I haven't been talking much about religious topics, or about seminary. Some of you, I know are relieved. Sorry, it's only temporary. <grin>

Here are today's links for ya:

I've been thinking a lot about spirituality and religion, spirituality or religion. I have, I think, pretty good personal definitions for both terms, but I'll start with the "official" ones (both from dictionary.com)

Here's a bunch of things I came across that I think are useful, with a bit of commentary.

I love the Pew Research Center. They provide such great data on people's ideas and attitudes. They are a real reality check on what we think is going on in this country. So anyway, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press just released a new study on the relationship between religion and politics.

Interestingly enough, although I've read a fair bit about stem cells, and, even a long time ago, taught a section of a course on the possible use of stem cells for particular kinds of neurological problems, I haven't blogged about them yet.

Today, one of my favorite organizations, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (because I love data, if you hadn't figured that out already) came out with an interesting new study. It's worth a look. They looked at the "hotbutton" social issues of our time, such as abortion, stem cell research, and gay marriage. What they found is, in some ways unsurprisingly, that most Americans are pretty middle-of-the-road about those issues.

I heard about this in an announcement in church this morning, then saw it in a Salon article. In Pittsburg, a number of women are going to be ordained as priests.

Declaring herself "present" (in Latin, ad sum), each of the 12will be ordained priests or deacons by women bishops -- themselvessecretly ordained to the episcopacy by active Roman Catholic malebishops whose names will remain locked in a vault until they die.

In the interest of learning more, and dialogue, I tend to read one or two Christian-oriented blogs that are more conservative than I am.

I'm sitting in the lobby of the conference hotel, waiting for the action to start. Well, I'm not waiting for the action to start, really, I'm waiting for my organizational compatriot for the Sunday Christian service to meet for lunch and a planning session because one of the three of us got stuck on the other side of the pond, and can't come. So we have to make due. Which will be fine after I finish freaking out.