Wicca goes to college; Empty Pews; What’s wrong with mindfulness?...more

Under Sharia: Women Get Punished For Resisting Being Raped  The Islamic State has just beheaded a woman who resisted being raped by an ISIS fighter. She killed the rapist and then was slaughtered for defending herself.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler points out that this isn’t uncommon under Islamic Sharia law. In fact, it is commonplace that under Sharia, a woman who resists being raped can be tortured or killed....

Wicca goes to college  Most people think of October 31 as Halloween, but for a rapidly growing number of Americans the date is celebrated as “Samhain” (saw - en), one of the eight Wiccan (and pagan) “sabbats.”

Wiccans and other pagans belong to one of the fastest growing religions in the United States. The 2012 U.S. census shows an increase in self-identified Wiccans from 8,000 in 1990, to 134,000 (2001), to 342,000 (2008). Those who call themselves pagan, but do not worship as Wiccans, numbered 140,000 in 2001 and grew to 340,000 in 2008.

Paganism and Wicca are highly individualized belief “systems” that today almost defy definition. Patti Wigington, a “soccer mom,” PTA vice-president, and witch from Ohio explains: “With no central authority, anyone who publishes a book or creates a Website, can say whatever they want about the faith.”...

Remembering the Holocaust after the Survivors are Gone  As aging Holocaust survivors gathered at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to celebrate its 20th anniversary last year, a question hung in the air:

 

How will the world remember the Holocaust — the Nazis’ systematic murder of 6 million Jews —  when the last survivors are gone?

 

It’s a question Joshua M. Greene, the writer and producer of “Memory After Belsen,” grapples with in his new documentary that will premiere at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York on Nov. 20 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.

 

“The further we get away from the actual events of history, the more difficult it will be to stimulate interest, the more difficult it will be to avoid the Holocaust fading into ancient lore,” said Greene...

 

Empty Pews
When I first saw the gothic chapel at Princeton University many years ago, I was quite taken aback. It was large, beautiful inside and out with a spectacular stained glass window over the altar, and seemed surprisingly Catholic for a university that I had always taken to be professionally secular, neutral and mainly disinterested in religious matters. Margaret Grubiak’s book offers a great deal of enlightenment on the unusual circumstances and controversies over chapel construction and gives intriguing thoughts on the reasons for their decline. When finished with the book, I actually wished for an extension of it into current times to see what has since been the fate of the “white elephants.” But presumably that will have to wait...

Anglican vicar posts 'Bless the Burqa' sign outside church and is shocked by the backlash   An Anglican vicar in Australia says he is "sickened" by the hate he has received in response to a sign he put up outside his church saying 'Bless the Burqa'...

What’s wrong with mindfulness? More than you might think
...One of the difficulties mindfulness will face as it sweeps across the globe is that it quite clearly in fact is a religion, however much it might shy away from the word. It’s remarkable the number of classes advertised with the caveat ‘No religious content’, which of course makes it palatable to the growing number who shy away from religion. It’s ritual for those who don’t pray; communal practice for the individualist. It’s non–doctrinal, non-prescriptive, non-demanding in terms of conduct apart from an insistence on not being judgmental. It seems to be the perfect religion for a Britain which is in full flight from its state church...