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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.

As we help US culture emerge from its anti-scientific faith moment, we need to stress a rational morality.

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].”

The proper role of government is to punish evildoers, Pastor Rick Warren tells Sean Hannity. If the Rev’s read is to be believed, the United States is in deep trouble.

What we are witnessing in Iran is a coup against elements of the establishment deemed insufficiently committed to a radical reading of Islam. Unable to handle the messy outcome of democracy is the regime in serious trouble?

The fantasy realms of online gaming become even more surreal when religion enters the scene; imagine Batman going on pilgrimage to Mecca, or a virtual crucifixion, or massive Bibles, raining from the sky.

The conservative evangelical founder of “The Call,” Lou Engle, is on a crusade to end legal abortion in the United States. He believes that George W. Bush and his Supreme Court picks were the result of prayer and, as depicted graphically in Jesus Camp, he aims to inspire young evangelicals to defeat the forces of Satan and his legislation.