Playing Gods, a new board game making headlines, is more than just a playful riff on religion. If we want to understand religions, we have to understand their game-like qualities, and that religion might, at the heart of it all, be a game. Which does not make it trivial.
There’s a surprising quality to the prayers left at the feet of a statue of Jesus at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital; they’re not simple petitions or requests for an all-powerful God to fix their problems—they are snippets of ongoing conversations.
From “God Hates Fags” to Desmond Tutu’s calls for compassion, religion has been deeply intertwined with the struggle for AIDS justice. Fully two decades after activists first challenged church authority on HIV/AIDS religion’s report card is mixed.
RD News Round-Up—December 2, 2008. Rick Warren and Reader’s Digest’s multimedia platform; Faith-based orgs and Katrina; Churches for sale; Breakaway Episcopalians; and Bob Jones U. apologizes for racism; and Ted Haggard returns.
A new study reveals that religious professionals are not being trained to deal with the most basic aspects of the sexual dimension of congregants’ lives. Not acceptable when it comes to issues like AIDS/HIV, workplace ethics, domestic violence, and LGBTQ needs.
Rolling with the atheists in the UK; rich men, camels, and needle’s eyes; Jews, Christians, and Gaza; the Obamas on Sunday mornings…all this and more on the religion writer’s beat as the year begins.
RD News Round-Up—December 8, 2008: Proposition 8—The Rematch; California Supreme Court Justice in Religious Right’s Crosshairs; American Family Association’s 40th Birthday; and “The Last Languages Campaign,” Breakaway Episcopalians, and “Counterfeit Pro-Lifer[s].”