As our friend Nicole mentioned, yesterday marked an interesting calendrical convergence. Feb. 15 is both the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday and Nirvana Day, which commemorates the Awakened One’s escape from the surly bonds of earth. Must have been an especially auspicious day for all you MuBus out there.
The National Council of Church’s 2011 church stats are out, bringing more unhappy news to mainline Protestants and Southern Baptists. Church membership overall in the U.S. dropped by about 1 percent, to 145.8 million, according to the annual report. Pentecostalism continues to grow.
Like the mainliners, conservative Judaism is also freefalling, according to the Forward, with membership dropping 14 percent since 2001. Don’t blame academia for the exodus, a new study suggests, because people with post-graduate degrees are just as religious as the rest of America.
President Obama awarded the Medal of Freedom yesterday to Dr. Tom Little, a Christian worker for the International Assistance Mission who was murdered in Afghanistan last August. The sway of Christian conservatives is scaring GOP candidates away from Iowa’s caucuses, WaPo reports.
The murder of a prison guard in Louisiana is focusing public attention on a place normally hidden from view — the prison chapel, according to the AP. A Boy Scouts leader in Portland sexually abused hundreds of boys, even though Scout and LDS Church leaders had been warned for years that the man was an abuser, a suit alleges.
In a surprising move, the Vatican said three Massachusetts parishes can stay open, overruling the local bishop. A Catholic church in Saskatoon is embedding solar panels in its stained-glass windows, and a Canadian Catholic priest who describes himself as “pro choice” is suing the anti-abortion LifeSiteNews.com for defamation.
It’s not only lonely being a single Mormon woman of a certain age, it also imperils her happiness in the afterlife. Two-thirds of teenagers wish they had their virginity back, according to a survey by an evangelical youth ministry.
The AP profiles the Dalai Lama’s nephew, who was killed by an SUV in Florida while marching for Tibet on Monday.
Believing that God wants you to be famous actually improves your chances of attaining fame, according to the WSJ. The South Park Mormon musical is not as anti-Mormon as expected, Slate reports. Arcade Fire’s Grammy winning album, written in large part by its Mormon-raised frontman (that’s Win Butler at top left), explores the soul of suburbia, says Religion Dispatches. The band’s “Neon Bible” is a better album, though, IMHO.