The Bishop of Croydon has attacked some of the UK’s favourite Christmas carols as “nonsense”.
The Rt Rev Nick Baines said hymns such as Away in a Manger had helped perpetuate an image of Christmas more to do with Victorian sentiment than the Gospel story.
“I always find it a slightly bizarre sight when I see parents and grandparents at a nativity play singing ‘Away in a manger’ as if it actu
In describing his experience of bombardment in France during the First World War, Australian writer Bill Harney told of the different ways in which soldiers reacted to these intense moments of stress and fear. He observed some common responses. As the bombs rained down upon the trenches, some men would panic and yell and scream, while others would start crying like children and there were those
A University of Kansas class is recording the stories of members of the state’s lesser-known religions as their numbers dwindle.
‘ ‘I was kind of motivated by this idea that we’re going to lose stuff,” said professor Tim Miller, who created the class after completing a Douglas County religion project in 2003. ”I mean, it’s the nature of human civilization that we’re going to lose stuff as tim
A plaque honoring victims who were murdered for being transgender was unveiled Nov. 20 at the Matthew Shepard Triangle in conjunction with the Transgender Day of Remembrance.
More than a 100 members of the transgender community and their supporters gathered at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Crescent Heights Boulevard carrying white roses and candles to witness the unveiling and
Even after the U.S. and China set targets this week for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s combined pledges ahead of next month’s climate summit fall far short of what experts say is needed to avert dangerous global warming.
Still, emission promises by the two countries, the world’s biggest polluters, added much-needed momentum as governments began final preparations for the 192-nat
The Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up clerical child abuse until the mid-1990s, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday.
The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation’s 720-page report said that it has “no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up” from January 1975 to May 2004, the time covered by the repo
Members of one of America’s oldest Protestant churches officially apologized Friday , for the first time , for massacring and displacing Native Americans 400 years ago.
“We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land,” the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides. “With pain, we the Collegiat
As I get older, I find that I have less tolerance for the holiday hubbub. (Its only a matter of time before I am screaming at the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.) I can totally see why Charlie Brown was annoyed with his snotty little sister and that beagle.
As I wait in line to pay for my $80 six-foot spruce tree with one wonky side, I imagine the Magi looking down on us, pounding thei
Springvale, Dandenong, Noble Park and Keysborough families are preparing their spare rooms to billet visitors to the worlds largest interfaith event.
The Parliament of the Worlds Religions is at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from December 3-9.
Hundreds of international and interstate guests, from a diverse range of religious and ethnic backgrounds, are expected to be staying i
I just learned of a pre-Christian Celtic tradition that is still being practiced in Scotland and relates to one that most of us have engaged in here.
Mary Beard, a classics professor at Cambridge University, wrote in the London Times Literary Supplement about her visit to a clootie well in northern Scotland.
The idea, she says, is to hang cloths (clooties) on trees around a well or sprin
