Monday's News & Ideas - 1/13/2025

They lost their Altadena church in the Eaton fire. They still gathered to worship*
The Los Angeles Times: The Eaton fire reduced the 78-year-old Spanish Colonial Revival sanctuary to ash. And it took the homes of at least 15 members of the small, aging United Church of Christ congregation.
NPR: Southern California wildfires destroy or damage many houses of worship

Some US lawmakers want more Christianity in the classroom. Trump could embolden their plans
The Associated Press: Conservative lawmakers across the U.S. are pushing to introduce more Christianity to public school classrooms, testing the separation of church and state by inserting Bible references into reading lessons and requiring teachers to post the Ten Commandments.

On a mission from God: Inside the movement to redirect billions of taxpayer dollars to private religious schools
ProPublica: Rarely seen letters show how the voucher movement started in the 1990s as a concealed effort to finance urban parochial schools and expanded to a much broader push.

‘God is still on the throne’ and other post-election platitudes
Sojourners: Pastors and Christian leaders who respond with cliches like “God is still on the throne” are often well-meaning but those responses are theologically unsound.

India kicks off a massive Hindu festival touted as the world’s largest religious gathering
The Associated Press: Over about the next six weeks, Hindu pilgrims will gather at the confluence of three sacred rivers — the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati — where they will take part in elaborate rituals, hoping to begin a journey to achieve Hindu philosophy’s ultimate goal: the release from the cycle of rebirth.

The Spark

As a climate scientist, I knew it was time to leave Los Angeles
One lesson climate change* teaches us again and again is that bad things can happen ahead of schedule, The New York Times says.

*access is limited for nonsubscribers