religion
Youth ministers struggle to be candid about life's struggles
By TERRY MATTINGLY
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
It's the question that preachers, teachers and parents dread, especially if they were shaped by the cultural earthquakes of the 1960s.
But no one fears it more than youth ministers, who hear the private questions that young people fear to ask their elders.
The addiction we consider a virtue
By DAVID YOUNT
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Among false slogans, none can beat the one wrought in ornamental iron over the gates of Auschwitz: "Work Makes You Free." It was the first thing that slave laborers saw as they entered the death camp.
How Doug Marlette mixed faith and humor
By TERRY MATTINGLY
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Cartoonist Doug Marlette got used to hearing people mix comments about his humor with references to Almighty God.
After all, one of the main characters in his syndicated comic strip "Kudzu" was the Rev.
All about extinction
By DAVID YOUNT
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Scientific consensus has it that our universe began with a Big Bang. Physicists are less in agreement about how it might end.
Throughout history, prophets of doom have been anticipating the end of the world, sometimes actually predicting the date of its demise.
No mountain climbing necessary to see this unusual guru
By JENNIFER GARZA
Sacramento Bee
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Her Holiness Sai Maa knows a certain image comes to mind when most people think of a guru.
"A 75-year-old man with a long beard, right?" she says, laughing.
A look at the damage wild rumors do in the Muslim world
By TERRY MATTINGLY
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The rumor spread across Pakistan in a blitz of text messages on cell phones.
There was a killer virus on the loose and all you had to do to catch it was answer a call from an infected number.
People and their pets
By DAVID YOUNT
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
When our three grown daughters left the nest, my wife and I replaced them with a younger trio -- two cats and a Scottish terrier.
How Obama balances faith and politics
By TERRY MATTINGLY
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Play the right guitar chords and worshippers in megachurch America will automatically start singing these words: "Our God is an awesome God, He reigns from heaven above.
A look at Christopher Hitchens and his writings
By DAVID YOUNT
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
For months, the Publishers Weekly list of best-selling religious titles has been led by a book that not only denies God's existence but claims religion to be evil.
Its author, Christopher Hitchens, is a professional polemicist who routinely employs ridicule to attack what most people find sacred.
Tolerance, truth and religion, and where they fit in history
By TERRY MATTINGLY
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
When it comes to religion and politics, many skeptics are convinced that strong faith leads to judgmentalism, which leads to intolerance, which leads to oppression and, ultimately, theocracy.
Many people disagree, saying that it's impossible to defend basic human rights without a religious or at philosophical commitment to moral absolutes.
It's easy to tell who is who when they speak out.
Consider this voice: "Freedom on the one hand is for the sake of truth and on the other hand it cannot be perfected except by means of truth.
