This week’s Weekend Plug-in highlights the winners of the Religion News Association’s annual journalism contest. Plus, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) By the time of Spong’s death at the age of 90, many of his once-heretical beliefs — especially on sex and marriage — had become normalized in most Episcopal pulpits and institutions. However, his post-theistic doctrinal approach was too blunt for many in the mainline establishment.
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(REVIEW) Disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker has been broadcasting “The Jim Bakker Show” since 2003, nine years after his release from prison. Today, it reflects an empty shell of his former glory, featuring prophetic apocalyptic preaching.
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Like many millennials, Brenda Marie Davies, a former model, left an evangelical Christian church and found a home for her faith in progressive Christian spaces online. Now she dives into the “grey” answers to life’s questions on her popular podcast and YouTube channel “God is Grey.”
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(REVIEW) Entering the main gallery is a religious experience of sorts — the sequences of tableaux that punctuate all four sides of the space serve as stations for reflection. Büttner leaves us with a restorative vision of the future, encouraging us to earnestly consider the meaning of faith, hope and love.
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(OPINION) Conflict over abortion will likely only increase as courts release opinions on a Mississippi “heartbeat’ law and consider overturning Roe v. Wade. Here’s how pro-life Christians should respond.
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(OPINION) Pro-abortion rights activists — including the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the Unitarian Universalist Association and major non-Orthodox Jewish organizations — have filed their briefs for the Supreme Court hearing on Mississippi’s abortion law. But Protestant denominations are notably missing.
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(ANALYSIS) Italy’s national airline — known for its near-impeccable safety record and sometimes-appalling customer service — will officially shut down on Oct. 15. The announcement, made this past summer, marks the end of an era for an airline founded in 1946 that became the pontiff’s official airline.
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In Pakistan, religious minorities, including Christians and Ahmadi Muslims, live under constant threat of blasphemy allegations. The laws prohibit making derogatory remarks against Islam, desecrating the Quran and insulting the Prophet Muhammad, which can be subjectively interpreted in courtrooms and impose fines, jail time and even death.
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All but one of the top 20 Christian Facebook pages operating in Oct. 2019 were fakes, according to an internal Facebook report entitled “How Communities Are Exploited on Our Platforms” that was publicly released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in September.
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In an interview with Religion Unplugged, bestselling Christian author Philip Yancey discusses his new memoir, “Where the Light Fell,” about a painful upbringing in poverty and fundamentalism with his brother and single mother that birthed a passionate curiosity and a writing career of many celebrated Christian books over the last 40 years.
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(OPINION) The big question: Where does the Afghanistan story go next, and frankly, will elite American media cover the religion elements of this story? That question was at the heart of a recent Religion Unplugged podcast discussion.
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(ANALYSIS) The data is in: Christianity is aging, younger generations are having fewer children, and without a great influx of new members, thousands of churches will close over the next few decades. But smaller religious groups in the U.S. — like Hindus and Muslims — have younger members who are having more kids.
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(ANALYSIS) After completing the decades-long construction of the Jacob’s Well Greek Orthodox Church in the Palestinian city Nablus in 2018, Archimandrite Ioustinos, 81, has an equally lofty ambition to fulfill before he retires.
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Young Kashmiris are creating and performing new music as therapy to counter the sense of hopelessness, isolation and depression that has gripped their majority-Muslim Himalayan region of North India, which has endured years of conflict, military presence, frequent lockdowns and unpredictable internet bans under a Hindu-first government.
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(OPINION) A new bill Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced in California would allow children access, without parental consent or knowledge, to sex-change operations, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and abortions through their family’s insurance plan.
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The dedication ceremony paid tribute to Botham Shem Jean, a Christian who died in 2018 when an off-duty police officer entered his apartment in Dallas and shot him.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in summary highlights the controversy over the Southern Baptist Convention executive committee’s handling of a sexual abuse investigation. Plus, catch up on all the week’s best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) Comedian Norm Macdonald — who died on Sept. 14 after a secret nine-year fight with cancer — wasn't a typical funny man. He openly identified as a Christian, while making it clear that he didn't consider himself a very good one.
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TrustBridge — an organization founded by atheist-turned-Christian Robert Collins — tries to make it easier for Americans to give directly to foreign ministries. Its approach cuts out the usual intermediary charities, which sometimes take a significant portion off the top for their expenses, while still allowing donors to get a tax deduction.
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