More God Stuff
Methodists defrock a lesbian minister; from the NYTimes:

In the second ecclesiastical trial of a gay Methodist minister in less than a year, a jury of 13 clergy members in eastern Pennsylvania convicted a fellow pastor of violating church law by living in a lesbian relationship and ordered her defrocked.

The ruling is evidence of the United Methodist Church's efforts this summer to tighten rules banning "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" from the ministry, a step that gained greater urgency after the jury in a trial in Bothell, Wash., last March cleared another lesbian minister of breaking church law.

[...]

The debate over gays in the clergy is roiling many mainline Protestant denominations and threatening some, like the Episcopal Church, with schism. While few Methodists expect their church, the country's third-largest denomination, to reach such a point, some said expulsions of gay clergy members could increase as more of them take on the church's edicts.

And here's a great commentary on NPR's All Things Considered about the commerciality of Christmas by John Boykin:

I'm out to change the bumper sticker, "Keep Christ in Christmas," to "Free Christ From Christmas." Heresy? Well, compare Christ's birthday with Martin Luther King's birthday. On his birthday, nobody pays any attention to his birth. Instead, it's "I Have a Dream" and his impact on society. We mark Dr. King's birth with what he said and did as an adult. Christmas, by contrast, for what the adult Jesus said and did. Christmas keeps him shut up as a baby in the manger where he can't make his usual noise about people repenting and living a godly life.

[...]

I'm not proposing that we cancel Christmas. I know, the economy would collapse without it. Fine, keep the gift giving and the jingle bells. Let's just subtract the remaining Jesus element from it and move that over into Easter. Call December 25th Solstice, call it Retail Day, call it Holiday #9, I don't care. Just leave Christ out of it. He was not born to be the patron saint of fourth quarter earnings