Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Separated at Birth?

Which logo came first?

Womaen’s Caucus is a network of feminist women and men who identify with the Church of the Brethren.

The Commission on the Status of Women is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).


Monday, November 18, 2013

Sharing is Caring

Can the gospel of file sharing really be recognized as a religion? In Sweden it can.

In the midst of a worldwide debate about Internet piracy, Swedish authorities have granted official religious status to the Church of Kopimism, which claims it considers CTRL+C and CTRL+V (shortcuts for copy and paste) to be sacred symbols, and that information is holy and copying is a sacrament.

The church was founded by philosophy student Isak Gerson, who is also the self-appointed spiritual leader of the movement. [...]

The blog Torrent Freak reports that membership in the church has grown from 1,000 to 3,000 in the last six months, and the founders expect more people to join now that its religious status is making a splash on the Internet.

“Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for Kopimi,” said Gerson. “Hopefully this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution.”

Thursday, November 07, 2013

Is Superman the Antichrist?

Warner Bros. hired a Christian marketing company to pitch The Man of Steel to churches, on the grounds that this was really a movie about Jesus. And apparently, this strategy has backfired, somewhat. As in, people are calling Superman "the Antichrist."

Sometimes pandering to religious groups — or trying to manipulate them into promoting your movie for you, depending on how you look at it — can backfire. According to the Washington Post, a number of pastors who got roped into seeing Man of Steel weren't happy afterwards:
“[Superman] is the anti-Christ,” as the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and commentator for National Catholic Reporter, tweeted after he saw the movie. In “Man of Steel,” Reese wrote, “Superpowers, not love, conquers (sic) evil. Bash the bad guy, don’t turn cheek.”
Or as Jackson Cuidon put it in his “Man of Steel” review in Christianity Today, a leading evangelical magazine: “Superman ... is there mostly to satiate that part of the American psyche that wants their messiahs to punch things, too.”

Saturday, November 02, 2013

God Reveals He Occasionally Eats Humans

Speaking candidly during a rare interview, God Almighty, Our Lord and Heavenly Father, revealed to the public that He occasionally eats human beings.

The Supreme Being, who spoke to reporters about His dietary habits, said that Homo sapiens don’t comprise a regular part of His food consumption, but noted that every once in a while He “feels like eating a human” and will then pick one out from earth and eat the person alive.