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Guilt files, Pagan edition

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We sometimes reference our guilt files and my guilt file is reaching epic levels so I’m going to try to unload three recent stories into one post. I’m grouping them together under what I’ll call The Wild Hunt banner — they’re all stories that would or could be covered over at that blog that deals with Pagan and Heathen communities. The Wild Hunt, for what it’s worth, is now appearing over at Patheos so it’s interesting to see how Patheos is landing various bloggers across the religious spectrum.


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CNN on porn: Smart people vs. Bible folks

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It seems that the comments pages at the CNN religion blog have been on fire for several days — with good reason. That’s what happens when you publish a feature about Christians hooked on pornography and you top it with a photo of a man reading a copy of Playboy hidden inside his Bible.


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Is Jon Huntsman a Jack Mormon?

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I wondered back in March whether or not the fact that we had two Mormons running for President would create an “LDSapalooza” in the news coverage. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, in part because Jon Huntsman is polling just above Pat Paulsen. Even though Romney is the nominal frontrunner in the GOP primary his faith was quite heavily covered in 2008, and this time around the media seems far more interested in covering — or ginning up — the controversies surrounding Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. I bet Romney’s pretty happy about that.


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Rounding up Madrid's 'Popestock'

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I’m often amazed by anything that can get a million or so young people to do anything or gather anywhere in one location. The Roman Catholic Church managed to do that at World Youth Day (or, what Rocco Palmo calls “Popestock”), which concluded in Madrid yesterday.


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Ethics evolve with technology

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It’s been well over a week since the New York Times published a provocative piece where women are interviewed who, after using fertility drugs and procedures, become pregnant with twins and decide to undergo “selective reduction” for lifestyle reasons. That’s a euphemism for the killing in utero of one perfectly healthy twin in a pregnancy. It’s an unbelievably difficult read if you’re of the mind that ending these lives is a major human rights crisis. But I can’t help but think it’s a difficult read even if you support the right of people to abort any child for any reason at any time in the pregnancy. I wanted to write about it all week but found it too difficult to broach.


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Evangelical royalty's game of thrones

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Frank Schaeffer has, as The Economist once put it, “made a career out of criticising his evangelical parents Francis and Edith Schaeffer.” While I and my people were not influenced by the Schaeffers, they’ve had a tremendous influence upon some of my favorite people (including GetReligion’s Douglas LeBlanc). They founded a Christian retreat center in Switzerland where many people transferred from fundamentalism to evangelicalism or to greater engagement with the culture, including secular culture. They are known for their apologetics and influence on a wide swath of people including everyone from Jesus People organizer Jack Sparks to musicians Larry Norman and Mark Heard. To say those parents were very well regarded among evangelicals, even by their evangelical critics, is an understatement.


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Will Islam affect future for Egyptian gays?

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Anyone who closely followed the events of the Arab spring knows that the demonstrations that rocked Egypt and other lands drew a unique and highly complex mix of people into the streets in opposition to the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.


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