Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Chicago wasn't the first target of the Indiana atheists. Earlier this year, the five or so members of the Secular Alliance of Indiana University, in Bloomington, closely followed the well-publicized atheist efforts in Britain (which, thanks to the fervor of the British press, received global coverage). "Why don't we try something like that?" one student asked at a meeting. They bounced around ideas and came up with a campaign to raise money to place ads on buses in the handful of Indiana cities with populations over 50,000. But that was turned down by the public transportation...
...things that struck me about the book is that it's fairly secular and practical - this is what a 401(k) does, this is how a Roth IRA works. Is this something you aimed for when you were writing it? I think that's right. I've got some religious principles in there that I think are primary - like giving to charity and so forth. The other was [compound interest], a principle that I think underlies all wealth, a principle that Jesus gave: "Unto him who has, more will be given." Like the parable of the Talents. So that comes...
...were dashed by the election of the conservative Paul VI. A severe shortage of priests may prompt the church to reconsider. Since Vatican II, seminary enrollment has dropped 75%. Cutié, suspended from clerical duties, is grappling over whether to wed his girlfriend of two years. If he takes the secular path, he won't be alone: an estimated 25,000 former priests are married and living in the U.S. today...
...unpopular peace agreements with Israel. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition to the American-backed Mubarak dictatorship, waged a small-scale terror campaign against both the government and the country's Coptic Christians during the 1990s. Since then, in an effort to derail the Islamist movement, the secular Mubarak regime has embraced some of its opponents' religiosity, and perhaps some of their anti-Coptic prejudice. Last month, in a supposed measure to prevent the spread of the H1N1 swine-flu virus, the government ordered the slaughter of every single pig in the country, even though there were...
Ironically, some of the best friends to Christians in the Middle East have been at odds with America and the West. The secular societies that formed in the 1950s and '60s in opposition to Israel - especially the Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria, and Egypt under Nasser - were pretty good protectors of religious pluralism. About 5% or 6% of Iraq's population in the 1970s were Christian, and some of Saddam Hussein's most prominent officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, were Christians. But since the American invasion of Iraq, Christians have fled in droves, and constitute less than...