Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...guidelines. But the new breed of Christian entrepreneurs advertises its faith loud and clear, often in its names and logos. There are Christian banks, car dealerships, gyms, plumbers, financial planners, mortgage lenders, moving companies, building contractors and Internet-service providers. As more Christians hang their beliefs on their shingles, secular observers are raising concerns about the rights of consumers and employees. Some question the wisdom of limiting markets by faith. "Capitalism worships the market, on which there aren't supposed to be any restrictions," muses Alan Wolfe, a Boston College sociologist and the director of the Boisi Center on Religion...
...some anti-Darwinists seized upon Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion in the 1987 case. Christian fundamentalists, he wrote, "are quite entitled, as a secular matter, to have whatever scientific evidence there may be against evolution presented in their schools." That line of argument--an emphasis on weaknesses and gaps in evolution--is at the heart of the intelligent-design movement, which has as its motto "Teach the controversy." "You have to hand it to the creationists. They have evolved," jokes Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, Calif., which monitors attacks...
...Paul's opposition to condoms, he simply called abstinence the only "fail-safe" way to prevent HIV.) But those who missed the "Panzer Kardinal" were rewarded in the weeks before an unusual political triumph on June 13. It was clear that Benedict regarded Europe as the epicenter of the secular relativism he scorned, but it was less so what he might do about it. When an Italian referendum threatened to end restrictions on in-vitro fertilization, the Pope joined the fray, telling Italian bishops fighting it, "I am close to you with my words and my prayers." When the initiative...
...Austrian cardinal stirring up the evolution-vs.-creationism argument in the U.S.? In part, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn says, to spark debate in an increasingly secular Europe. Earlier this month, the influential Archbishop of Vienna - who is as close as any Cardinal to Pope Benedict XVI - wrote an editorial in the New York Times lambasting what he calls "Neo-Darwinian dogma," and suggesting that the Roman Catholic Church isn't necessarily convinced that evolution is true. "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the Neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided process of random variation...
...wrenching moment for the Gaza settlers. The pullout strikes at the heart of their religious beliefs. Sharon's plan has caused a crisis in religious Zionism, the messianic movement that has driven Israel's massive settlement expansion of the last three decades, by shattering its basic tenet - the secular Israeli state is no longer serving as a vehicle for restoring Jewish possession of the Biblical Land of Israel, which they believe is an essential condition for the coming of the Messiah...