World: Barack Obama signs his first Law: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

World: Barack Obama signs his first Law: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Sphere: Related Content

Robert E. Seaver, Professor Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary, dies at 90

Church in the World: Robert E. Seaver, Professor Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary dies at 90 Sphere: Related Content

Roger Haight Ordered by Vatican to stop teaching and publishing for his Openness to Religions

For Fracis Clooney's Comments click here

Roger HaightAmerican Jesuit theologian Fr. Roger Haight, whose writing on Christ and non-Christian religions was censured by the Vatican in 2005 for causing “grave harm to the faithful,” has been ordered by Rome to stop teaching and publishing on theological subjects.

Sources told NCR that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal agency, communicated the restrictions to the Jesuits in spring 2008. They apparently came amid back-and-forth discussions involving the Vatican, the Jesuit leadership in Rome, and the order’s New York province. Among other steps, Jesuit officials in America reportedly had consulted the late Jesuit Cardinal Avery Dulles in an effort to resolve the concerns.  Read it all 

FRANCIS X. CLOONEY, S.J. COMMENTS :

 I am sure you know about the case against his Jesus Symbol of God and the Notification several years back. Since then Fr Haight, moved from teaching at the (then) Weston Jesuit School of Theology, has continued his writing, and also taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York, a Protestant seminary. But now, he is barred from further theological writing and from teaching, even at Union. The reason, it seems, is that he is not willing to recant and disown what he wrote in Jesus Symbol of God.   More

Theology Reader: Roger Haight Ordered by Vatican to stop teaching, publishing Sphere: Related Content

John Updike (1932-2009)

Updike's Middle-Class God

Like all great novelists, John Updike used fiction to explore, explain and expose truth. "One thing that's given me courage in writing," Updike once told an interviewer, "has been this belief that the truth, what is actual, must be faced and is somehow holy."

For Updike, who died Tuesday at age 76, that search for holy truth often involved the lives of small-town, middle-class Protestants. His people. Updike was the grandson of a Presbyterian minister. He was raised in the Lutheran church in Pennsylvania, but joined the Congregational church as an adult. In his later years, he became an Episcopalian and dated a Methodist chaplain.

The prolific author liked to joke about his lifelong "tour of Protestantism," and that he "never quite escaped the the Christian church," but it's clear that mainline Protestant theology formed the spiritual foundation of his work. "My subject is the American Protestant small town middle class," Updike told Jane Howard in a 1966 interview for Life magazine.

In a 2004 talk at the Center for Spiritual Inquiry in New York, Updike said his classic character, Harry Angstrom, was infuenced by his study of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish Christian philosopher. Other characters such as Rev. Fritz Kruppenbach and Rev. Tom Marshfield were influenced by Updike's reading of theologians Karl Barth and Paul Tillich.  Read ita all here

Religion and Theology in Updike's  novels

At a talk on religion in his work Thursday evening (Nov. 18) at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, Updike told the audience of 300 that his Christian faith had “solidified in ways less important to me than when I was 30, when the existential predicament was realer to me than now. … I worked a lot of it through and arrived at a sort of safe harbor in my life.”

While much of his earlier work contains traces of Updike’s furious immersion in Christian theology, he said he looked more to the congregation of his hometown Massachusetts church as the rock of his faith today.

“When I haven’t been to church in a couple of Sundays I begin to hunger for it and need to be there,” he said, standing at a podium in front of the altar, against a backdrop of Byzantine-style mosaics and dressed in a gray suit befitting one of America’s elder statesmen of letters. “It’s not just the words, the sacraments. It’s the company of other people, who show up and pledge themselves to an invisible entity.”

As a young man studying at Oxford in the mid-1950s, Updike said he devoured new translations ofSoren Kierkegaard at Blackwell’s bookstore, discovering him “so positive and fierce and strikingly intelligent, like finding an older brother I didn’t know I had.” He pointed to his classic character Harry Angstrom, of the Rabbit tetralogy, as an example of the Danish philosopher’s influence. The Swiss neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth informed another character in the first book of the series, the Lutheran minister Fritz Kruppenbach, who faces off with an Episcopal priest in a scene Updike chose to read. Upon going to Kruppenbach’s house to discuss Rabbit’s desertion of his family, Rev. Eccles is treated to a diatribe against meddling in others’ affairs. Kruppenbach sounds like a stand-in for Barth himself.  Read it all 

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Netaji died in Taihoku air crash in 1945: Alessandro Quaroni

Nation: Netaji died in Taihoku air crash in 1945: Alessandro Quaroni: "Following a public outcry against the government's view that Netaji died in the Taihoku air crash, it set up three enquiry commissions -- the Shah Nawaz Commission, the Khosla Commission and the Justice Manoj Kumar Mukherjee Commission -- to look into the matter.

While Shah Nawaz and Khosla agreed that Netaji was, indeed, killed in the Taihoku air crash, the Mukherjee Commission, however, concluded that Netaji was actually alive when the crash is said to have taken place.

Quaroni replied in the negative when asked whether his parents were in possession of any document indicating Netaji's death in the Taihoku crash." More Sphere: Related Content

Twitter Surpasses Digg: Almost 1000% Growth in One Year

The rise and rise of Twitter traffic in the UK
Twitter, the mobile phone-based micro-blogging service, rocketed nearly 1000% in use in the UK over the past year according to industry analysts HitWise.
For the first time, the site has seen more visits than "social bookmarking" site Digg, which allows users to share links to sites.
Twitter made headlines earlier in January, providing the first pictures of downed US Airways flight 1549.
The site may continue its meteoric rise as the new US President is a devotee.
The Twitter site has jumped from 2,953rd most popular in the UK in 2008 to 291st as of mid-January.


shifting shadows: faddism Exposed: Twitter Surpasses Digg: Almost 1000% Growth in One Year Sphere: Related Content

World: Barack Obama inauguration, Text of speech

Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Barack Obama inauguration, Text of speech
America finally got its first black president on Tuesday,January 20, 2009, and the country's usually staid capital was engulfed in a contagious party spirit.
Two million people covered almost every square foot of Washington's two-mile grass runway from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama – a restless sea of red, white and blue flags that barely stopped waving from freezing dawn to chilly dusk.
Tens of thousands more lined Pennsylvania Avenue, where an armoured black limousine later took the first black American president to his new home – a house built by slaves. Millions, possibly billions, watched on television around the world, but it was the extraordinary numbers who braved the numbing chill of a harsh Washington winter that really spoke best of the Obama appeal.
It didn't matter that the man the Mall crowds had come to see was, aside from the giant television screens, not even a speck in the distance, separated by a security operation so intense that a police sniper stood on every roof.
Nor did it really matter that, when asked, everyone trotted out precisely the same line about why they had come: "being present at a moment of history" might have been a cliché but that didn't mean it wasn't true. more


This is the full text of President Obama’s inaugural speech:

My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and co-operation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.


The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. Continue to read it all here

World: Barack Obama inauguration, Text of speech Sphere: Related Content

Niebuhr and Obama by Mark Tooley

Last year, Barack Obama cited Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) as one of his favorite philosophers. The choice contrasted with George W. Bush's famous citation in 2000 of Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher. Citing a deceased theologian with a German name seems sophisticated, and Jimmy Carter likewise often pointed to Niebuhr, and justifiably so. Niebuhr was probably the 20th century's finest ethicist in the liberal Protestant tradition.

Despite lay fans like Obama and Carter, who are themselves liberal Protestants, Niebuhr is today rarely embraced by the modern Religious Left, which prefers utopianism to Niebuhr's school of Christian realism. Niebuhr would appreciate the irony, because he himself was once a sort of utopian who shared the pacifism and socialism of Social Gospel enthusiasts after World War I. The rise of Nazism jolted Niebuhr back to the reality of transcendent evil, and he steadfastly endorsed World War II, even while criticizing the Allied bombing of German cities and questioning the atomic attacks on Japan. Later, he supported Western resistance to Soviet communism, though he opposed the Vietnam War almost from its start.

Niebuhr always remained left of center politically, endorsing the New Deal and welfare state, and heartily endorsing civil rights. A Lutheran, he taught for 30 years at Union Seminary in New York, which was then America's flagship liberal seminary. Today, like most once distinguished liberal seminaries, Union is a shadow of its former influence. But in Niebuhr's day it hosted some of America's great theological minds, including Niebuhr's colleague and close friend, Paul Tillich. Read it all here

Jacob's Ethics Reader: Niebuhr and Obama Sphere: Related Content

Wo-Men: 'women commandos' to fight social evils in Raipur

Raipur, Jan 14 (ANI): A voluntary organisation has raised a special force of women in Raipur to fight the social evil and work for women's empowerment.

Called as , they are bracing and work for empowerment of women.

President of the voluntary organization, Samshad Begum is a known face of women's upliftment, with Stri Shakti Samman award to her credit. She has already brought together 163 villages and raised 2200 helping groups empowerment of women.

Certain criterions have been laid down to select every women commando. Because she has to work in the village and among the villagers. So the circumstances can be very demanding.

"Woman commando is a woman who works for her village, is independent, who has a wish to do something. We have selected such women. And these women will work for the progress of village, women and women empowerment so that women can be independent. They will also come forward against social evils such as child marriage, dowry and witch craft," said Samshad Begum.

The women commandos are prepared to fight against social evils such as dowry, child marriage, exploitation of women, gambling in the society
Wo-Men: 'women commandos' to fight social evils in Raipur Sphere: Related Content

Liberal Criminal Procedure Code comes into effect - lawyers and Police not happy

Under the new law, CrPC (Amendment) Act 2008, the police, instead of arresting the accused, will be obliged to issue him/her a "notice of appearance" for any offence punishable with imprisonment up to seven years. The person can be arrested only if he/she does not appear before the police in response to the notice.

Seven years or less is the maximum penalty for a host of offences, including attempt to commit culpable homicide, robbery, attempt to suicide, kidnapping, voluntarily causing grievous hurt, cheating, outraging a woman's modesty and death caused by negligence.

The radical change in the CrPC has, however, drawn flak from a number of Bar associations across the country. Lawyers -- who also observed strike in various courts after the bill was passed in Parliament -- argue that the amendment (in Section 41) doing away with mandatory arrest provisions would remove fear from the minds of criminals who would misuse the provisions under the garb of personal liberty. more

CrPC amendment Bill is seen as a setback by certain senior police officials who readily

admit they are ill prepared to implement it.

One senior officer went to the extent of saying: "Delhi is not ready to usher in such liberal and revolutionary changes." However, the top brass put up a brave front saying the amendments would be implemented in "letter and spirit".


Crime and Court: Liberal Criminal Procedure Code comees into effect - lawyers and Police not happy Sphere: Related Content

Orissa temple purified after low caste woman minister visit

Hindu priests in Orissa are under investigation for conducting a purification ritual soon after a minister belonging to a lower caste visited a famous temple, officials said on Friday.

Minutes after Pramila Mallick, a minister in Orissa, prayed at the temple this week, Hindu priests shut the doors and threw away holy offerings, washed the floors and changed the idol's clothes, one official said.

"Some priests opposed the minister's entry into the interior chamber of the temple," Upendra Mallik, a senior government official told Reuters. "We are investigating."

..

The minister said the purification ritual, at the Akhandalamani temple in Orissa's Bhadrak district, could have been conducted at the behest of her political rivals.  more from Reuters India

Dalits Marginalized Everywhere: Orissa temple purified after low caste woman minister visit Sphere: Related Content

The Atheist Bus Campaign: A Reaction to Christian Fundamentalist Bible Advertisements

On Jan. 6 some 800 British red "bendy" buses carried the sign: "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

The Atheist Bus Campaign organizer, a young comedienne named Ariane Sherine, took exception last June to several London buses swathed with biblical quotes, placed by Christian fundamentalists.

Her idea to fund a few challenge ads took off; donors sent in $200,000 in two days. Ms. Sherine was joined by Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, a leading British atheist and author of "The God Delusion."

........

Religious institutes, church pastors, and divinity school professors have not treated the ads with Old Testament wrath, but with a relatively open mind and even embrace of so important an issue.

If Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, they say, the ads remind that an unexamined faith is not a real faith, and people need to think, and even pray, more deeply.

"The campaign will be a good thing if it gets people to engage with the deepest questions of life," says the Rev. Jenny Ellis, Spirituality and Discipleship Officer of Britain's Methodist church.

..........

Believers have criticized the second part of the message, "stop worrying and enjoy your life." Nick Spencer, of Theos, a public theology think tank in London, felt the "enjoy yourself" message – coming in the midst of an economic crisis that is taking jobs and spreading anxiety across Europe, possibly implies selfish indifference, and "could not be more ill-timed.... But since Brits are frightfully embarrassed about bringing up God in public, it is a godsend in some ways to have the atheists do it for us."

Dawkins, whose book, "God Delusion" sold 1.5 million copies, told the Los Angeles Times that "We've all been brought up with the view that religion has some kind of special privileged status. You're not allowed to criticize it."

Christianity does have a history of intolerance, theologians admit. But it also has a healthy history of doubt and skepticism, as well as interchanges between faith and science – and has reformed itself through a seeking of truth in and outside the church. Some of its best-known modern thinkers have expressed admiration for nonbelievers.

Reinhold Niebuhr, a leading midcentury American theologian, sometimes invoked by Barack Obama, said he preferred honest agnostics to overly pious believers.

The Lutheran Karl Barth, a leading 20th-century European theologian, wrote the forward to the English language version of Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach's prominent atheist critique, "The Essence of Christianity." Barth wasn't worried about the atheism, says Herman Waetjen, professor emeritus of New Testament studies at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, because Barth felt Feuerbach exposed many fault lines, mistakes, social and collective projections, and other falsifications of Christianity that had arisen around the 19th-century church.

"Barth was happy to write a forward to a book that exposed the kind of Christianity he felt to be so unlike the radical God of the Bible he was reading. He saw the value of Feuerbach. So for a campaign like the bus ads that forces us to think – well, I thank them for it," Professor Waetjen says.

more

Church in the World: The Bendy Bus Campaign: mass marketing of atheism Sphere: Related Content

Amitabh Bachchan blasts Slumdog Millionaire for showing India in poor light

Bollywood megastar has slammed Danny Boyle's Golden Globe award winning underdog drama Slumdog Millionaire .
“If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations,” Amitabh said in a posting on his blog www.bigb.bigadda.com Wednesday from Paris, France.

“Its just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative global recognition,” he added.

The 66-year-old also talked about the changing trend in recognition of Indian cinema.

“The commercial escapist world of Indian cinema had vociferously battled for years, on the attention paid and the adulation given to the legendary Satyajit Ray... and not a word of appreciation for the entertaining mass-oriented box office blockbusters that were being churned out from Mumbai.

“Ray portrayed reality. While, the other - escapism, fantasy and incredulous posturing. Unimpressive for Cannes and Berlin and Venice (film festivals),” he explained. Read it all here

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Robert T. Handy, Church Historian, dies at 90

The Rev. Dr. Robert T. Handy, Henry Sloane Coffin Professor Emeritus of Church History at Union Theological Seminary, died at Crane’s Mill Retirement Community in West Caldwell, New Jersey, on January 8. He was 90 years old.

During the 36 years he taught at the Seminary, Handy made a name for himself as an impressive scholar of American church history, an exceptional teacher, and a gifted administrator.
.....
Handy's students and colleagues have long since acknowledged him as a leading historian of American church history. His work on church and state, on religious liberty, on nineteenth-century attempts to establish a "Christian America," and his labor with fellow Union professors David W. Lotz and Richard A. Norris, Jr., in revising and updating Williston Walker's standard, A History of the Christian Church, produced books that are still in use and considered classics. Among his great contributions to the Seminary was A History of Union Theological Seminary in New York, published in 1987 as part of Union's sesquicentennial celebration. more

Church in the World: Robert T. Handy, Church Historian, dies at 90 Sphere: Related Content

Karnataka High Court allows House Churches to hold Worship services

Legal Victory for House Churches in Karnataka

Posted on January 14, 2009 by cd

KARNATAKA, INDIA (ANS) – Over four months after government authorities closed several house churches in Karnataka, India, the Karnataka High Court said they should reopen and can hold worship services.

This followed the action of several pastors and Christian believers from Davanagere District who had lodged a writ petition to the High Court of Karnataka in Bengaluru.

The All India Christian Council had supported the pastors in logistical and finding legal representation. For last four and half months about twelve churches in Davanagere in central Karnataka were locked.

Following attacks on several churches on August 17, 2008, the district administration issued notices seeking a survey of churches functioning without permission. In early September, several churches were sealed. The next week Deputy Commissioner K. Amar Narayan instructed the Police Department to survey churches and prayer halls to check how many of them were authorized. The Indian media noted that worship places of other religions were not checked.

Local Christian leaders say the problems were because extremist Hindutva groups influenced officials. During 2008, groups like RSS and Bajrang Dal have beaten believers, pastors, and even set fire to churches. They also made false accusations against pastors and registered cases with the police.

The High Court chief Justice Mr. Dinakar was strict with the District Collector saying, “In a democratic country, no one has power to stop anyone worshiping according to one’s own faith. One’s faith can be a church or any other worship centre.”  more

Church in India: Karnataka High Court allows House Churches to hold Worship services Sphere: Related Content

Richard John Neuhaus Lutheran turned Catholic intellectual passed away on 08 Jan 2009 at the age of 72

Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a leading intellectual of the Christian right who helped build a new coalition of conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics and informally advised President George W. Bush, died Thursday. He was 72.

Neuhaus died from the side effects of cancer treatment, said Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, a journal of religion and public policy that Neuhaus founded.

A one-time Lutheran minister, Neuhaus led a predominantly African-American congregation in New York in the 1960s, advocating for civil rights and protesting the Vietnam War. With Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, the Catholic peace activist, Neuhaus led the anti-war group Clergy Concerned About Vietnam.

He later broke with the left, partly over the Supreme Court's 1973 ruling legalizing abortion. He converted to Catholicism in 1990, and a year later was ordained a priest.

He then worked to break down the historic mistrust between evangelicals and Catholics over their theological differences, helping build the coalition of churchgoers across faith traditions who became key to Republican electoral victories in recent years.

Theology Reader: Richard John Neuhaus Lutheran turned Catholic intellectual passed away on 08 Jan 2009 at the age of 72 Sphere: Related Content

Dr Paul Nimmo gets the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise 2009

Dr Paul Nimmo, who works at Edinburgh University, has been awarded a 2009 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise for his work on the ethics of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth.

Dr Nimmo will receive a prize of $10,000 plus additional funds of up to $10,000 to pay for public lectures at universities around the world.

He will receive the prize at a ceremony at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in May.

Established in 2005, the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise is given annually to twelve young scholars in any area of religious studies, for the best doctoral thesis or best first book related to the topic of God and spirituality.

Dr Nimmo's award was in recognition of his recent book Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth's Ethical Vision, which arose out of his doctoral research carried out at Edinburgh. source

Theology Reader: Dr Paul Nimmo gets the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise 2009 Sphere: Related Content

Will the caste system be destroyed?

Justice Markandey Katju, a Judge of the Supreme Court of India, writes:

To my mind, the caste system will be destroyed (and is in fact being destroyed) in India by the advance of technology, through people’s struggles, and inter-caste marriages.

As regards the advance of technology, it has been pointed out above that in a modern industrial society the division of labour cannot be on the basis of one’s birth but on the basis of technical skills. Hence industrialisation destroys the caste system. In fact, the caste system has become weak in a State such as West Bengal, which was partially industrialised before most other States.

As regards people’s struggles, these are in fact going on everywhere in view of the harsh economic conditions in India (marked by price rise, unemployment, and so on). People in India are realising that united they stand and divided they fall, and that caste is certainly a dividing force.

As regards inter-caste marriages, I have stated in my judgment in Lata Singh vs. State of U.P. [2006(5) SCC 475, JT 2006(6) SC 173], that they are in the national interest and hence should be encouraged.

Read it all from the Hindu

Dalits Marginalized Everywhere: will the caste system be destroyed? Sphere: Related Content

Obama on Decision making in a Democratic Society - 2006 speech

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing. And if you doubt that, let me give you an example.

We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.

Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God's test of devotion.

But it's fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason. read it all here

Changemakers: Obama on Decision making in a Democratic Society - 2006 speech Sphere: Related Content

Don't confuse faith for history: Romila Thapar

Eminent historian Romila Thapar recently received the prestigious Kluge Prize 2008 of the United States Library of Congress, for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity. Well known for her contribution to creating a new pluralistic view of Indian civilization, she speaks to Shruba Mukherjee of Deccan Herald. Excerpts:

Does study of history have a future?

History as practised at the professional level has a good future. But what passes for history at the popular level often does not reflect the work of serious professional historians. This is partly because historians have distinctive methods of subjecting data to critical analyses. This helps explain what happened in the past and why in a more factual manner and the analyses can change with advances in knowledge. Popular notions of history seldom apply rigorous methods of examining data from the past.

Faith is based on belief which means anything can be believed without having to be proved correct. This is the opposite of history. So when people of faith want to impose their beliefs onto history, there is a conflict with historians. more from Deccan Herald


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Animation film made on Lalu Prasad Yadav

Animation film made on India's Railway Minister and popular politician, Lalu Prasad Yadav in Patna has become an istant hit. The film is produced by Pawan and animation is done by Gopala.

Pawan, who besides producing the film has also done the characterization and conceptualization of the film, said that the reason for making a film on Lalu was that he wanted to present him in different light

Art and Films: Animation film made on Lalu Prasad Yadav Sphere: Related Content

New Year Resolutions: a good check-list to see how you are doing.

LifeLine: faith and Spirituality: New Year Resolutions: a good check-list to see how you are doing. Sphere: Related Content