New on the Spiritual Web Shelves - A select list of books

• Playing with Religion in Digital Games (Digital Game Studies) Gregory P. Grieve
• Exploring Religious Community Online: We are One in the Network (Digital Formations) Heidi Campbell
• Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds Digital Religion Heidi A. (EDT) Campbell
• iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives Craig Detweiler
• Digital Religion, Social Media and Culture: Perspectives, Practices and Futures (Digital Formations) Pauline Hope Cheong
• The Digital Puritan - Vol.III, No.3 John Bunyan
• Byte Religion Christian Kirtchev
• Cyber Meltdown: Bible Prophecy and the Imminent Threat of Cyberterrorism Ron Rhodes
• Cyber Religion: An entry from MACM's Contemporary American Religion Brenda E. Brasher
• 13 Blasphemies: Cyber Attack on the Holy Bible S.R. Smith
• Religion and the Internet - current cult fundamentalist Cyber ??religion ( Internet Society) (1998) ISBN: 4000262742 [Japanese Import] Tosa Masaki
• Religion on the Internet (Religion and the Social Order) (Religion and the Social Order) (Vol 8) Jeffrey K. Hadden
• Cyber Evangelism Esther Ogbonda
• Cyber With Me God (First Edition) Lee Vosloo
• iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks) Gary R. Bunt
• Digital Amen: A Look into the New Cyber Congregation S. Antonio Moffett
• CyberQuest: The Complete Virtual Adventure Sigmund Brouwer
• eMinistry - Virtual Pathways for Spiritual Leadership: Taking Evangelism into the Cyber Frontier Rev. Dr. Lauren Speeth
• Cyber Snoop Nation: The Adventures Of Littanie Webster, Sixteen-Year-Old Genius Private EyeOn Internet Radio Anne Hart
• Saved In Cyber-Space: How One Man Found Salvation On-line & How the Internet Can Bring Christ to the Entire Planet Matthew Long
• Japanese Religions on the Internet: Innovation, Representation, and Authority (Routledge Research in Religion, Media and Culture) Erica Baffelli
• The First Cyber Death Extravaganza!: A Mock Passion Play Scott Douglas
• Super Cyber Box Scope and Sequence First Quarter: Cyber Wars, 7 Weeks of Fighting to Win Over the Enemy, Satan 6 Weeks of Faith, Responsibility, Self Charisma Life Publishers 

Costco Apologizes for Labeling Bibles as Fiction

A California pastor tweeted a picture of the label to his congregation

By Denver Nicks @DenverNicksNov. 20, 2013 TIME.com

Christian News Networkhttp://christiannews.net/2013/11/21/costco-apologizes-for-distributors-mistake-of-labeling-bibles-as-fiction/

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. – The wholesale retailer Costco has issued an apology after a pastor in California Tweeted a photograph of a Bible at his local store being marked as “fiction.”

On Friday, Pastor Caleb Kaltenbach of Discovery Church posted the photo on Twitter after shopping for a gift for his wife at his Simi Valley Costco.

“Costco has Bibles for sale under the genre of fiction,” he wrote above a photograph of a Bible with a “$14.99 fiction” label. “Hmmmm….”

Kaltenbach told local television station KTLA-5 that he attempted to obtain information about the label after noticing the issue.

Heavenly Bodies: Relics of Catholic Saints - in pictures

"As the Vatican prepares to display bones it believes to be those of St Peter, we explore an amazing series of jewelled saints' remains from southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The skeletons were found in 1578 when some of the catacombs of Rome were opened up, containing the remains of the city's early Christian community. Over the next couple of hundred years, some of the skeletons, identified as saints' remains, were sent north across the Alps to replace relics destroyed in the Protestant Reformation. To mark their newfound status, they were festooned with an extraordinary assortment of jewels, cloth of gold and other precious fabrics, and are still objects of veneration. Paul Koudounaris tracked them down for his book Heavenly Bodies..."  continue reading Guardian

on the same shelf:

• Heavenly Bodies Cynthia Huntington
• Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society Richard Dyer
• The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses   Paul Koudounaris
• Earthly Bodies & Heavenly Hair: Natural and Healthy Bodycare for Every Body Dina Falconi
• Heavenly Bodies David Vance

Where is the "Muslim World"? Professor Tony McEnery

"What is the Muslim world? At TEDxLancasterU, linguist Tony McEnery argues that this phrase, which was used 11,000 times in articles discussing Islam written from 1998 to 2009 by the British press, highlights an unsettling trend in the media -- using language that characterizes Muslims as violent and unusual -- a trend that, as he shows, has a long history and he asks us to change...."


On the same shelf (British media):

• New report highlights abuse of Muslim women

• Giving and campaigning in the Muslim charitable sector by Mohammad Zaman

• The evolution of British Islamic activism, by Sadek Hamid

• Muslim chaplains in British public life, by Sophie Gilliat-Ray

• Challenging supremacist ideology in Islam, by Tehmina Kazi

• The case of True Religion v. truereligion.com: Muslim website owner says he has faith court will protect him

• Atheists challenge churches’ free parking permits

Bless atheists, for they have sinned

by Emma Teitel on Friday, November 15, 2013, macleans.ca

Extract:

The door-to-door religious proselytizer is, like his secular cousin the Cutco knife peddler, a harmless irritant of modern North American life. If you don’t care for his wares, you say no thanks, shut the door and sometimes roll your eyes. But you rarely, if ever, engage. Portland University philosophy professor and proud atheist Peter Boghossian not only advocates engaging religious fundamentalists in debate, he has written the manual on how to do so.

His new book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, could be called the bible of deconversion.  Continue reading.

There can be no goodwill if we only tolerate each other

Dear Friends and Family, Greetings on Guru Nanak's Birthday!
I thought this message from Judge Mota Singh of UK might interest some of you. Amritjit Singh

The message is written by His Honour Sir Judge Mota Singh QC, a former Crown Court judge in the UK, who has received many lifetime achievement awards. He has been an advisor to the non-profit organization "United Sikhs" for Sikhs' Right To Turban campaign under which we won three cases at the UN against France’s ban on the turban in schools and on ID photo documents...

"Sikh  spiritual tradition is not content with mere toleration. There can be no goodwill if we only tolerate each other. Many thinkers rebuke the habit of condescending toleration. We must appreciate all faiths, recognise that they offer rich spiritual experiences and encourage sacrificial living and inspire their followers to a nobler way of life. The Sikh Gurus had this noble quality of appreciation of whatever was valuable in other religious traditions. The more we understand one another, the more we find we are like one another..." continue reading SikhSiyasat.Net

On the same shelf:

• The Surprising Pope: Understanding the Thought of John Paul II (Religion, Politics, and Society in the New Millennium)   O.P. Zieba Maciej  -- "What kind of brothers and sisters in Christ would we have if we only tolerate each other? To "bear one another up in love" means more than to tolerate." (p. 149)
• My Path to World Faith & Love at Home, by Frankie Fredericks, Executive Director of World Faith "After studies in Greece and Italy, I went to Egypt to explore Christian-Muslim relations through independent research. Witnessing how mere coexistance and tolerance will never create greater community and understanding, rather than finding answers, I began discovering
  new questions.  If we only tolerate each other, how can we create a space where religious identity is no longer a source of divisiveness?"
• Tolerance in Islam (Lessons from history), By: Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall.  "There is no doubt but that, in the eyes of history, religious toleration is the highest evidence of culture in a people. Let no Muslim, when looking on the ruin of the Muslim realm which was compassed through the agency of those very peoples whom the Muslims had tolerated and protected through the centuries when Western Europe thought it a religious duty to exterminate or forcibly convert all peoples of another faith than theirs - let no Muslim, seeing this, imagine that toleration is a weakness in Islam. It is the greatest strength of Islam because it is the attitude of truth. Allah is not the God of the Jews or the Christians or the Muslims only, any more than the sun shines or the rain falls for Jews or Christians or Muslims only."