Two stories about churches of various sorts.

The first is a bunch of them in the US. Leaders from Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, Lutheran, Mormon, and Pentecostal communities in the United States have signed an open letter about the “serious consequences of redefining marriage”. They say these consequences will …

… arise in a broad range of legal contexts, because altering the civil definition of “marriage” does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands, at once. By a single stroke, every law where rights depend on marital statussuch as employment discrimination, employment benefits, adoption, education, healthcare, elder care, housing, property, and taxationwill change so that same-sex sexual relationships must be treated as if they were marriage. That requirement, in turn, will apply to religious people and groups in the ordinary course of their many private or public occupations and ministriesincluding running schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other housing facilities, providing adoption and counseling services, and many others.

Not content with confining their ideas about marriage to their own communities, the church leaders want to stop the liberalisation of marriage law and remove the legal sanctions for discrimination against homosexuals and others. This “redefinition of marriage” is being described as “a direct attack on religious freedom”. Click here to read about it.

The second story is about a “crisis of faith”, according to some religious leaders, as the idea of “de-baptism”, started as a joke by the National Secular Society, has caught on across Europe and America. The NSS’s “de-baptism certificate” has been downloaded from its website at least 100,000 times, while it’s been reported that “the church has put in place a new evangelizing strategy to more strongly encourage parents to get their children baptized”. Even more de-baptism certificates will be needed in the future, presumably.

Click here to read more.