Buoyed by public support

American nuns met in St. Louis last week and decided to tell the Vatican to cut the nunsense--albeit in gentler, more sisterly terms.

After a weekend of prayer and reflection here in Sainta Louisia, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents about 80 percent of American nunhood, announced that it would not submit to a Vatican-mandated takeover, but would instead seek continued dialogue with Rome over charges that the group's leadership is "radical feminist".

In April, the Vatican issued an 8-page doctrine that was sharply critical of the leadership of LCWR for spending too much time on issues like poverty and social justice, and not enough time condemning homosexuality and abortion, the great mainstays of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Holy See has announced that it will assign a team of bishops to take over the LCWR and realign it with the hard and fast values of the church--a mandate LWCR rejected on Friday, in favor of dialogue with a panel of archbishops.

These "radical feminunzies" have exposed a rift between American Catholics regarding the mission and structure of the Church. St Louis, with its diverse population of 650,000 Catholics, was the perfect staging ground.

More »

craigslist.org

On March 26,1997, authorities entered the mansion of the Heaven's Gate religious cult near San Diego to find the bodies of 39 people dead from a self-induced cocktail of phenobarbital and vodka. The deceased wore identical sweat suits and Nike sneakers and lay neatly arranged on bunk beds in the belief that they'd soon be picked up by a spacecraft and ferried away to a new beginning.

Now two of those bunk beds associated with the largest mass suicide ever to occur on U.S. soil can be yours for the low, low price of $1,000 each, or best offer. And if you think that sounds expensive, it's a bargain compared to what the beds once went for online, according to the man behind the Craigslist ad.

More »

Just don't try it in a Missouri jail after September 6.

On Tuesday, Missourians overwhelmingly voted for Amendment 2, more commonly known as the "right to pray" amendment. The amendment ensures that everybody in the state has the right to express their religious beliefs, acknowledge God in public, and pray whether they're in a school, public building or government office.

But not if they're in prison.

More »

Reverend Xiuhui Joseph.

Reverend Xiuhui "Joseph" Jiang, 29, has been charged with first-degree endangering the welfare of a child for allegedly fondling a girl younger than 17. Jiang is the associate pastor at the Cathedral Basilica, but none of the inappropriate sexual contact occurred on church property. 

On December 17, 1862, nearly 150 years ago (minus six months or so), General Ulysses S. Grant expelled the Jews from the Department of the Tennessee, the war zone under his command, which stretched from northern Mississippi to Cairo, Illinois, between the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers.

Within three weeks, President Lincoln had countermanded the order, known as General Orders No. 11, and the Jews were allowed to return to their homes. But the effects of the order lingered for several decades -- though not in the ways one might expect.

Jonathan D. Sarna, a historian and professor at Brandeis University, tells the story of General Orders No. 11 in his latest book, When General Grant Expelled the Jews. He'll be at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site at Grant's Farm (which Grant actually did farm, in the 1850s) tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. to discuss the book, but he took some time this morning to chat with Daily RFT by phone.

Daily RFT: Tell us a little bit about General Orders No. 11.

Sarna: I could tell you a lot about General Orders No. 11.

Just the good parts, then.

More »

image via

A Jewish cemetery in Otwock, Poland, near Warsaw.

Dr. Robin Park, a psychiatrist who practices in Creve Coeur, is not a Jew. She has no Jewish ancestors. Nonetheless, she will be spending her summer vacation this August in a Jewish cemetery in Zambrów, a small town in northeastern Poland, where she will be clearing debris and collecting scattered pieces of tombstones and bits of bone.

It's not like she enjoys cleaning up. If that were all, there are plenty of cemeteries in the U.S. that could use her help. But Park is a member of the Matzevah Foundation, a non-profit based in Norcross, Georgia, dedicated to reconciling Christians and Poland's tiny Jewish community.

"That's what 'Matzevah' means in Hebrew," Park explains, "to reconcile or restore. We're a group of Christians with no agenda."

But the group also has a more practical mission. Before World War II, there were 3.5 million Jews in Poland. Now there are 3,500 living Jews and 1,400 cemeteries. Somebody needs to tend to all those graves.

More »

Image via

Can a secular group thrive in Missouri?

The Secular Coalition of America -- an umbrella group comprised of non-theists, believers in the separation of church and state, freethinkers, and other people headed straight to Hell -- is trying to open a chapter in Missouri.

They're based in D.C., but they're now launching the second of five phases to get a toehold in the states. "Phase 2" includes Missouri, plus Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Montana, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Texas.

Why the expansion? Quoth executive director, Edwina Rogers: "Some of the most egregious violations of church state separation are being promoted and passed at the state level, and we absolutely must act to stop it."

Rogers cites as examples Missouri's recent "Don't Say Gay" bill, the bill encouraging state residents to participate in the National Day of Prayer, and the bill that allows employers who oppose contraception and abortion to refuse to provide coverage for employees who want those things.

But can a secular group thrive in Missouri?

More »

For months, rumors have swirled in St. Louis' arts & music scene that the Luminary Center for the Arts, a secular 501(c)(3) nonprofit, harbors secret plans to convert artists to Christianity. (See our current feature). Part of this suspicion has arisen from the video below, which was recorded in November 2010 at The Journey, the Christian church right next door to the Luminary's current space on S. Kingshighway:



It was posted on their Facebook wall back in April. Luminary's co-founder James McAnally (the guy on the far left) -- who denies his group has any designs to proselytize -- admits that he had it instantly deleted from the site.

More »

At the Azusa Street Revival, the Los Angeles church where modern-day Christians first began speaking in tongues.

Like everything else, there are rules to tongue-speaking. Peter Marina, now a visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis spent four years embedded in a small Pentecostal church in Brownsville, an impoverished neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, doing ethnographic research and learning its culture and folkways, and can list them by heart.

He'll be publishing his story as a book called Getting the Holy Ghost: Experiences in An American Tongue-Speaking Church, but yesterday he gave a preview in the form of a lecture and discussion at the Forest Park Visitors Center sponsored by OASIS and the Academy of Science of St. Louis.

More »

image via

It's been noted that in Michelangelo's rendering of God in the Sistine Chapel, the deity looks like He's resting inside a giant brain.

There has been much debate over the existence of the G-spot. No, not that G-spot. The other one, in the brain, where G stands for God.

"The spiritual experience is very complex," says Brick Johnstone, a neuropsychologist at the University of Missouri. Johnstone and four of his colleagues just completed a study that shows that the right parietal lobe is connected to feelings of selflessness, which are associated with self-forgetfulness and spiritual transcendence. But that's not the only part of the brain associated with spirituality.

"There's not one spot in the brain that makes you believe in God," Johnstone asserts. Ultimately, he hopes to draw a spiritual map of the brain similar to the ones scientists have now to illustrate all the parts that contribute to the process they call "cognition" and the rest of us call "thinking."

And if spirituality is the result of brain function, then spiritual experiences aren't just limited to believers.

That's good news for us heathens.

More »