February 22, 2008

ENVIRONMENT
Evangelical leaders host 'creation care' summit in Orlando-area church
Mark I. Pinsky/Orlando Sentinel (02/22/2008)
Calling climate change "the civil-rights movement of the 21st century," evangelical Christian leaders gathered at a daylong environmental conference in Longwood Thursday.

'Renewal' spreads the environmental gospel
Ty Burr/Boston Globe (02/21/2008)
Global warming makes strange but useful bedfellows. "Renewal," a documentary by Marty Ostrow and Terry Kay Rockefeller opening at the Museum of Fine Arts today, traces the rise in environmental activism among religious communities throughout America.

DEATH PENALTY
Lawyers divided on death penalty system
Henry Weinstein/Los Angeles Times (02/21/2008)
Prosecutors and defense attorneys tell a state panel that the system is dysfunctional but differ on solutions.

DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE
Web Site Encourages Churches to Break the Mold
Matthew Streib/Religion News Service (02/22/2008: pewforum.org)
In an era of declining attendance, churches across the country are scrambling to embrace modern marketing tools: Web sites, podcasts, billboards and the like. But a backlash is forming, as critics argue that while these megachurch-inspired tactics fill the pews, they sometimes lead to a weakened Christianity and ecclesiastical bait-and-switch.

A Lead on the Ark of the Covenant
David Van Biema/Time (02/22/2008)
When last we saw the lost Ark of the Covenant in action, it had been dug up by Indiana Jones in Egypt and ark-napped by Nazis, whom the Ark proceeded to incinerate amidst a tempest of terrifying apparitions. But according to Tudor Parfitt, a real life scholar-adventurer, Raiders of the Lost Ark had it wrong, and the Ark is actually nowhere near Egypt. In fact, Parfitt claims he has traced it (or a replacement container for the original Ark), to a dusty bottom shelf in a museum in Harare, Zimbabwe.