In the News – Heathens, Hymns, and Holy Men
A round-up of the week’s religion news. Continue Reading →
Tag: uk
Discount Jesus
Ashley Baxstrom: Jesus saves but maybe he shouldn’t sell. At least, not cell phones. And especially not during Easter.
The Advertising Standards Authority, which governs media advertising and operates kind of like the UK’s version of the FCC, this month banned a publicity campaign from UK mobile retailer Phones 4 U that ran this past spring, calling them “disrespectful.” Continue Reading →
Safe Words
Abby Ohlheiser: All the religious language of the last fortnight’s Perry and Ames fest ’11 (or should that be ’12) made me click on this tweet (despite the parenthetical clue) without thinking for a second that it would be a comment on anything other than something Bachmann or Perry have talked about recently. By the way: don’t google “perry bondage.”
It was, in fact, an article about the sort of bondage with a bigger but quieter internet presence: BDSM, which stands for bondage, discipline, sado-masochisim. Continue Reading →
Sharia Creeps in England
More than 700 protesters gathered and clashed with riot police in Bradford, England today, the home of a large Pakistani community. Members of the English Defense League organized the rally to protest “the spread of Islam, Sharia law and Islamic extremism.” You can check out the EDL’s American counterpart at their 9-11 photo-clad facebook page here. Continue Reading →
In Support of Mythical Families
David Nolan of Catholics for Choice gives us a run-down of the agenda for the upcoming World Congress of Families Regional Congress, an event to be held during the UK’s “National Family Week.” You can guess what kind of families organizers and speakers are — in some cases, literally — lobbying for. (Not yours nor mine, most likely. Indeed, the agenda gives the impression that there once was a God-blessed mythical family, a foundational community building block that, if reestablished, would end a host of social ills that, um, secular government can’t; it’s a notion that historical and contemporary data in both the US and the UK refutes. But let’s not much up a fine story.) Nolan writes: Continue Reading →