Jonathan Merritt poses a fascinating question: Is AI a threat to Christianity? Read more on the answer (if there is one) here.
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February 9, 2017
September 7, 2016
For most Americans, “until marriage” proves too long to wait—at most, only about 5 percent are virgins on their wedding night. Even many Christians now question the idea that premarital sex necessarily taints people.
Olga Khazan writes in Sex Ed Without the Sex
(Image credit: Michael Kraus / gdvcom / Shutterstock / Kara Gordon / The Atlantic)
November 26, 2013
The Daniel fast is growing in popularity, often prompted by Christians’ desire for a deeper form of prayer. Many are reporting lasting physical benefits, too.Read more. [Image: flickr/A Gude/Waiting for the Word/Frapestaartje]
September 25, 2013
Claim: Twitter Is 2,000 Years Old
There’s Twitter, the 140-character bound communications service. There’s Twitter, the multi-million-membered social network. There’s Twitter, the soon-to-go-public company. But there’s also Twitter, the idea-distributor. Twitter, the community-builder. Twitter, the platform.
In those broader senses, Twitter is much older than its official seven years of life would suggest. Twitter may be, in fact, nearly 2,000 years old.
In a conference with Italian newspaper editors, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi — who, as president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, acts as a kind of culture minister for the Vatican — discussed social media and the Church’s use of it. And he claimed, during the discussion, that Jesus was the earliest of Twitter’s early adopters: the first person ever to use Twitter. Well, to “use” it.
Jesus’s pronouncements, Ravasi noted, tended to be “brief” — made up of fewer than 45 characters — and “full of meaning.” The first Christian also relied on elementary and thus easily sharable phrases like “love one another.” He also delivered many of his messages via stories and symbols, Ravasi said, “a bit like in television today.”
Read more. [Image: Shutterstock/Renata Sedmakova]
April 10, 2012
The Upstart Christian Sect Driving Invisible Children and Changing Africa
For Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children, stumbling into Uganda’s one-time civil war wasn’t an accident; it was a divine calling.
While the rest of the world laughs at or ponders the psych ward-ridden creator of Kony 2012, the unlikely Internet video sensation that brought both himself and a vicious Ugandan rebel instant and overwhelming fame, the mystery of his inspiration and success only grows more curious.
Who is this man? Is he crazy? What drives him? Russell summed it up in two hesitant words – Jesus Christ.
“For me, that’s the motivator,” Russell told me in an interview early one morning from California in March, as the video was first going viral.
He’d just had what was among the first of many nearly sleepless nights, he told me at the time, which his family later said contributed to his nude psychotic breakdown on a San Diego street corner.
“I can’t do it without that faith,” he said, calling Jesus the “ultimate storyteller.” Excitement rushed through his voice. “If I thought I was doing it myself, it would feel myopic.”
Behind the origins and success of Kony 2012 is an eclectic and powerful network of Christian activists, traditionally dominated by the Christian right, that has at times brought mass attention, almost single-handedly, to some of Africa’s worst and most ignored conflicts, from South Sudan to the Nuba Mountains, Darfur to the Lord’s Resistance Army.
The movement has also sparked controversy. It is a community of activists that wields disproportionate influence over African affairs, from military politics to public health to social policy. As they work to organize a global effort to catch the leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a distinct but not-so-distant wing of the same movement helped to implement Uganda’s notorious anti-gay law, which legalizes the killing of “repeat” gay men.
Still, for all the financial links connecting Invisible Children to the socially conservative American activists in Africa, the two could not be more different.
Read more. [Image: Invisible Children/YouTube]
April 9, 2012
In Focus: Holy Week and Easter
Last week, Christians around the world celebrated Holy Week and Easter, commemorating the final days of Jesus Christ – his return to Jerusalem, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Families attended church services, hooded penitents took part in processions, and children hunted for Easter eggs. In Catholic passion plays, participants depicted Jesus’ trial and death. Other local rituals drew heavily on earlier pre-Christian traditions. Collected here are images from several Holy Week and Easter activities this year.
See more. [Images: Getty, Reuters]
(Source: The Atlantic)
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