The Tony Blair Foundation and the Washington Post On Faith section asked a number of women to discuss the value of religion to women in this fascinating online series developed for the International Day of Women.   Does it help or harm women?   Some of the women include: Farah Pandith,  Special Representative to the Muslim Communities at the US Department of State,Katrina Lantos Swett,  Chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and Samina Yasmeen,  Specialist in Islam and professor... Read more

In this 14 minute clip, author Diana Butler Bass discusses with Religion and Ethics Newsweekly the implications of the religiously unaffiliated for the Christian Church. She says they are leaving the Church for a variety of reasons such as the hypocrisy of church leaders who are often more concerned about politics and money than faith. She deals with this in much more depth in her book, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual... Read more

On Wednesday, last week, the United Nations proposed a declaration to condemn violence against women. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, according to the New York Times, took issue with that declaration and outlined a list of exceptions that seem to reflect the patriarchal view of the Brotherhood and frighten Egyptian liberals. The Brotherhood says that the husband has “guardianship” of his wife and is not his equal partner. My thanks to David Korfhage for tweeting the link to this story. Read more

Watch early church trinitarian heresies in this humorous clip that I found at First Things. Partialism and modalism are defined here. Read more

Who was St. Francis of Assisi, the namesake of the new Pope? This short clip from Religion and Ethics Newsweekly summarizes his life. Read more

Pope Francis paying his hotel bill and endearing himself to the world for his simplicity. The Washington Post has a nice short clip from CBS reporter, Allen Pizzey, about the Pope’s first day with the press. It also has a good story about the Jesuits here. Read more

As part of World Malaria Day, my religion students learned about the tragedy of malaria in a Face to Faith video conference with malaria expert, Saleema Abdul Ghafur. She is the director of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance, an alliance of 49 African presidents and prime ministers. She works to raise money to defeat malaria. Today, she told us that Africa loses almost $12 billion dollars each year because of lost productivity from malaria deaths. She says that women and... Read more

Another excellent clip, this one from CNN, on how the cardinals select the next pope. Read more

The religion professor and writer, Stephen Prothero tweeted the link to this engaging story in PRI’s The World.  Reporter, Rhitu Chatterjee,   profiles a young Indian girl in a remote village showing that in a country under fire for its treatment of women, unprecedented opportunity still exists for many women. The story includes a couple of short videos, like the above, another in which the reporter allows the young girl to turn tables and interview her. It’s a touching story... Read more

Eric Johnson,writing for the Atlantic Magazine, describes a week that he spent at the Kumbh Mela Hindu festival last month. The festival happens every twelve years at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. Hindus believe that bathing in the water will wash away their sins and help bring salvation. But religion is not the only reason why this festival is so interesting.  What’s amazing about Kumbh Mela is that it was the largest gathering of humans in history, with over 100,000,000... Read more