RNB’s Religion Roundup: News and Data for Busy People

Religion news and data in bite-sized nuggets.¹

• Want to convert to Christianity in Burma/Mayanmar? Step 1: get government permission
• How Christianity’s Eastern history has been forgotten. More in Philip Jenkin’s book, The Lost History of Christianity
• Interactive timeline collates over 400 reports of incidents related to whole or partial demolitions of churches or church-run buildings in China’s Zhejiang Province in 2014. From April, 2014: China on course to become ‘world’s most Christian nation’ within 15 years.
• The ski school the Taliban couldn’t wipe out
• More than 1 in 10 Protestant churchgoers attend megachurches. “Mega” = sustained weekly attendance of more than 2,000. Database of 1,643 Megachurches in the U.S. These churches represent only about half of one percent of the roughly 320,000 Protestant churches in the U.S. Plus database of megachurches around the world. ²
• Rick Warren‘s Saddleback megachurch has openened a new campus in Costa Mesa. It’s the church’s ninth campus in Southern California.
• How the Book of Mormon overtook the Bible — in LDS eyes. And why Christians reject the Book of Mormon
• Stephen Green, who was boss of the HSBC bank during the period covered by the leaked Swiss files, emerged from the global financial crisis with a reputation as the City of London’s ethical banker. An ordained Church of England minister, Lord Green published a book in 2009 entitled Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World. It preached that business leaders should behave not just legally but ethically, going beyond “what you can get away with”. But does he practice what he preaches?. He faces a grilling. Also: Can banking ever be ethical?
• “The way the U.S. government policy uses drone strikes for targeted killing without any due process — not to mention the large number of innocents killed or crippled in the process — is unacceptable from any perspective.”
• Danny Masterson, an American actor and disc jockey, recently demonstrated what a mind on Scientology looks like. Scientology watcher Tony Ortega checks the facts. At Apologetics Index we like to refer to our research resources on Scientology as a consumer alert.
• Dutch court says fugitive rabbi Eliezer Berland can be extradited to Israel on sex abuse charges

Also Noted

• Can Venture Capitalists predict the future? No. Bonus: the research behind that article.

  

• Reading the Bible like we read the Quran. Some interesting comments as well.
• Couples Who Choose Not To Have Children Are ‘Selfish,’ Pope Says [What happened to simply preaching the Gospel instead of being such a busybody?]
• Meanwhile: Catholic lobbying crosses divides in pursuit of the common good
• Martin Luther: Playmobil’s fastest selling toy ever. “The so-called little Luther was released to mark the 500th anniversary of the publication of “95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences”, written by Martin Luther in 1617, which criticised certain beliefs and practices of the Catholic church such as the selling of indulgences to absolve Christians of sin and launched the Protestant Reformation.”

  

• Also: How Evangelicals Can End the Culture War. Cites the fact that when 91 percent of people between the ages of 18-29 hear the word “Christian,” they think “anti-gay.” ³

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