News & Ideas

Thursday's News & Ideas - 6/6/2024

  • Jürgen Moltmann dies
  • Côte d’Ivoire Conference to leave UMC
  • New religious schools commission
  • Christian media figures’ defamation trials
  • Vatican & the supernatural
  • Wildlife on D-Day wrecks

Died: Jürgen Moltmann, theologian of hope*
Christianity Today: A German soldier found by Christ in a prisoner of war camp, he became a renowned Christian scholar who taught that “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.”

Côte d’Ivoire Conference votes to leave denomination
United Methodist News: Côte d’Ivoire Conference members, meeting in a May 28 special session in Abidjan, unanimously voted for the conference to leave The United Methodist Church.

New commission of religiously affiliated higher education aims to spark collaboration
Religion News Service: A prominent association of American colleges and universities has created a new commission of religious schools whose aim will be to share with their nonreligious counterparts recent successes in the areas of access and affordability and the innovations that have led to growth in recent years.

Christian media figures may face defamation trials before November election
Baptist News Global: Christian media celebrities and the companies that platform them are getting closer to facing the legal consequences of falsehoods they spread about the 2020 elections.

Amid growing legitimacy challenges from its right and left, Vatican seizes control of the supernatural — to prevent ‘abuses’
Religion Dispatches: The guidance released by the Vatican’s Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith cracks down on the flurry of miracles shared on social media which, the Church argues, are exploiting and leading its members astray.

The Spark

D-Day shipwrecks were a WW2 time capsule — now they are home to rich ocean-floor life 
Among the 80-year-old sunken D-Day wrecks that line the coasts of Britain and France, wildlife is thriving on the wreckage of war, says the BBC.

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