Monday's News & Ideas - 9/20/2021

Women are essential in the Bible. Now they’re in the Sunday readings
Religion News Service: “What does it look like to tell the Good News through the stories of women who are often on the margins of scripture and often set up to represent bad news?” asks the Rev. Wilda Gafney.

As a pastor, I can’t define life’s edges. Neither can lawmakers
Sojourners: This holy space of in between, when death is drawing near, is not the place for theological questions about personhood or ensoulment. These are the gray edges of life.

What vaccine advocates need to understand about religious exemptions
CNN: History reveals how religious exemptions were co-opted first by the anti-vaccination movement and then by the increasingly radicalized American right.

The 20-year media spectacle of saving Afghan women
Religion & Politics: To be sure, Afghan women do face deadly conditions under Taliban rule, and they are worthy of the collective attention of the international community. Yet U.S. media concern for them has always been voyeuristic in nature.

The Trump prophets regroup*
The New York Times: When you are in the business of prophecy, what do you do when prophecy fails?

The Spark

Six rules that will define our second pandemic winter
The pandemic keeps changing, but these principles can guide your thinking through the seasons to come, The Atlantic says.

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