Search

In a relatively unprecedented move, Greek police arrested the Rector of the thousand-year-old Vathipedi Monastery, Father Ephraim, on Christmas Eve. He had just returned to the Monastery, which is located on the most sacred ground in all of Orthodox Christendom, which we have now discovered to be the only semi-autonomous region of Mount Athos.

Is the NYPD Hizzoner’s private army?

Time magazine’s religion top ten list had Mormonism in the spotlight. The Religion Newswriters Association voted Osama bin Laden’s death (and the faith response to it) their number one story in a list that included Harold Camping, Rob Bell, and Mississippi ’ s Personhood initiative. Oh, and the top religion author of 2011? Tim Tebow, whose life story is a runaway bestseller for our friends at HarperOne. But what about the stories that shoulda been, but weren ’t ? We ’ re thinking this list, drawn up Peter Laarman, might provide a template for 2012 coverage. — The Eds.

Over the past couple years, religionistas of all sorts have attempted to navigate a new media landscape in which old constructions of religious authority, identity, affiliation, and practice are changing almost by the minute.

On the conflation of deities.

In their new book, Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future, Gary Macy, William T. Ditewig, and Phyllis Zagano revisit the question of women’s ordination to the diaconate in the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike ordination to the priesthood, women’s ordination to the diaconate has unambiguous roots in the Christian New Testament, where Phoebe is named as a deacon of the church.

What do Pope Benedict XVI and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain have in common? They both have a thing for Krampus.

We wouldn’t have wine, and Israel would be really different.

Equally Blessed charges hierarchy is “insensitive” and “out of touch.”