In his April 1 "Brainstorm" blog post in The Chronicle of Higher Education, University of Washington professor of psychology David Barash offered a "modest proposal": "Indeed, I propose that it is high time for the electorate to reject anyone who is strenuously devout."

The substance of the post is a poor attempt at re-inventing the wheel when it comes to arguing that the proper relationship between religion and politics is no relationship at all.

 

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Police in Chichawatni, Sahiwal district have charged a mentally ill Christian with "injuring religious feelings" under Pakistan's widely condemned blasphemy laws.

Three families related to 25-year-old Babar Masih – the only other Christian families in the area – have fled their homes after a Muslim mob threatened to harm them, relatives of the accused told Compass.

 

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Fifty-eight-year-old Bruce Huff believes it is a sin to receive any blood or blood products. When his wife, 58-year-old Candy Huff, became unconscious several weeks ago and was rushed to Clark Memorial Hospital, he wrote a letter to the staff telling them not to give her blood transfusions.

The hospital filed a petition in Clark County Circuit Court asking that someone be appointed to make medical decisions for Candy Huff, alleging Bruce Huff was unable to make decisions in her best interest.

 

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Rules to prevent religious discrimination can now also be used to protect a belief in the BBC's ethos of public service broadcasting, a tribunal has ruled.

The decision elevates the BBC's core principle to a place in British law equivalent to Christianity.

 

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The government tried to portray several thousand Hmong followers of a sub-Christian messianic cult as orthodox Christians while the military forcibly disbanded their gathering yesterday and today.

The cult members recruited from orthodox Christian groups – vulnerable to false teaching in a country where Christians cannot print their own Bibles and are subject to other restrictions – had gathered for religious reasons in Muong Nhe district, Dien Bien Province, but it turned into a confrontation before local defense forces disbanded them, bolstered by Vietnam People's Army reinforcements hastily dropped in by helicopters.

 

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A court in Central Russia has turned down a request to end the compulsory psychiatric treatment of the man, whose doomsday sect that spent more than six months underground waiting for the apocalypse in 2007-2008.

In November 2007, 35 members of a religious sect, led by Pyotr Kuznetsov, went underground to wait for the end of the world, which they initially claimed would come in May 2008.

 

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