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POPSTeaching Religions (Plural) in Public Education Few of the recent tweets from the discussion at OnFaith on above topic. The topic is worth pondering over even if you speed read few of these articles. The question they are asking is this: The Texas Board of Education, the nation's second largest purchaser of public school textbooks, is revising its K-12 social studies curriculum and deciding how to characterize religion's influence on American history. Three consultants have recommended emphasizing the roles of the Bible, Christianity and civic virtue of religion. As America's children go back to school, how would you advise the Texas board? How should religion be taught in public schools?
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POPSReligion Begets Prejudice .... Today it is from this same part of America, the most overtly religious part, that most of the hostility toward equality in the pursuit of justice for gay and lesbian people comes. The question that should be asked is: What is there about religion in general and Christianity in particular that continues to fuel the prejudices of our day?
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POPSAgainst Islamic Extremism It is for this reason that one must approach Islam from Islamic sources if one wants to understand it. This doesn’t mean one will have to accept all that one reads, nor that one can’t be critical after you have studied it: but you will then be able to be critical of something which is true and representative of the faith, not something made up.
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POPSReligious Books Not sure how they're doing it, but there are bunch of religious books, all available for pdf download. The site is clean, but you'll get the Ads when you try to download.
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POPSChurch Must Change or Die The traditional church always fights every new intellectual insight, making it difficult for educated people not to stray. Recall the fate of Galileo in the 17th Century. Observe how the church still fights Darwin with such silly things as intelligent design. Look at the present debate in the church over homosexuality in which people use a definition of homosexuality that is no longer saluted anywhere in scientific or medical circles upon which to justify their prejudice. When knowledge collides with traditional faith change is inevitable. I welcome it and if the church cannot engage this intellectually driven change, then it probably should die.
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POPSKaren Armstrong will make the ‘Case for God’ in Noble Lectures Among Armstrong’s recent work is a re-writing of her biography of the Prophet Muhammad, newly titled “Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time.” She said on New York public radio in 2006, that “I have rewritten my biography of the Prophet Muhammad, based on the latest research — he was not a warrior, but he found himself, like many of the Axial Age sages, in a violent society and he eventually brought peace to the region by practicing a daring policy of nonviolence worthy of Gandhi. He stopped the violence and went into Mecca unarmed and forced the Meccans to negotiate with him, accepting terms that his followers thought were disgraceful.” She has just completed work on her latest book, “The Bible: A Biography,” due out in November.
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POPSThe Biggest Threat to the West Lies Within Itself, Not with Islam Simon Jenkins on threats to peace and democracy. This defeatism led the American Congress to allow its president to authorise torture and detention without trial in what Senator Robert Byrd called “the slow unravelling of the people’s liberties”. It enabled a British Home Office to curb free speech and habeas corpus. It arms police, fortifies buildings and impedes the free movement of citizens. It makes every Christian suspicious of every Muslim.