Javier Bardem. Bardem’s priest wonders why we fall in and out of love with God, as we watch a couple played by Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko fall in and out of love with each other. If the parallelism were not clear enough, Bardem’s priest—played with brilliant understatement by an actor who often goes for the jugular—tells us how human love can serve as a gateway to divine love. Which (metaphysical spoiler alert) is roughly the final resolution of the film.

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Distracted by the weather, perhaps, or by the sight of so many young things lining up for Sunday worship, a passing car rear-ended the vehicle ahead. The crowd groaned and jeered. “Don’t worry,” a young woman called out, between tender sips of Red Bull. “You’ve got, like, a hundred witnesses!” The crowd laughed and turned inwards, leaving two piqued drivers to the earthly task of exchanging insurance information.

Soon enough, the doors opened and we shuffled inside. Near the entrance to the foyer, several church ladies had set a table with biscuits and a few iced cakes.

At our final destination, the sanctuary, we were greeted by bare walls and dull paint; presumably, everything of grandeur had been stripped away when the church was rendered unsacred. (The Nave, on St. Paul’s Road, is now an “arts and performance space.”) Almost instantly, the rows of plastic chairs arranged before the altar were filled, and congregants began competing for floor space. A screen above their heads displayed the words “Live Better, Help Often, Wonder More.” And then, our high priest arrived.

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“The results imply that atheists’ attitudes toward God are ambivalent, in that their explicit beliefs conflict with their affective response,” concludes a research team led by University of Helsinki psychologist Marjaana Lindeman. Its study is published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.

Lindeman and her colleagues describe two small-scale experiments. The first featured 17 Finns, recruited online, who expressed high levels of belief, or disbelief, in God. They read out loud a series of statements while skin conductance data was collected via electrodes placed on two of their fingers.

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