Children from religious families are less kind and more punitive than those from non-religious households, according to a new study. All over the internet and printed in newspapers (the above quote is from the Guardian) is the conclusion of the study that found that religious belief is a negative influence on children’s altruism: ” Our
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Preaching the opposite of what the Bible teaches On Sunday most preaching on the Widow’s Mite will preach the opposite of what Jesus in the Bible is actually teaching. On Sunday many men (and women) in long robes (and even those who deprecate robes and instead wear expensive suits or hip-pastor jeans with designs and
Available now online is New Zealand’s Lectionary Te Maramataka 2016 PDF (1.54 MB – click link to download). [Note – page numbers of the printed booklet may differ from the online version referred to here.] This is just a splash of comments from a quick first glance. There is much in a publication such as
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I’m reading Hermits; The Insights of Solitude and appreciating what it offers, including a lot of the quotes it presents. In a book focusing mainly on solitude in the Christian tradition, I was taken by the chapter on Ramakrishna in which it reminded me that life, for a Hindu, is divided into four stages: bramacarya
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This coming Sunday, in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia of Or, the lectionary indicates (above) the liturgical colour is Green, or Red, or White, or Violet. This “reflects common practice in most parishes” (Lectionary page 4). First prize goes to the first person who can calculate the number of reading options
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History of All Souls Day The origins of All Souls date to 1048 when Abbot Saint Odilo of the monastery of Cluny declared this celebration to commemorate departed Christians. In the course of several hundred years the feast spread across Europe to England and finally in the fourteenth century Rome made it an official feast
