one higher power

A story today out of Taunton, Massachusetts, highlights the worst effects of the despair associated with the love of money.

Of course, I don’t know Carlene Balderrama. Maybe there were other factors at play besides just an aggressive mortgage company foreclosing on a home. There are all sorts of speculative ways of looking at a situation like this without firsthand knowledge, but the root of the problem was clear in Carlene’s own words: “take the insurance money and pay for the house.”

As Paul Martin describes despair in his new book, Carlene felt (Continued…)

Here in the U.S., the presence of religion in public schools is limited to a strongly enforced “objective” presentation - meaning that public schools can teach “about” a religion, but cannot promote the idea that any particular religion is a preferable one. While students are free to gather in extracurricular “clubs” surrounding religious themes, discussing religious beliefs in any way that could be construed as proselytizing or promotion is prohibited during official school time. For example, students are not permitted to hand out religious pamphlets, and in some more extreme cases cannot even wear clothing with religious messages.

Saudi Arabia, though, is much different. The “moderate” Muslim country is often cited in political and social circles as a global leader in terms of defusing “misconceptions” cast on the religion of Islam by extremists. See also this post from July 19th.

However, Slate.com ran an interesting article yesterday, pointing out the radical difference between U.S. and Saudia Arabian government-sponsored schools - specifically in the textbooks. Anne Applebaum, author of the article, points out regarding Saudi textbooks:

They are written and produced by the Saudi government and subsequently distributed, free of cost, to Saudi-sponsored schools as far afield as Lagos, Nigeria, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Americans are not the only ones who worry about their influence. In Britain, a small political storm began last year when British mosques were found to be distributing Saudi books that called on Muslims to kill all apostates.

What’s so concerning about this, is that the information being produced and distributed as educational material from the “moderate” Muslim country contains blatantly anti-semitic, anti-Christian teachings. The dogmatic material is presented to children as young as the fourth grade, which presents a disturbing trend, considering the most recent material about which the article is written was produced after a “comprehensive revision” by the Saudi government to remove materials that were disparaging to religious groups.

You can read the Slate article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2195684

Apparently, I’m not the only one interested in researching the oldest manuscripts of the Bible. The Associated Press is reporting this evening that the British Library in London is setting out to compile the complete Codex Sinaiticus, from all its diverse locations, into a single online repository - complete with images, transcriptions, and translations. The British Library claims it should be completed and available to the public within a year.

It will be interesting to see if the texts match up to those I found at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. If nothing else, CSNTM can validly say they were the first to make a go at it.