Until last fall, a 25-year-old Seattle man named Andrew was happily committed to Mars Hill Church, one of America’s fastest-growing megachurches with more than 5,000 members. He volunteered weekly for security duty at his branch of the church, joined a Bible study group, and had recently become engaged to the daughter of a church elder. Then he made a mistake that found him cast out: He cheated on his fiancee with a community college classmate. The fury over Andrew’s experience—and his decision to publicize the church’s internal disciplinary procedures—has led to accusations by other Christians that one of the most powerful evangelical voices in the country, Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll, employs a cultlike leadership style. Now, for the first time, Mars Hill is speaking out in response to its former member’s charges.

The Grey is a film about survival in the Arctic wilderness when four men are confronted by a pack of wolves. It is an intense movie with strong Christian undertones, but its powerful qualities are undermined somewhat by oft-used expletives. In addition, the presence of some frightening scenes featuring wolves may prompt parents to keep their children home for this film.

At The Atlantic:

In a week of tech industry protests about censorship, one company -- Microsoft -- is lending its voice to a different political cause: gay marriage. 

It has joined with five other businesses (Vulcan, NIKE, RealNetworks, Group Health Cooperative, and Concur) to support bills that would legalize gay marriage in Washington state, where Microsoft is based. The letter to Governor Chris Gregoire was brief. In its entirety it reads, "We write you today to show the support of our respective companies for SB 6239 and HB 2516 recognizing marriage equality for same-sex couples." But Microsoft elaborated on why it was supporting the bills on its official blog.

From TorrentFreak:

Since 2010 a group of self-confessed pirates have tried to get their beliefs recognized as an official religion in Sweden. After their request was denied several times, the Church of Kopimism – which holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols – is now approved by the authorities as an official religion. The Church hopes that its official status will remove the legal stigma that surrounds file-sharing.

All around the world file-sharers are being chased by anti-piracy outfits and the authorities, and the situation in Sweden is no different. While copyright holders are often quick to label file-sharers as pirates, there is a large group of people who actually consider copying to be a sacred

Whenever clergy from Asia, South America or Europe visit Roman Catholic Bishop Tod Brown in Orange County, they all want to see one church, but not one of Brown's. They want to see the Crystal Cathedral.

For decades, the architectural landmark — famous for its 10,000 panes of glass and 236-foot bell tower — has been synonymous with the Rev. Robert H. Schuller and his "Hour of Power" broadcasts. That is about to change.

Last month, the Crystal Cathedral property became the future home of the diocese after a bankruptcy judge approved the sale for $57.5 million. The Vatican has signed off and diocese officials expect escrow to open soon.

On the darkest day of the year, a hushed crowd in a dim church awaited a few minutes of sheer brilliance.

They were gathered for what has come to be known as an "illumination," a brief, breathtaking interval when a sunbeam penetrates the church's front window to bathe the altar and the sacred objects around it in a blazing patch of light. The mission perched at the edge of the San Andreas fault sees it but once a year.

As roosters crowed, a luminous rectangle appeared on the wall just to the left of the altar. Turning gold and then fiery, it slowly moved over the altar. At that moment, someone threw open the church's great double doors and a river of light shot down the 188-foot-long main aisle. One by one, parishioners were led to the altar for their moment in the sun.

Scientists are warning that frankincense supplies are failing fast, and that 90 per cent of the world’s supply could be gone in the next 50 years, thanks to some spectacularly unwise men.

Teams from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and Ethiopia have published results from the first large scale study of frankincense production and concluded that human activity and insect attack will cripple the production of what was once one of the most valuable substances known to mankind. It was imported into Europe by Frankish crusaders for use in incense for religious ceremonies, thus the name, and is noted in the bible as one of the gifts for the infant Jesus.

Many evangelicals say they have drawn scorn for bringing faith into the public square, and in [Tim] Tebow they see someone rebuffing critics who wish he’d stop talking about Jesus Christ. They see a courageous ambassador who leads an exceptionally honorable life – a virgin in adulthood, an advocate for disadvantaged children – and they credit the power of Christ within him.

“He has the following that he does, and people are interested in his story from a Christian perspective, because we [Christians] have been attacked in the media, in the entertainment world and in politics,” says Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, a Christian advocacy group. “This is a guy in the public arena, happens to be professional sports, and he’s one of us. And we’re cheering him on.”

An essay about premarital sex published in a student newspaper has caused an uproar at Yeshiva University, the Orthodox Jewish college in Manhattan, prompting the student council to withdraw the paper's funding and igniting a campus-wide debate over censorship.

By Thursday night, the website for the Beacon had received more than 41,000 hits, including 15,000 unique views on the anonymous first-person story, in which a young woman excitedly describes a hotel room tryst and her subsequent regret over having sex, the editors said.

But many said that the real argument sparked by the piece, published Monday, was over the soul of the university itself.

If there is one institution that has made a point of desperately trying to keep women in their place, it's organized religion.

Whether it's Christianity, Islam or Judaism, women are often relegated to secondary roles, their contributions seen as insignificant.

In the Catholic Church, that is taken a step further by refusing to even allow women to become priests. Now, some Catholic churches are alienating women by refusing to allow girls to serve as altar servants.