TODAY IN GOD:
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE
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Travolta faces gay boycott over Scientology

Scientologist John Travolta is facing a gay boycott of his new movie.

Travolta turned himself into a chubby female for the role of Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray.

But activists are calling for the community to shun the film, alleging that Scientology is homophobic.

“It’s well known that Scientology has operated reparative therapy clinics to try and ‘cure’ gays,” said Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff.

“Scientologists are required to donate a hefty portion of their income to the church.

“So, by going to this movie, gay people are literally putting money into an organization that seeks to ‘cure’ them.”

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote in his 1950 best selling Dianetics book that gay people were “sexual perverts” and “very ill physically”.

Travolta refused to comment on the proposed boycott.
But the New York branch of the Church of Scientology has hit out at Naff.

“Scientology doesn’t try to tell people what their sexual orientation should be.

“The emphasis is on helping people survive better in the world,” spokesman John Carmichael said.

“If a person comes into Scientology and they are involved in doing anything that they consider detrimental to their survival, then they can change that compulsion.”

Hairspray is set to his cinemas next month.
SOURCE: SPLASH NEWS VIA NINE/MSN AUSTRALIA

Finding Religion in Second Life’s Virtual Universe
SAN FRANCISCO — In Second Life, the online virtual universe that is attracting 3.7 million users, you can light virtual candles for Shabbat, teleport to a Buddhist temple or consult the oracle for some divine guidance.

Second Life is a three-dimensional, online game produced by San Francisco-based Linden Lab in which participants create a virtual world, buy and sell land and products and interact in all the usual ways.

Now religion has a growing presence there, too, users say, and religious diversity and participation have skyrocketed since last June, when basic membership to Second Life became free.

And just like in real-life churches, mosques and synagogues, there is diversity, debate, schism and, yes, more than a few holier-than-thou types. With some real-life churches taking notice, it’s not just for computer geeks, either.

It all starts when users create an online 3-D persona, known as an avatar, taken from the Sanskrit word for the incarnation of a Hindu deity. The game’s 3.7 million users control their 6.5 million avatars with their keyboards and communicate with one another via instant message.

Tom Boellstorff, professor of anthropology at University of California-Irvine, says that contrary to what one might expect in a virtual world, Second Life adheres closely to real life.

“The surprising thing is when it’s not surprising,” said Boellstorff, author of the upcoming “Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human.”

Noreen Herzfeld, professor of theology and computer science at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., says Second Life reflects what she calls the “external face” of religion — community, identity, codes and creeds, ritual and practice.

Beth Brown, a 33-year-old Orthodox Jewish artist from Dallas, says she didn’t intend to start a community when she built the first virtual synagogue, Second Life Synagogue-Temple Beit Israel, in September.
FOR THE FULL STORY (RELIGION NEWS SERVICE VIA WASHINGTON POST) CLICK HERE

NYT‘S “On Religion”:
An Advocate Lends a Hand as Social Justice Goals Unify Faiths
CHICAGO — Lina Jamoul stood amid the London multitudes that day in February 2003, and in the masses of antiwar marchers in Hyde Park she imagined she saw her political future. There were Socialists and fashion models, dentists and nuns, the sort of coalition that an idealistic graduate student like Ms. Jamoul could envision not only stopping the impending invasion of Iraq, but also making social change at home.

Then the weeks passed and the throngs dissipated and the war began and the whole enterprise, at least in Ms. Jamoul’s eyes, dwindled to rote slogans and camp followers. Worse still, the sense of futility struck an intimate and familiar chord. Her own family had had to flee their native Syria because her father, a journalist, had fallen afoul of the government as a dissident.

On an unexpectedly brisk night two weeks ago, sitting in a Roman Catholic church on the periphery of downtown Chicago, Ms. Jamoul recognized that those frustrating experiences were not her destiny but more like an instructive counterpoint. She had not lost her desire to right wrongs. She had, however, followed it across the ocean and half a continent, to the working-class neighborhoods and suburbs that radiate outward from the Loop.

She was meeting on this evening with the leaders of a group audaciously called United Power for Action and Justice, and composed largely, though not exclusively, of congregations from across the religious spectrum.

A Muslim herself, Ms. Jamoul sat beside three women from the Mosque Foundation, a major Islamic center in suburban Chicago. Next to those women, each covering her hair with the hijab, a Reform rabbi removed his baseball cap to reveal a yarmulke.

The action and justice being discussed was a major piece of health-care legislation bogged down in the Illinois Legislature. The language of the session had none of the yearning, supplicating tone of do-gooders; it bristled with words like “target,” “polarize,” “enemy” and “vilify.” The people speaking it, Ms. Jamoul included, relished conflict and intended to win.

This kind of lexicon has for decades been a mainstay for the member groups of the Industrial Areas Foundation, the legacy of the legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s successor as head of the foundation, Ed Chambers, specifically directed its efforts toward religious congregations, and for much of the past quarter-century that especially meant black Protestants and Latino and white Roman Catholics.

Lina Jamoul embodied the process of ethnic and religious change. She is the only Muslim among the 150 full-time, paid organizers for the Industrial Areas Foundation’s affiliates throughout the country.
FOR THE FULL STORY (NEW YORK TIMES) CLICK HERE

Death row inmate holds joke contest for his ‘last words’
WASHINGTON – A convicted double murderer in Texas is holding a joke contest on the Internet so he can use the winning entry as his last words when he is sentenced to die by lethal injection on June 26.

“I’ll be enjoying my last days on this earth … I am asking you to spread the word that I am holding a contest. I want people to send me their best jokes, to keep me and the others with (execution) dates laughing!” Patrick Knight, 39, told CNN Friday in an interview from his prison.

Convicted of murdering two neighbors in 1991, Knight has spent the last 16 years on death row in Texas, the state that accounts for more than one third of all US executions since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

Relaxed and cracking jokes, Knight got all serious when he explained why death row needed an injection of humor.

“We have a situation back there where you have guys that are actually innocent — I’m not one of them … Jokes are needed back there, something to ease the tension.”

However, Knight betrayed no tension when he said, “Death is my punishment, I’ve accepted that, that’s what’s gonna happen. If you got to go, go with a smile.”

The idea for a contest, he said came from reading “Dead Man Walking,” a book on capital punishment by Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun and advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, which was turned into a Hollywood movie starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon.

So Knight, tongue in cheek, titled his webpage on the Internet, “Dead Man Laughing.”
SOURCE: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE VIA YAHOO NEWS

Noah fascinates the faithful:
Despite destruction, tale has always gotten a flood of attention

Thousands of years after the Book of Genesis was written, folks are still fascinated by the story of an old man who followed God’s command and set sail on a tumultuous journey.

Hundreds of children’s books – and some adult ones, too – retell the Noah’s ark story. Baby nurseries are decorated with scenes from the ark. Older children play at gathering the animal pairs with miniature sets made of plastic, wood or fabric.

The focus is rarely on the chaos, destruction and death in the Genesis story. Instead, the emphasis is on Noah’s obedience, how he built the giant vessel, gathered the animals and witnessed God’s promise, symbolized by a rainbow at the catastrophic storm’s end.

Some even imagine a funny side. The comedy Evan Almighty, which opens nationally Friday, stars Steve Carrell as an arrogant suburban politician who reluctantly builds an ark. Morgan Freeman plays God.

Why does the flood story continue to capture our imagination? What is it about the Old Testament story that keeps us buying ark beach towels, coffee mugs, wallpaper and birdhouses – though it describes God as destroying “every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air”?

Part of the appeal lies in the story’s adventurous spirit and child-friendly animals, said Robert Hunt, director of global theological education at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology.

“It’s an adventure story, at its roots,” said Dr. Hunt. “People embarking on a great, great adventure appeals to adults and children.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (DALLAS MORNING NEWS) CLICK HERE

RUTH GRAHAM’S TASTES REFLECTED
IN SIMPLE PLYWOOD COFFIN, MADE BY PRISONERS:

(Ed. Note: The following is a statement from Larry Ross, the Grahams’ spokesman.)

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – On a visit to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, La., in 2005, Franklin Graham noticed some coffins being produced by the inmates. Upon inquiry, he learned this was a project inmates began several years ago when warden Burl Cain discovered that many of the poorer inmates were being buried in cardboard boxes.

The warden had the inmates construct simple plywood coffins for themselves and others who could not afford to purchase them. In addition to making the caskets, the prisoners – many of them former hardened criminals who are now committed Christians – also pray over them.

Franklin was struck by the simple and natural beauty of these caskets and requested that the prisoners design and build two of them for his parents. Mr. and Mrs. Grahams’ coffins were built by inmate Richard “Grasshopper” Liggett, with the help of others, whose names are burned into the wood.

The coffins are made of plywood and lined with a mattress pad. The Grahams requested no special upgrades to the caskets, which cost around $200 to make. They were modified slightly for easier transport to multiple locations.

Upon his death, Mr. Graham will be buried in his own matching casket and laid to rest next to his wife at the foot of the cross-shaped walkway in the Prayer Garden at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte.

Following Franklin’s visit to the prison, a chapel at Angola was dedicated in Mr. Graham’s honor in 2006.