Here's what's happening on the church and culture front today...
Texas’ education board on Tuesday advanced a new Bible-infused curriculum that would be optional for schools to incorporate in kindergarten through fifth grades, one of the latest Republican-led efforts in the U.S. to incorporate more religious teaching into classrooms. (Lathan, AP News)
“Tammy Faye,” a new musical about the scandal-wracked singing televangelist, will close on Broadway after an unexpectedly short run, a major disappointment for a costly and ambitious show that picked up some good reviews in London but was poorly received in New York and failed to find an audience. (Paulson, The New York Times)
A New York priest who allowed popstar Sabrina Carpenter to shoot a music video in his church has been stripped of his duties after he "mishandled substantial church funds," according to the Diocese of Brooklyn. (Limehouse, USA Today)
A poster depicting the comedian Fern Brady as the Virgin Mary squirting breast milk into the mouth of a kneeling man dressed in ecclesiastical clothing has been banned over fears it could offend Christians. (Horne, The Times UK)
Texas’ education board on Tuesday advanced a new Bible-infused curriculum that would be optional for schools to incorporate in kindergarten through fifth grades, one of the latest Republican-led efforts in the U.S. to incorporate more religious teaching into classrooms. (Lathan, AP News)
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“Tammy Faye,” a new musical about the scandal-wracked singing televangelist, will close on Broadway after an unexpectedly short run, a major disappointment for a costly and ambitious show that picked up some good reviews in London but was poorly received in New York and failed to find an audience. (Paulson, The New York Times)
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A New York priest who allowed popstar Sabrina Carpenter to shoot a music video in his church has been stripped of his duties after he "mishandled substantial church funds," according to the Diocese of Brooklyn. (Limehouse, USA Today)
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A poster depicting the comedian Fern Brady as the Virgin Mary squirting breast milk into the mouth of a kneeling man dressed in ecclesiastical clothing has been banned over fears it could offend Christians. (Horne, The Times UK)
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Deepfakes have introduced a new era of digital manipulation, where reality can be convincingly altered with advanced AI. Unlike earlier tools like Photoshop, which made surface-level edits, deepfakes use neural networks to create highly realistic images, videos, and audio designed to deceive. (1440 Daily Digest/YouTube)
Most Americans are wary of social media’s role in politics and its overall impact on the country, and these concerns are ticking up among Democrats, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults. Still, Republicans stand out on several measures, with majorities believing major technology companies are biased toward liberals. (Anderson, Pew Research)
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A Wyoming judge ruled on Monday that two state abortion bans — including the first state law specifically banning the use of pills for abortion — violated the Wyoming Constitution and could not be enforced. (Belluck, The New York Times)
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Pope Francis has said that Israel’s attacks in Gaza should be investigated to determine if they meet the legal definition of genocide, according to excerpts from a forthcoming book based on interviews with the pontiff. (Faiola & Masih, The Washington Post)
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Horror has had a decades-long attraction to religion, Christianity especially in the U.S., with the 1970s “The Exorcist” and “The Omen” being prime examples. Beyond the jump scares, the supernatural elements of horror and its sublime nature pair easily with belief and spirituality. (Meyer, AP News)
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The Highway to Heaven sits on the eastern part of Montgomery County, Maryland, which was determined to be the most religiously diverse county in the country, according to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The U.S. Census does not collect data about religious affiliation, so the PRRI Census of American Religion is considered to be one of the most reliable sources of data on the topic. (Ventre, NPR)
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The election of Donald Trump has sparked a surge of interest in the United States in South Korea’s 4B movement, a radical feminist crusade that preaches the four Bs: bi-hon (no marriage), bi-yeonae (no dating), bi-sekseu (no sex) and bi-chulsan (no childbirth). (Kim, Los Angeles Times)
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Once a month St Peter’s Church in Shipley hosts Kingdom Wrestling, a Christian professional wrestling charity, which puts on a show interspersed with prayer, worship and testimony. (Alt & Feeny, The Times UK)
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Since the early 1970s, Stratton’s family has been nurturing evangelical Christian talent from its home base in Taylors, South Carolina. The museum has booked Logos for two more shows in 2025, including a yet-to-be-named adaptation of a C.S. Lewis novel. (Ritzel, The Washington Post)
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Coca-Cola solely used artificial intelligence to generate this year’s Christmas advert instead of casting a person to play Santa Claus. The 15-second recreation of its famous “Holidays are Coming” ad is the fizzy drink brand’s first extensive use of generative AI in a television Christmas campaign. (Montgomery, The Telegraph)
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The study, published on Thursday in The Lancet, reveals the striking rise of obesity rates nationwide since 1990 — when just over half of adults were overweight or obese — and shows how more people are becoming overweight or obese at younger ages than in the past. (Agrawal, The New York Times)
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Preliminary data shows roughly 97,000 fatal overdoses over a 12-month period. That's down roughly 14.5% from a year earlier. Public health officials say the drop translates into more than 16,000 lives saved and marks the lowest level of drug deaths in nearly four years. (Mann, NPR)
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Hundreds of posters depicting several Jewish faculty members as "wanted" were spread across the University of Rochester campus in upstate New York over the weekend, university officials said. (Marbury & Nguyen, USA Today)
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Multiplying the power of pop celebrity for a good cause, Do They Know It’s Christmas? by Band Aid was recorded on November 25, 1984, and released just two weeks later. It became a runaway sensation, a number one single for three weeks that raised £8 million in its first year towards combating famine in Ethiopia. (McCormick, The Telegraph)
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The now-infamous congressional hearing was one filled with sensational claims about UFOs. Despite the government's rebranding of UFOs with a less-stigmatized acronym – unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP – the hearing still captivated a public long obsessed with ideas of flying saucers and little green men. (Lagatta, USA Today)
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The film Heretic, directed by screenwriting duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, explores the plausibility of this kind of freeing faith. Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) has entrapped two young Latter-day Saint missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) in his home. (Marchbanks, Christianity Today)
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