Last Lama * Putin Satan * Pocono Exile : Tuesday’s Roundup

The fourteenth Dalai Lama says we don't need a fifteenth. Is Putin the "new Cain?" And if you were to go into exile, would you pick the Poconos?

Protest genen Putin. Image courtesy of Michaela via Flickr.
The Dalai Lama, religious and spiritual leader for millions of Tibetan Buddhists around the world, arrived in New York City on Sept. 17, 1984, to begin a 44-day visit to the United States. During the trip, he will visit cultural, educational and religious centers. Religion News Service file photo

The Dalai Lama, religious and spiritual leader for millions of Tibetan Buddhists around the world, arrived in New York City on Sept. 17, 1984, to begin a 44-day visit to the United States. During the trip, he will visit cultural, educational and religious centers. Religion News Service file photo

The Dalai Lama says his position should be retired. Who am I to argue? But I can think of at least a couple of other people whose jobs should be discontinued sooner.

Dalai Lama: it should end with me

The Dalai Lama says he wants to be the last to hold the job, and that the nearly 500-year-old tradition of a Dalai Lama heading up Tibetan Buddhism should end on a high note. The Dalai Lama has in the past said that the institution has “served its purpose” but was far more explicit to a German newspaper this week:


We had a Dalai Lama for almost five centuries. The 14th Dalai Lama now is very popular. Let us then finish with a popular Dalai Lama . . . Tibetan Buddhism is not dependent on one individual. We have a very good organizational structure with highly trained monks and scholars.

Report: Putin is going to hell

Protest genen Putin. Image courtesy of Michaela via Flickr.

Protest genen Putin. Image courtesy of Michaela via Flickr.

So says Patriarch Filaret, head of the Kiev Patriarchate, a part of the Orthodox Church that broke away from Moscow after the fall of the Soviet Union. The patriarch also called the Russian president “the new Cain,” and explained that he had fallen under “the spell of Satan.” He still has time to repent though, added the Ukrainian patriarch.

Pledging not to pledge

You may have heard that the American Humanist Association is asking people not to say the Pledge of Allegiance until the words “under God” are removed from it, so that it would include all Americans — not just those who believe in God. Our own religious freedom editor, Brian Pellot, has balked at the pledge for other reasons.

Southern pastors make bigger bucks

Pastors in big Southern churches make more than their counterparts anywhere else in the country, reports our own Adelle Banks. The next-highest-paying region is the Northeast, followed by the West and Midwest. But Canadian pastors do worse than Midwesterners. The pay gap is just one gleaning from a new study of 727 North American churches with attendance ranging from 1,000 to more than 30,000.

Cal State vs. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

One of the largest university systems in the world, California’s state colleges, just ruled that one of the largest Christian campus groups in the world, the evangelical InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, can’t be an official school group. They’re still welcome on campus, but they don’t get the perks afforded recognized colleges groups, because InterVarsity’s leadership policies conflict with California anti-discrimination laws, writes our own Kimberly Winston.

The Poconos vs. Turkish prison

Fethullah Gulen. Image by Diyar se via Shutterstock.

Fethullah Gulen. Image by Diyar se via Shutterstock.

To some, the Turkish preacher, self-exiled in the Poconos, is a praiseworthy, pro-Western voice of moderate Islam. To newly-elected Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, he is a problem, and one he wants Obama to extradite back to his native land. Erdogan says he’s going to bring up the subject of Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of corruption, when he talks to Obama at the NATO summit on Friday.

The Show-Me-No-Abortions State

There’s already, in Missouri, a one-day waiting period and the requirement that women be given material that declares that life begins at conception and that an abortion will terminate the life of a “unique human being.” But now the legislature in Jefferson City is about to override the governor’s veto of a bill that will give Missouri the nation’s second-longest mandated waiting period before a woman can get an abortion: 72 hours.


Hindu Nation

India is 80 percent Hindu and has no official state religion. But Hindu nationalists, emboldened by the election earlier this year of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are preaching the gospel of an all-Hindu India. Foot soldiers in the movement are the volunteers in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a vast organization, Reuters reports, that aims to convert the entire country to Hinduism.

Said one Hindu nationalist activist at a recent ceremony to convert a Christian family to Hinduism:

We will not let the conspiracy of church or mosque succeed in India.

Peres to Pope: Let’s have a U.N for religions

On retired Israeli President Shimon Peres’s recent trip to visit Pope Francis, he pitched a “United Nations of Religions,” to reflect  that most conflicts these days are undergirded by religious, more than nationalistic, convictions. The Vatican, according to the AP, said Peres floated the idea to Francis during a 45-minute audience Thursday in the Apostolic Palace, and that Francis promised the Vatican would give it attention.

“Jesus Shot Me in the Head”

M.C. Taylor, who chose “Hiss Golden Messenger” for his stage name, is not a snake handler but a folksy/bluesy/jazzy singer-songwriter who croons about God and doubt.  The Washington Post profiles Hiss, offering some of the lyrics to his “Jesus Shot Me in the Head.” Or you can cut to the video:

We will give the Dalai Lama the last word in today’s Religion News Roundup, because who knows how long the world is going to have a Dalai Lama? Take it away, D.L., who once said:

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

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