Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Two Prophetic Religious News Analyses from 2009 Still Relevant Today


I was looking over some old articles I posted (or reposted) back in 2009 and 2010 at johnsanidopoulos.com and found the following two articles worth taking a second look at 7 years later to see how they still hold up. Remarkably these two articles, which challenge two religious extremes in our culture, are just as relevant today as they were when they were written. Read for yourself.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Movies in the 21st Century


BBC.com this past week published a list of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century since 2000, as picked by 177 film critics from around the world. Though I have some personal issues with the list, I really liked the introduction to the list, which makes the case that film in the 21st century has not been on the decline, as many wrongly hold, but it is ever evolving and producing new classics like it always has. Therefore, I will reproduce a section of the introduction below, and you can view the list here, and determine how many you have seen, and if you agree with the list.

Saturday, August 13, 2016

An Orthodox Chapel for the Russian Athletes in Rio de Janeiro

Members of the Russian Olympic team pose for a photograph after a prayer service at the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/Tass

August 11, 2016

The father confessor of the Russian Olympic team, and rector of St. Dimitry Donskoy Church in Severnoye Butovo (district in south-east Moscow), Archpriest Andrey Alexeyev organized a chapel for the Russian Olympic athletes.

It was opened in the Olympic village in Rio de Janeiro. Each athlete receives support and consolation there, parishioners of St. Zinaida Church in Rio de Janeiro told Interfax-Religion on Thursday.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

The Vow of an Olympic Gold Medalist


Anna Korakaki is a shooter who represented Greece at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, winning a gold medal in the 25m pistol and a bronze medal in the 10m air pistol. At the age of 20 and in just her maiden Olympic campaign, she became the first Greek woman to win two Olympic medals in the same competition and the first Greek athlete in general since 1912, making her one of the most decorated Greek athletes ever.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Mixing Religion and Politics Is Bad for Both


Napp Nazworth
March 19, 2012
The Christian Post

Young people are turning away from churches because they associate Christianity with Republican politics, a study reveals.

Political science Professors David Campbell (University of Notre Dame) and Robert Putnam (Harvard University) published their findings, "God and Caesar in America: Why Mixing Religion and Politics Is Bad for Both," in the March/April edition of Foreign Affairs. Campbell and Putnam also wrote American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (2010), which was recently released in paperback. For that book, they have been surveying the same group of people from 2006 to 2011. The same data was used for the Foreign Affairs article.

Friday, August 5, 2016

The Habit of Demonization in American Public Life


Religious Right Should End 'Demonization' Of Political Opponents, Seek 'Common Ground,' Opinion Piece Says

September 30, 2009

Since the early 1970s, there has been a "disappearance of an approach to public life in which stark differences could be debated without adversaries slipping into the demonization of one another," David Gushee -- distinguished professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights -- writes in a USA Today opinion piece. According to Gushee, a "number of factors have contributed to a national slide from civility to demonization in the past 40 years," but the "1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision and the ensuing religious mobilization into political combat ... have made the greatest difference." He writes that demonization is "viewing those we disagree with as if they are the embodiment of evil" and "involves a profound loss of perspective on the humanity of our opponents."