TODAY IN GOD:
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE
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Uh … the Easter kiwi?
WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND – A New Zealand environmental body is targeting the Easter bunny in a renewed war against one of the country’s worst natural pests.

Environment Canterbury on the country’s South Island wants people to come up with an alternative Easter symbol as part of a campaign to highlight the damage caused by the non-native pest.

“They’re like an environmental curse,” Mark Oldfield of Environment Canterbury told Reuters.

“We did have a similar competition a number of years ago and we came up with the Easter Kiwi,” Oldfield said, referring to the flightless bird that is the country’s national bird.

Rabbits were introduced in the late 19th century for a fur trade that never got established, but they bred at such a rate that they infested large parts throughout the country, eating sparse vegetation and causing widespread erosion.
FOR THE FULL STORY (REUTERS VIA YAHOO NEWS) CLICK HERE

Passover seders can be ‘relaxed, funky,’ rabbi explains
Passover seders are sometimes depicted as stiff family affairs with ancient foods, bored children and a heavy dose of scripture. Sort of like a religious Thanksgiving without the football.

But many Jews describe Passover, which begins at sundown today, as the “fun” Jewish holiday. And some take their seder fun and extend it beyond the first night of Passover.

Although family seders remain the most common kind of Passover celebration, non-traditional seders have become increasingly popular in recent years. There are seders-at-sea, chocolate seders and seders for singles, for racial justice, for addicts, for women, even for vegetarians.

Precisely because it is a home-based, family-oriented festival, Passover is the most celebrated Jewish holiday, observed by the very religious and not-so-religious alike.
FOR THE ENTIRE STORY (By my homechunk Tim Townsend at the ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH) CLICK HERE

Joyful noises at a hip-hop church
He goes by the name of Pastor Flo.

As he stood in the pulpit of the Hip-hop Sanctuary New Generation Church, all eyes were on him.

“They say we can’t have hip-hop and church,” said Flo, a lay preacher whose real name is Roosevelt Sargent. “I say this is real church. It’s just presented by and for the hip-hop community, but don’t get it wrong, this is a place of praise and worship.”

In the dimly lighted church, a chorus of agreement rang out.

Murals of the Last Supper dangled from the wall. A deejay scratching bass-booming, wall-thumping music worked from the pulpit. Churchgoers wore do-rags and New Era fitted hats, and clutched worn Bibles.

With traditional churches seeking ways to revitalize interest in worship — particularly among the young — the distance between hip-hop and religion is closing.
FOR THE FULL STORY (LOS ANGELES TIMES) CLICK HERE

Was It a Hoax? Debate on a ‘Secret Mark’ Gospel Resumes
Imagine the discovery of a previously unknown Gospel of Mark, a secret text suppressed by church authorities that pictured Jesus initiating his disciples with a hallucinatory, nocturnal and quite possibly homosexual rite. Imagine the headlines, the four-alarm book promotion and the cable network special.

Ho-hum, you say? Isn’t it simply Easter season, when fresh Gnostic gospels or dubious ossuaries show up like spring daffodils?

Ah, but those with long memories know that just such a “secret Gospel of Mark” once did make headlines. In 1973, Morton Smith published both a dense scholarly tome (“Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark,” Harvard University Press) and a popular book (“The Secret Gospel,” Harper & Row) describing a manuscript that he had found in a Greek Orthodox monastery south of Jerusalem.
FOR THE FULL STORY (Peter Steinfels at THE NEW YORK TIMES) CLICK HERE

Beware slackers: Your soul may be dead
BEIJING — China has issued new rules intended to weed out “dead souls” and other so-called employees at government departments who earn salaries despite not doing any work, state press reported last week.

Government departments around the country often pay more out in wages than they should, with far too many employees sitting around doing nothing or continuing to be paid after they have retired, the China Daily said.

“In some cases, former staff members’ families receive their salary after they have died,” the paper said, referring to the “dead souls” phenomenon.
FOR FULL STORY (AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE VIA UK YAHOO NEWS) CLICK HERE

Bulgarian Satanists Demand to Register Sect as Official Religion
Bulgaria’s Satanists will demand their sect to be recognized and promulgated as an official religion by the Bulgarian Directorate on Ecclesiastical Matters, Standart newspaper reported Monday.

There are politicians in the sect of Bulgaria’s Satanists, its head Rumen Atanasov announced Saturday in an interview for Darik Radio.

There are more than 100 people, who are members of the Argenteum Astrum Order, politicians among them, Atanasov, who is the head of the order in Bulgaria added.

According to the newly adopted law on religion, the Satanists must register themselves as a religion in court and not in the Directorate on Ecclesiastical Matters.

According to another newspaper, members of the ultra-nationalist party Ataka and of the Union of Democratic Forces also belong to the satanic order.

Modern Satanism was founded by Aleister Crowley, who created a doctrine, whose main principle is “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”.
FROM SOFIA NEWS AGENCY