The precise location of Herod’s tomb remained a mystery for nearly two millennia, until April 2007, when Netzer and his colleagues at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem unearthed it on the upper slopes of Herodium. The discovery provided new insights into one of the most enigmatic minds of the ancient world—and fresh evidence of the hatred that Herod excited among his contemporaries.
Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. Life, it seems, is not an incidental component of the universe, burped up out of a random chemical brew on a lonely planet to endure for a few fleeting ticks of the cosmic clock. In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe; the universe is adapted to us.
General Theological Seminary in New York has successfully installed seven geothermal wells, with 15 more slated for installation. These wells will replace the fuel oil heating system and reduce the seminary’s carbon footprint significantly. But the red tape surrounding the green project has been a nightmare.
Facebook and other online platforms are becoming more prevalent in American religious culture. Religion and Ethics Newsweekly (complete with a shiny new web design) looks at the phenomenon with a particular focus on a Boston pastor’s challenge to his congregation to live by the rules of Leviticus for a month and then blog about it at their Facebook group and then looks at the pluses and minuses of online religion.
Bishop Jack Iker, who presided over the vote in the Diocese of Fort Worth to leave the Episcopal Church, has been inhibited in the exercise of the ministry in the Episcopal Church by the Presiding Bishop.
Never before, say historians, has there been this much attention on what church the president-elect will attend. As a follow-up to Time’s asking the “which church” question, today the Washington Post also examines the phenomenon of churches trying to “maneuver themselves to attract the nation’s first African American president and his family to their house of worship.”
Many people are surprised to learn that the Diocese of Haiti is the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church with nearly 100,000 members. The Presiding
Earlier this month the Archbishop of Canterbury traveled with the Chief Rabbi to two of most notorious concentration camps of World War II. Both call for a renewed recognition of the fundamental humanity of those with whom we disagree.
A new site is out to change the way we understand the Christmas holiday by recasting it so that it is viewed through the lens of the Season of Advent.
An article by Michael Conlon for Reuters details the GAFCON backed plan to create an alternative or parallel Anglican province in the United States. The article has a number of quotes by Bishop Minns of Nigeria and claims that the Communion is likely to recognize his efforts to create this new structure. Unfortunately there seems to be a lack of actual balanced reporting in the article.