Word: christians
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...Over the past few years a new breed of young Muslim activists, most of them educated and from the middle class, have aggressively embraced a stricter version of Islam, rejecting anything Western and Christian. Boko Haram began life as a peaceful group focused on the study of the Koran, according to Abdulmumin Sa'ad, a Muslim scholar and professor of sociology at the University of Maiduguri. "The idea was that there is a lot of sin in the larger society and their parents had amassed a lot of ill-gotten wealth," says Sa'ad, who taught some of the militants...
...Minister encouraged other municipalities to follow Milan's lead, and by last week, there was a second city making a change to tackle underage drinking. The western Sicilian city of Caltagirone, famous as the birthplace of Don Luigi Sturzo, a Catholic priest and the father of Italy's modern Christian Democratic Party, will not punish underage consumers - or their parents - but it will impose fines of $70 to $350 on those who furnish them with alcohol...
That said, Christian audiences will laugh at anything, since they are either so nice or so unaware of any entertainment other than Seventh Heaven. Puns proved to be a big hit, as was anything involving eating or pooping. My troupe mates were impressively funny within those boundaries, but after a while, I couldn't take the comedy shackles. During a version of the game Jeopardy!, someone shouted the answer "Milk!" to which I nervously buzzed in with "What is a movie they'd never play at this church?" To my relief, this got a laugh. So when...
Afterward, lots of supernice Christian people complimented my Christian-bashing jokes, including Tony Guerrero, Saddleback's director of creative arts, who also throws a jazz and Shakespeare festival at the church. I asked him what exactly the point of all this was, and he said, "If you look back in history, most of the arts were done for the church. All the music of Bach and Mozart was written for the church. We'd like it to be a hub for the arts again." Even back in the Renaissance, for every Michelangelo, there were probably five guys on a stage...
...from its central missions of proselytizing and charity, I think it's great that the congregation is branching out. I want there to be more kinds of comedy and music and art. I'm just glad I'm not one of the poor Evangelicals who let themselves see only Christian versions of those things. Because I can't be there every month to save the show...