You might think that religion may deter business, but researchers have now found that the opposite is true. It turns out that businesses with head offices in places with high levels of “religiosity” are less likely to experience stock price crashes as a result of not disclosing bad financial news. The findings reveal that if you’re looking for a business to invest in, you may want to consider one that’s religious.
— Science World Report

Zoroastrians mull future at India meeting
The world’s tiny but hugely successful Zoroastrian community will confront a demographic crisis which threatens its very existence when it gathers en masse in its spiritual home of Mumbai this week. The four-day World Zoroastrian Congress, beginning on Friday, brings together followers of one of the world’s oldest religions, many of whom are descended from Persians who fled to India to escape persecution more than 1000 years ago.
— SBS

Atheists are standing up for religion
The most prominent thinker in the first wave of religion-friendly atheists was Alain de Botton, the Swiss-British author of Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion (2012). De Botton worried that as fewer and fewer of us went to church, temple, mosque or reading room, we would come to lose our sense of being members of a community with responsibilities to one another. We atheists, he wrote, have much to learn from religion about care, compassion, forgiveness and duty. We belittle the inter-personal or social accomplishments of religion at our peril.
— The Province

Circumcision of young boys is not a right
It is a basic tenet of human rights law that one right may well conflict with another. The classic case is the right to privacy vs. the right to free speech. Regarding the circumcision of young boys for religious reasons, children’s right to physical integrity conflicts with parents’ right to freedom of religion. As many of its resolutions show, the assembly has been a strong supporter of religious rights. But in this case, when considering the relative weight of the human rights in question, the assembly gave precedence to the rights of children.
— Stuff

To what degree is it reasonable to describe Paganism as ‘a religion’?
What is the relationship between religion and spirituality? These are big questions, by anyone’s standards. When you start out along a Pagan path, these questions may be visible to you and troubling. Equally they may be invisible, which can make the questing a good deal harder. The very nature of Paganism makes tidy answers difficult to find.
— Patheos

Jesus, Christianity And Social Justice
Christianity in India was—and is—not a monolith of social conservatism or progressivism, very much like Europe or elsewhere (as we saw in the preceding discussion). This duality of the Christian tradition continued during the colonial rule and continues still in many visible and invisible ways. Put otherwise, the emergence of phenomena such as the Christian right and Liberation theology have their local versions all over the world. Thus, in regard to India (where 85 per cent Christians are subalterns or dalit-adivasis who embraced the religion in the hope of freedom from caste-class oppression), the Christian leadership has to decide whose legacy it carries and celebrates.
— Countercurrents

Try Buddha’s eightfold path to restore amity and sanity
Although some might construe Buddhism as an Oriental intrusion intended to discombobulate the predominantly Judeo-Christian culture of the Occident, those who revere the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution are most likely to appreciate the contribution that Buddhism could make to remove the mental fetters that have caused much agony and discontentment (dukkha) among people living in a society driven by excessive materialism.
— Sri Lanka Guardian

How an atheist deals with Christmas
“Part of my interest in being a vocal atheist is to let more people know that we are out here,” [Ron] Herman said. “We are members of the community and we’re responsible members of the community with integrity like other people. And we strive to do good even though we don’t have gods. I like to let people know, hey, we’re not all believers.”
— Albuquerque Journal

A Christian Musician With More Questions Than Answers
Last year, Christianity Today magazine named Josh Garrels’ Love & War & The Sea in Between its album of the year. In 66 minutes, Garrels mentions Jesus exactly once. The album is a lyrical, haunting exploration of what it means to be a Christian.
— NPR Music