another rumor hits the dust

No, the Khazars didn't convert to Judism.

for later reading.

The Penn Museum "silk road" symposium

discusses how religions and ideas went up and down the silk road, and Jenkin's book on "lost christianities" of the east discusses the large Nestorian church organizations that interacted with the jews, buddhists and Muslims.

But I'm just starting my investigation into this little known part of history

which is being rewritten since the archeology sites were closed to western investigation until the fall of the USSR, and often the Arabic/Chinese/Parthian/etc. sources are not yet translated into the English language

Sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander

Iranian site against mandatory veil gets lots of hits at facebook.

Hey, I thought they banned facebook...

When Masih Alinejad posted a picture of herself online jumping in the air in a sunny, tree-lined London street, the journalist hoped to cheer up readers weary of her stories of grim human rights cases in her native Iran.

well that explains it: She lives in London.

taking her veil off there was a really brave thing to do /s

from the front lines:

The popularity of the page, and the vitriolic reaction, have made it the focus of one of the most prominent challenges to President Hassan Rouhani, a self-proclaimed moderate.
Like the arrest of six young people last month who posted a video of themselves - the women unveiled - singing along to the Pharrell Williams pop song "Happy", "My Stealthy Freedom" has shown the yearning of liberal-minded Iranians, many of whom voted for Rouhani, for greater personal freedoms.
"#Happiness is our people's right. We shouldn't be too hard on behaviours caused by joy," Rouhani wrote on Twitter after the "Happy" arrests.
He also appeared to agree that social rules - in a country where morality police patrol the streets to detain women they deem to be showing too much hair - should be eased, saying: "We can't take people to heaven by force and with a whip."
But reformist Iranians say those words have not been followed by policy changes

Hmm: Wonder what would have happened if they tried that in Saudi

-------------------------------

And the US frowns on Burma's new laws against religious conversion:

Draft laws in Myanmar aimed at protecting the country’s majority Buddhist identity by regulating religious conversions and marriages between people of different faiths have “no place in the 21st century” and should be withdrawn, a U.S. government agency has said.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said the laws risked stoking violence against Muslims and other religious minorities, including Christians. If the laws are passed, it said, Washington “should factor these negative developments into its evolving relationship with Burma (Myanmar).”
The U.S. State Department said it had serious concerns about the pending legislation and had expressed them to the government of Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.
State Department spokeswoman Jan Psaki told a regular news briefing on June 11 that any measure that would criminalize interfaith marriages “would be inconsistent with the government’s efforts to promote tolerance and respect for human rights.”

this is aimed at the Rohinya minority, and against the Christians in the northern rural areas.

But again, is the US state Department threatening Saudi for worse things?

Abuse in Irish society

An article about child abuse in Irish society, including a note by Father Flangan of Boy's town, by Irish History podcast.

In the summer of 1946 the issue of institutional abuse was widely debated in the Irish papers when Fr Edward Flanagan, a native of Roscommon and well known US priest visited Ireland. He had earned widespread fame through his progressive institution Boystown which was the subject of a 1938 Oscar winning film. As he travelled across Ireland Flanagan was critical of the regime of physical abuse he witnessed in some of Ireland’s institutions.

my take is that the "morality" was an attempt to stop the abuse, not the opposite (in the same way that Methodism's strict laws were an attempt to help the poor in the slums or the Evangelicals with rules of morality here in the Philippines try to rebuild an honest society)

and yes, a society torn apart by famine deaths and migration is prone toward abuse, and the sexual abuse has to be put into contest, especially when young men are financially unable to marry (Check statistics on STD in the UK at the time).

Of course, I am comparing the third world Ireland with the problems of third world people today, where modernism destroys the culture, people migrate, families are torn apart by economic circumstances etc such as today's Philippines, where abuse of teenagers mainly but not always girls is alas common in some areas. while most people are comparing it to today's Europe, which is another country.

pseudo christian terrorists in China?

LATimes report here about a terrorist action by a member of a fringe group that started out as a Christian group.

I say that because of this paragraph:

Founder Zhao Weishan preached that Jesus had come back to Earth in the form of a local woman named Yang Xiangbin, also known as Lightning Deng. Both Yang and Zhao subsequently immigrated to the United States. The sect claims to have up to 5 million members worldwide and opposes China's Communist Party, calling it the "Great Red Dragon."China cracked down in late 2012, when members prophesied that the world would end Dec. 21. Nearly 1,000 Almighty God adherents were detained for handing out leaflets about the apocalypse and "spreading rumors." It was one of the biggest operations against a religious group since the 1999 ban on Falun Gong, which draws its beliefs from Eastern traditions including qigong and Buddhism.

if this doesn't bring to mind the trouble cause by Jesus' younger brother, it should.
People who know Chinese history are aware that even the Buddthists were thrown out in the 800's...but I am reading a history of the eastern Nestorian Christians, and it seems that  the Christians were thrown out back then and several times later, under the Jesuits and under the communists.

Conspiracy theory of the day

Did Benedict really resign?

The pope intended only to give up Ministerium, that is the practical everyday (administrative) work of that office. The formula by Benedict…there is distinguishing a double (or two-fold) way…But also there is a spiritual aspect, of equal importance, which is enacted via suffering and prayer. Benedict said: “I do not return to private life…I do not wear more leadership in the Church, but for the Church’s good and with prayer I rest in the enclosure of St. Peter” but “enclosure” should not be comprehended only as a material place to live but is also a “place” theological.

whatever.

-----------------
vaguely related item: I am reading Jenkin's book on the lost Christendom: the Nestorian churches of the first Milleneum and early second milleneum, which at times were larger than the Roman branch, and stretched to China and Tibet. One Nestorian bishop even helped the Buddhists translate their holy books into Chinese.

They fell because of the depopulation from GhengisKhan and Tamberlaine, but also because of later Muslim pogroms (early Islamic rulers welcomed Christian and Jewish scholars: Indeed, much of what some folks call Islamic scholarship was by these groups who happily worked together with their Muslim counterparts).

But later, Islamacist types took over, and that was the deathknell of the already weakened churches.

The problem with traditional churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic etc) is that they rely on bishops and a hierarchy. Destroy the stem, the branches dies.

Which is why I wonder if the house churches of today's China may be the future of Christianity under a NWO that perverts all churches to it's philosophy. So far, of course, the Pope is trying to get them to compromise so that the church and it's valuable institutions to help people can survive, but many especially Pius X types and Protestants, see this as a way for the NWO to make an antipope/antichrist church.

Jenkins also has a book on the new christianities, but I haven't read that yet.

The books are on Scribd so I can find them now legally with only a minimal charge for membership.