Bangladesh

Bangladesh Arrests ‘Atheist Bloggers’, Cracking Down On Critics. The Bangladeshi government is cracking down on bloggers critical of its pro-Islamist stance, arresting four of these writers in the capital of Dhaka this week. This sort of crackdown on free speech in Bangladesh is nothing new. In the last decade, several journalists, including a cartoonist, have been arrested under the same blasphemy law under which the bloggers were arrested -- an archaic legacy of the British colonial system. Nonetheless, the four arrests took the nation by surprise as the Awami League, the party leading the center-left coalition government, likes to be identified as a secular political party (Emran Hossein, Huffington Post)

Bhutan

Bhutan Makes Condoms Available To Buddhist Monks To Stop Spread Of STDs. Health officials in the tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan are making condoms available at all monastic schools in a bid to stem the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV among young monks who are supposed to be celibate Warning signs of risky behavior among monks first appeared in 2009, when a report on risks and vulnerabilities of adolescents revealed that monks were engaging in "thigh sex" (in which a man uses another man's clenched thighs for intercourse), according to the state-owned Kuensel daily. Psychiatrists suggest the spread of disease could be a result of mental stress. It is not uncommon for monks and nuns, mostly between the ages of 15 and 25, to visit psychiatrists. Even senior monks show symptoms of severe stress, especially when they are undergoing long periods of meditation, Dr. Damber Kumar Nirola told Kuensel. Bhutan is the world’s only officially Buddhist country (Vishal Arora, Huffington Post)

France

L'Observatoire de la laïcité, crée en 2007 mais qui n'a jamais fonctionné jusqu'ici, a maintenant un président, Jean-Louis Bianco, ancien ministre et ancien secrétaire général de l'Elysée, et quinze membres nommés, d'après des arrêtés publiés samedi 6 avril au Journal officiel — Jean-Louis Bianco prend la tête de l'Observatoire de la laïcité (Fait Religieux)

Deux jours après que le grand rabbin de France a reconnu que son livre Quarante méditations juives (Stock, 2011) plagiait plusieurs passages de l'ouvrage d'une universitaire américaine, ce qu'il avait nié dans un premier temps, L'Express révèle ce qu'il désigne comme un autre "mystère" de Gilles Bernheim — Le grand rabbin Gilles Bernheim n'a jamais eu l'agrégation de philosophie (Le Monde)

USA

North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill. Republican North Carolina state legislators have proposed allowing an official state religion in a measure that would declare the state exempt from the Constitution and court rulings. The bill, filed Monday by two GOP lawmakers from Rowan County and backed by nine other Republicans, says each state "is sovereign" and courts cannot block a state "from making laws respecting an establishment of religion." The legislation was filed in response to a lawsuit to stop county commissioners in Rowan County from opening meetings with a Christian prayer. The religion bill comes as some Republican-led states seek to separate themselves from the federal government, primarily on the issues of guns and Obamacare (John Celock, Huffington Post)

Americans Love The Bible But Don’t Read It Much, Poll Shows. More than half of Americans think the Bible has too little influence on American culture, yet only one in five Americans read the Bible on a regular basis, according to a new survey from the American Bible Society. More than three-quarters of Americans (77 percent) think the nation's morality is headed downhill, the survey shows (Caleb Bell, Huffington Post)

Vatican

Le Pape François s'est adressé dimanche 7 avril à environ 100.000 pèlerins réunis sur la place Saint-Pierre à Rome pour recevoir sa traditionnelle bénédiction hebdomadaire, les invitant à évangéliser et à "ne pas voir peur d'être des Chrétiens" — Le Pape : « N'ayez pas peur d'être des chrétiens » (La Croix)

Christianisme

‘A New New Testament’: Scholars Add 10 New Texts To The Christian Canon. A group of scholars and religious leaders has added 10 new texts to the Christian canon. The work, "A New New Testament," was released nationwide in March in an attempt to add a different historical and spiritual context to the Christian scripture. The 19-member council that compiled the texts consisted of biblical scholars, leaders in several Christian denominations -- Episcopal, Roman Catholic, United Methodist, United Church of Christ and Lutheran -- two rabbis and an expert in Eastern religions and yoga. Texts included in "A New New Testament" are the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Acts of Paul and Thecla and others, along with pieces of poetry and prayers. Karen King, a respected scholar of early Christianity at Harvard University who worked with Taussig on the panel, said she thinks the new texts add historical depth to the New Testament (Caleb Bell, Huffington Post)

Dark-Skinned Satan Has A Long History. When some people recently started questioning whether the Satan character on "The Bible" miniseries resembled President Obama, others posed a broader question: Why does Satan need to be dark-skinned at all? Religious experts and historians say the controversy points to a centuries-old tradition where dark is bad, light is good. European folklore described Satan as a black man, and the Puritans imported these notions, and raised them during the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. Cain Hope Felder, professor of New Testament language and literature at Howard University, said the Satan depiction in the recent miniseries was disappointing given the more multicultural depictions of biblical figures seen in recent decades. He was the general editor of the Original African Heritage Bible, which in 1993 included images of Jesus and his disciples as people of color. That was followed in 1999 by the African American Jubilee Edition of the Holy Bible, which includes depictions of a black Jesus on the cross and in the arms of Mary (Adelle M. Banks, Huffington Post)

Livres

L'Eglise de France et les enfants juifs - Des missions vaticanes à l'affaire Finaly (1944-1953) de Catherine Poujol (PUF, 2013)