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The weekly Resurgence Roundup brings together some of the most interesting content we’ve found online, as it pertains to the church and the people God has called us to reach. Keep in mind, we don’t endorse or agree with everything you’ll see included in the roundup.

The 8 worst places in the world to be religious

CNN:
Since 1999, the U.S. State Department has kept a list of the world’s worst abusers of religious rights. As the most recent report notes, it has never lacked for material. Persecutions of people of faith are rising across the globe.

Compromise on Gays Pleases No One, Scouts Are Learning

New York Times:
The Boy Scouts’ national board voted a year ago to allow openly gay youths to participate in scouting, while continuing to exclude gay leaders age 18 and over. It was promoted as a compromise intended to offer the organization time to figure out how to proceed. Instead, it has brought the Scouts only more ire from all directions and produced a house divided.

Harvard’s satanic ‘black Mass’ cancelled

CNN:
A Harvard club’s plans to stage a satanic “black Mass” were abruptly cancelled Monday after drawing fire from the Archdiocese of Boston and condemnation from the president of the Ivy League school.

Pope Francis will take rabbi and Muslim leader with him to Holy Land

Religion News Service:
Pope Francis will be accompanied on his first visit to the Middle East by Argentine Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Muslim leader Omar Abboud — two friends from Buenos Aires.

The Closing of the Collegiate Mind

Wall Street Journal:
There was a time when people looking for intellectual debate turned away from politics to the university. Political backrooms bred slogans and bagmen; universities fostered educated discussion. But when students in the 1960s began occupying university property like the thugs of regimes America was fighting abroad, the venues gradually reversed. Open debate is now protected only in the polity: In universities, muggers prevail.

Crude rules: R-rated comedies dialing it up a notch

USA Today:
Comedy’s smutty/silly/sleazy season has erupted. Hollywood is presenting a shocking 15 R-rated yuk-fests on its crucial summer slate . . . . Why the veering toward vulgarity? Given a movie calendar crowded with tent-pole movies featuring PG-13-rated superheroes, makers of comedies turn the earthiness up to 11 to gain attention — even if it means foregoing young ticket-buyers.

Atheist TV: Coming soon to a television near you

Religion News Service:
Move over, Christian televangelists. Atheism is coming to television. . . . David Silverman, president of American Atheists, a national advocacy group for nontheists, announced Tuesday (May 6) that his New Jersey-based organization would launch the first television channel dedicated to atheism in July.

Brain-Linked Prosthetic Arm Wins FDA Approval As Our Bionic Future Looms

TechCrunch:
DARPA’s initiative to build a prosthetic arm that’s fully controllable via a wearer’s mind has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration . . . a key green light that will let it edge closer to wide-scale production and distribution. The next step is to find someone to build the device, and then it can start helping amputees cope with the loss of their limbs.

The Ethics of Erasing Bad Memories

The Atlantic:
Though the emerging possibility of deleting traumatic memories could provide some people relief, the question remains whether it would fundamentally change who they are.

Don’t Call Me Grandma: Births to ‘Older’ Moms on the Rise

NBC News:
Last year, at age 42, [Elizabeth] O’Brien became a first-time mom to a 7 pound, 13 ounce “ridiculously happy and healthy” baby boy named Samuel. And she also become part of a growing trend among women over age 35 who are having their first children, according to data released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

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