"Left-footed" explained

I encountered a new term while reading "Good Omens" yesterday:

"He quite liked nuns.  Not that he was a, you know, left-footer or anything like that.  No, when it came to avoiding going to church, the church he stolidly avoided going to was St. Cecil and All Angels, no-nonsense C. of E..."

My wife found an explanation in an old column at The Guardian:

Why are Catholics sometimes called 'left-footers'? 

The saying turns on a traditional distinction between left- and right-handed spades in Irish agriculture...

Most types of digging spade in Britain and Ireland have foot-rests at the top of their blades; two-sided spades have foot-rests on each side of the shaft and socket, while an older style of one-sided spade had only one. Two-sided spades may well have been introduced by the Protestant 'planters' in the sixteenth century. By the early nineteenth century specialised spade and shovel mills in the north of Ireland were producing vast numbers of two-sided spades which came to be universally used in Ulster and strongly identified with the province.

One-sided spades with narrow blades and a foot-rest cut out of the side of the relatively larger wooden shaft continued in use in the south and west. The rural population of Gaelic Ireland retained the Catholic faith and tended also to retain the one-sided spade and 'dig with the wrong foot'. 

In fact, the two-sided spade of Ulster was generally used with the left foot whereas the one-sided spade tended to be used with the right foot. Instinctively, the 'wrong foot' of the Catholics has come to be thought of as the left foot...

--Hugh Cheape, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh.

The best image I've found of such a shovel in use is this one, from Jim Orr Photography -

- of a "loy spade" (from the Gaelic word laí, for spade).  His gallery of photographs of the shovel in use includes a closeup of the narrow-bladed tool (about half the width of a conventional shovel).

Top two photos from here (this one appears to me to be designed for use with the right foot) and (cropped from) here.

Addendum:  A tip of the ushanka to reader Aleksejs for finding the following explanatory video:

YouTube link.

I'll bet the ancient Irishmen would have loved to have had someone attach bicycle handlebars to their spades.

Family photo implanted inside a living chicken

YouTube link.

Apparently a manifestation of a Santeria ritual.

Miami-Dade College anthropology professor Mercedes Cros Sandoval explained, "This is a magical ritual of Cuban origin, probably, with the name 'Sarabanda,' which is a deity from the Congo area that was probably used to affect the relationship of these three young people. To me it is alien, the idea of casting your sins on innocent animals," said Sheehan.

Alien, yes, but not inexplicable when one remembers the Western tradition of "sin-eating" and its relationship to Christianity.

More details here, via Nothing to do with Arbroath.

p.s. - I rather suspect when they named the chicken, the rescuers intended it to be spelled "trouper" rather than "trooper."

Mega-churches for atheists

From the StarTribune:

Nearly three dozen gatherings dubbed "atheist mega-churches" by supporters and detractors have sprung up around the U.S. and Australia — with more to come — after finding success in Great Britain earlier this year. The movement fueled by social media and spearheaded by two prominent British comedians is no joke...

They don't bash believers but want to find a new way to meet likeminded people, engage in the community and make their presence more visible in a landscape dominated by faith...

"If you think about church, there's very little that's bad. It's singing awesome songs, hearing interesting talks, thinking about improving yourself and helping other people — and doing that in a community with wonderful relationships. What part of that is not to like?"..

Sunday Assembly — whose motto is Live Better, Help Often, Wonder More — taps into that universe of people who left their faith but now miss the community church provided... It also plays into a feeling among some atheists that they should make themselves more visible...

"In the U.S., there's a little bit of a feeling that if you're not religious, you're not patriotic. I think a lot of secular people say, 'Hey, wait a minute. We are charitable, we are good people, we're good parents and we are just as good citizens as you and we're going to start a church to prove it.."

During the service, attendees stomped their feet, clapped their hands and cheered as Jones and Evans led the group through rousing renditions of "Lean on Me," ''Here Comes the Sun" and other hits that took the place of gospel songs. Congregants dissolved into laughter at a get-to-know-you game that involved clapping and slapping the hands of the person next to them and applauded as members of the audience spoke about community service projects they had started in LA.

I do like this Pope - updated

Addendum:   Found this story at Reddit today - "A couple being married at the Vatican were volunteers at a charity that uses humor therapy for sick children. So, when they met Pope Francis..."

It's the sort of behavior that wouldn't surprise me coming from a Lutheran clergyman, but that I would never previously have expected from a Pope.

"Germany’s recently suspended “Bishop of Bling” faces the prospect of seeing his lavish multimillion euro residence turned into a refugee centre or a soup kitchen for the homeless, Catholic church officials in his home diocese announced today.

Bishop Franz Peter Tebartz-van Elst was formally suspended last week amid accusations that he had spent over €31m (£26.5m) on renovating his official residence in Limburg. The charges, which earned the 53-year-old bishop his nickname, provoked outrage among German Catholics."

Thomas Jefferson and Islam

From a fascinating column at Salon:

At a time when most Americans were uninformed, misinformed, or simply afraid of Islam, Thomas Jefferson imagined Muslims as future citizens of his new nation. His engagement with the faith began with the purchase of a Qur’an eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s Qur’an survives still in the Library of Congress, serving as a symbol of his and early America’s complex relationship with Islam and its adherents...

That he owned a Qur’an reveals Jefferson’s interest in the Islamic religion, but it does not explain his support for the rights of Muslims. Jefferson first read about Muslim “civil rights” in the work of one of his intellectual heroes: the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke. Locke had advocated the toleration of Muslims—and Jews—following in the footsteps of a few others in Europe who had considered the matter for more than a century before him...

As they set about creating a new government in the United States, the American Founders, Protestants all, frequently referred to the adherents of Islam as they contemplated the proper scope of religious freedom and individual rights among the nation’s present and potential inhabitants. The founding generation debated whether the United States should be exclusively Protestant or a religiously plural polity. And if the latter, whether political equality—the full rights of citizenship, including access to the highest office—should extend to non-Protestants. The mention, then, of Muslims as potential citizens of the United States forced the Protestant majority to imagine the parameters of their new society beyond toleration. It obliged them to interrogate the nature of religious freedom: the issue of a “religious test” in the Constitution, like the ones that would exist at the state level into the nineteenth century; the question of “an establishment of religion,” potentially of Protestant Christianity; and the meaning and extent of a separation of religion from government...

Although we have since learned that there were in fact Muslims resident in eighteenth-century America, this book demonstrates that the Founders and their generational peers never knew it. Thus their Muslim constituency remained an imagined, future one. But the fact that both Washington and Jefferson attached to it such symbolic significance is not accidental...

The citations above are excerpted from a recently-published book: “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an” by Denise A. Spellberg.  I've requested the book and hope to review it some time in the future - sounds interesting.

Teaser for "Hug an Atheist"

YouTube link.

Excerpts from an article at Sojourners:

Some outside the atheist community — and even many inside it — would argue that atheism has an image problem. Every challenge to the First Amendment seems to bring to the airwaves some version of an angry atheist versus a sputtering religious pundit. Cooler, calmer heads seldom make an appearance.

Now, a new feature-length documentary from a first-time filmmaker hopes to put a more human, middle-of-the-road face on American atheism... The 90-minute film is the project of Sylvia Broeckx, a 35-year-old Belgian who lives in England and has been an atheist and humanist since her teens. She became interested in America’s perception of nonbelievers when some American friends and fellow atheists shared their own stories of feeling marginalized.

“I always assumed America was founded on freedom of religion and was very much like Europe where if you are an atheist it is no big deal,” she said. “When I discovered that in America being an atheist could be a big problem, that was really a shock to me.”

She was especially upset by the stories of Jessica Ahlquist and Damon Fowler, two teenage atheists who challenged prayer in their public schools. Ahlquist, a Rhode Island high schooler, received death threats and was belittled by local government officials, and Fowler’s family kicked him out of their Louisiana home before his high school graduation...

What is not included is any sort of diatribe or argument against religious belief or believers that’s become the common currency of the most visible atheist activists.

“I really wanted to make sure it was as upbeat as possible and that it really wasn’t a case of ‘us’ against ‘them,’” Broeckx said.

Maps of religiosity

Via The Land of Maps.

Non-religious people in Germany. (2011 census)

Via The Land of Maps.

Not from The Onion

This is a real book, reviewed at Amazon and discussed at Le Café Witteveen.

Christianity's "myth of persecution"

From a book review at Salon:

Moss, professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame, challenges some of the most hallowed legends of the religion when she questions what she calls “the Sunday school narrative of a church of martyrs, of Christians huddled in catacombs out of fear, meeting in secret to avoid arrest and mercilessly thrown to lions merely for their religious beliefs.” None of that, she maintains, is true. In the 300 years between the death of Jesus and the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, there were maybe 10 or 12 scattered years during which Christians were singled out for supression by Rome’s imperial authorities, and even then the enforcement of such initiatives was haphazard — lackadaisical in many regions, although harsh in others. “Christians were never,” Moss writes, “the victims of sustained, targeted persecution.”..

This is not to deny that some Christians were executed in horrible ways under conditions we’d consider grotesquely unjust. But it’s important, Moss explains, to distinguish between “persecution” and “prosecution.” The Romans had no desire to support a prison population, so capital punishment was common for many seemingly minor offenses; you could be sentenced to be beaten to death for writing a slanderous song. Moss distinguishes between those cases in which Christians were prosecuted simply for being Christians and those in which they were condemned for engaging in what the Romans considered subversive or treasonous activity. Given the “everyday ideals and social structures” the Romans regarded as essential to the empire, such transgressions might include publicly denying the divine status of the emperor, rejecting military service or refusing to accept the authority of a court. In one of her most fascinating chapters, Moss tries to explain how baffling and annoying the Romans (for whom “pacifism didn’t exist as a concept”) found the Christians — when the Romans thought about them at all.

Christians wound up in Roman courts for any number of reasons, but when they got there, they were prone to announcing, as a believer named Liberian once did, “that he cannot be respectful to the emperor, that he can be respectful only to Christ.” Moss compares this to “modern defendants who say that they will not recognize the authority of the court or of the government, but recognize only the authority of God. For modern Americans, as for ancient Romans, this sounds either sinister or vaguely insane.” It didn’t help that early Christians developed a passion for martyrdom. Suffering demonstrated both the piety of the martyr and the authenticity of the religion itself, and besides, it earned you an immediate, first-class seat in heaven. (Ordinary Christians had to wait for Judgment Day.) There were reports of fanatics deliberately seeking out the opportunity to die for their faith, including a mob that turned up at the door of a Roman official in Asia Minor, demanding to be martyred, only to be turned away when he couldn’t be bothered to oblige them.

More at Salon, where there is a link to the book.

Feodora Morozova goes into exile with two fingers raised

This will be my final entry on material derived from the remarkable book and television program about the Lykov family.  For newbies, see these background posts: Isolated for 40 years in the Taiga,  "Agafia's Taiga Life" (outstanding video), and Lost in the Taiga.

Here's an excerpt from Lost in the Taiga (p. 38):

A friend of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich's pious first wife, the young widow Feodosia Prokofievna Morozova was very rich (eight thousand serfs, a mountain of gold, a gilded carriage, horses, servants)...

In Surikov's painting we see Morozova being taken through Moscow on a peasant sledge on her way into exile.  In this remarkable canvas we see the face of the entire Schism: sniggering priests, the concerned faces of both common and distinguished people who obviously sympathize with the martyr, the stern faces of adherents of the old ways...

The State Tretyakov Gallery offers this description of the painting (click the top image for bigger, btw - it's quite a painting):

Surikov, Vasily Ivanovich. Boyarina Morozova. 1887 oil on canvas 304 x 587,5

Feodosia Prokopievna Morozova (?–1675), was a supporter of the spiritual leader of the old faith, archpriest Avvakum. Circa 1670 she was secretly tonsured as a nun; in 1671 she was arrested and in 1673 she was sent to the Pafnutief-Borovsky convent where she was starved to death in an earthen prison. The painting is devoted to the Church Schism of the 17th century. The Schism arose as a result of reforms by Patriarch Nikon to unify the rites and establish uniformity in the church service. The artist has depicted an episode when Boyarina Morozova is taken around Moscow to her place of confinement. In the centre is Morozova herself, her hand thrown up, blessing the crowd in the two-fingered manner of the Old Believers. The black spot of her clothing sounds the tragic dominant note of the painting. The crowd has divided. To the left, they are mocking the boyarina; to the right, they sympathize with her. Alongside Morozova is her sister Evdokia Urusova, who shared the fate of the Schismatics.

Wikipedia has an extended entry on the Old Believers.  First on a list of "Main differences between the Old Believers and post-Nikonian Russian Orthodoxy" is this entry:

Old Believers use two fingers while making the Sign of the Cross (the pointer finger straight, middle finger slightly bent, two fingers joined with thumb, held at point, three folded) while new-style Orthodoxy uses three fingers for the sign of cross (three fingers (including the thumb) held together at point, two fingers folded). Old Ritualists generally say the Jesus Prayer with the Sign of the Cross, while New Ritualists use the Sign of the Cross as a Trinitarian symbol. This makes for a significant difference between the two branches of Russian Orthodoxy, and one of the most noticeable...

Peskov made the same point in his book about Agafia:

Divergencies [sic] that seem ridiculous to us provoked special protest.  According to the new books, Nikon asserted, religious processions around the church should go counterclockwise, not clockwise; the word "hallelujah" should be sung two times, not three; people should bow at the waist, not to the ground; and they should cross themsleves with three fingers, not two, as the Greeks do.  It was a debate not about faith but about the rituals of the service, about isolated and relatively minor details of observance.

It was for these differences that Morozova was starved to death.  It was for differences like this that Agafia's father and her siblings abandoned civilization to flee into the wilderness of the taiga.  And it is this sort of insistence upon details of dogma and ritual that I believe constitute the greatest weakness of religions.  These almost arbitrary distinctions create schisms that exclude the "others" from the communion of believers and theoretically from eternal salvation.  It leads to wars between Sunnis and Shiites.

I remember in the 1960s how the Lutheran Church (itself subdivided into sects that seem ridiculously unimportant) tried to promote the "new ecumenism."  But true interfaith pluralism never emerged; I suspect every faith has much at stake in maintaining its identity distinct from all others. 

Addendum:  A hat tip to reader Robert "Chemsolver" who remembered that Zorba the Greek contained a reference to Madame Hortense not getting a proper burial because of the number of fingers she used to make the sign of the cross:

"Shall I go and call the priest? said Mimiko.
"What priest you fool?" said Kondomanolio furiously. "She was a Frank; didn't you ever notice how she crossed herself? With four fingers-like that-the infidel! Come on, let's get her underground, so that she doesn't stink us all out and infect the whole village!"

A "bloody" book of devotion

The British Library's Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts has a page devoted to "Kissing Images" (the habit of kissing images in books).  Discussed there is BL MS Edgerton 1821:

"The most remarkable example of a book of devotion that may show signs of having received that devotion in a direct physical form is Egerton 1821, an English product of around 1490. This book is known to those who work on prints, and was exhibited at the National Gallery in Washington DC in 2005, but is still largely unknown, I think, to those who work on manuscripts. It begins with three pages, each painted black, on which large drops of blood trickle down. The third page has been thoroughly worn. I am not absolutely certain this is the result of kissing, and part of it has been rubbed and smudged rather than merely kissed, but I think it very well could have been partially erased by kissing... "

"After this the pages turn blood red, and thick gouts of blood pour down them from innumerable wounds. This disturbing decoration continues for ten consecutive pages (the last folio was cut out at some date, leaving only a stub). I count approximately 540 wounds on the bloodiest page, so perhaps taken together they were intended to represent the 5400 or more wounds received by Christ according to texts of late medieval devotion."

"There are two openings like this before one reaches a third with two further woodcuts pasted in. The first represents a Man of Sorrows surrounded by twenty small compartments with instruments of the passion. Facing it is a larger woodcut of the five wounds of Christ with a heart at the centre over a cross. The left image (think back to the miniature in Harley 2985) carries an indulgence (later defaced): ‘To all them that devoutly say five Pater nosters, five Aves, and a Creed afore such a figure are granted 32,755 years of pardon.’ (A combination of hyperinflation and opportunism by printers among others had seriously devalued the indulgence by this date.)"

Further discussion of this book, with additional photos, continues at the British Library site.

Michele Bachmann channels Cotton Mather

YouTube link.

"It's no secret that our nation may very well be experiencing the hand of judgment. It's no secret that we all are concerned that our nation may be in a time of decline.... Our nation has seen judgment not once but twice on September 11. That's why we're going to have '9/11 Pray' on that day. Is there anything better that we can do on that day rather than to humble ourselves and to pray to an almighty God?"

This response from Rachel Maddow:

To be sure, Bachmann, like everyone else, is entitled to whatever theological beliefs she wishes to embrace. But it's nevertheless jarring, to put it mildly, to see a prominent politician -- a former presidential candidate and current member of the House Intelligence Committee -- argue publicly that God's judgment of Americans' sins led to deadly terrorist attacks. Members of Congress usually blame the terrorists for mass murder, not us.

Catholic wife and Protestant husband, separated after death by religious bigotry

Relevant text from the Reddit thread:

Grave of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband. The Protestant Colonel of Cavalry, JWC of Gorkum married the Catholic damsel JCPH of Aefferden. This "mixed" marriage, at that time (the 19th century), would have given them trouble. The wife wanted to be buried next to her husband, but the difference in their denomination would not allow that. So the Colonel was buried in the Protestant part, against the separation wall and his wife was buried on the Catholic side.

Here's the cemetery (Roermond, The Netherlands) on Google maps (you can see the monuments from the street view camera!)

The new Pope gets off to a good start - updated

Note the change in the papal throne.  Via Reddit.

Addendum:  Easter 2007 vs. Easter 2013:

Via Reddit.

Hoods for Holy Week

Penitents take part in the procession of "La Paz" (The Peace) brotherhood during Holy Week in the Andalusian capital of Seville, southern Spain, April 5, 2009. (REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo)

A boy carried a cross and wore a hood as he prepared to take part in a procession at a school on the eve of Christianity's Holy Week in Seville, Spain, Friday.  Marcelo del Pozo/Reuters.  Source.

It's interesting to note the degree to which the symbolism of the hood has been co-opted for Americans by its historical misuse.  Every time I look at the top photo, the candle looks like a club.

The Popul Vuh creation myth

Popol Vuh "is a corpus of mytho-historical narratives of the Post Classic K'iche' kingdom in Guatemala's western highlands." Popol Vuh's prominent features are its creation myth, its diluvian suggestion, its epic tales..., and its genealogies."

Chapters 1-3 contain Popol Vuh's creation myth...

"This is the first account, the first narrative. There was neither man, nor animal, birds, fishes, crabs, trees, stones, caves, ravines, grasses, nor forests; there was only the sky. The surface of the earth had not appeared. There was only the calm sea and the great expanse of the sky. There was nothing brought together, nothing which could make a noise, nor anything which might move, or tremble, or could make noise in the sky. There was nothing standing; only the calm water, the placid sea, alone and tranquil. Nothing existed. There was only immobility and silence in the darkness, in the night. Only the creator, the Maker, Tepeu, Gucumatz, the Forefathers, were in the water surrounded with light. [...] Then Tepeu and Gucumatz came together; then they conferred about life and light, what they would do so that there would be light and dawn, who it would be who would provide food and sustenance. Thus let it be done! Let the emptiness be filled! Let the water recede and make a void, let the earth appear and become solid; let it be done. Thus they spoke. Let there be light, let there be dawn in the sky and on the earth! There shall be neither glory nor grandeur in our creation and formation until the human being is made, man is formed. [...] First the earth was formed, the mountains and the valleys; the currents of water were divided, the rivulets were running freely between the hills, and the water was separated when the high mountains appeared. Thus was the earth created, when it was formed by the Heart of Heaven, the Heart of Earth, as they are called who first made it fruitful, when the sky was in suspense, and the earth was submerged in the water."

Together, gods attempted to create living beings so that they may be praised and venerated by their creation. Their first attempts (animals, mud man, and wooden man) proved unsuccessful because they lacked speech, souls, and intellect.

"This the Forefathers did, Tepeu and Gucumatz, as they were called. After that they began to talk about the creation and the making of our first mother and father; of yellow corn and of white corn they made their flesh; of cornmeal dough they made the arms and the legs of man. Only dough of corn meal went into the flesh of our first fathers, the four men, who were created. [...] And as they had the appearance of men, they were men; they talked, conversed, saw and heard, walked, grasped things; they were good and handsome men, and their figure was the figure of a man."

Women were created later while the first four men slept.

More at Wikipedia.

Reaction to the "Pop Tart gun" incident

In case you missed it, here is the "Pop Tart gun" incident, as described by the Washington Post:

A 7-year-old Anne Arundel County boy was suspended for two days for chewing a breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun and saying, “Bang, bang”— an offense the school described as a threat to other students, according to his family.

The pastry “gun” was a rectangular strawberry-filled bar, akin to a Pop-Tart, that the second-grader had tried to nibble into the shape of a mountain Friday morning, but then found it looked more like a gun, said his father, William “B.J.” Welch.

Welch said an assistant principal at Park Elementary School told him that his son pointed the pastry at a classmate — though the child maintains he pointed it at the ceiling...

Anne Arundel officials could not comment on the pastry incident because of confidentiality laws, schools spokesman Bob Mosier said. He did say, however, that a letter was sent home to families Friday and is posted on the school’s Web site.

In the letter, Myrna Phillips, assistant principal at the school, informed parents that a student “used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class” but said no “physical threats” were made and no one was harmed.

If children are troubled by the incident, Phillips wrote, parents should “help them share their feelings.” In addition, a counselor will be available to students, the letter said. “In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices,” she wrote.

More at the link (Pop Tart photo via, child photo from ABC15.com).

I have expressed my own disdain for "zero tolerance" school policies on several occasions (here, here, here, or search the blog for "zero brains"), but an Illinois church (Grace-Gospel Fellowship church near Chicago) has taken it to the next level:

The story of the little boy suspended over his Pop Tart gun not only inspired legislation to stop such absurd school discipline, it inspired an Illinois church to celebrate “Second Amendment Sunday” with an “assault” Pop Tart gun-biting contest for Sunday school students...

Kirkwood told Doug Giles of Clash Daily that Christians must stop being apathetic and stand up and fight for our God-given rights...

“Each child who wanted to participate chewed a pop-tart into the shape of a gun and the top four would win prizes; in this case a toy gun,” Kirkwood told Giles. Clash Daily reported the following on the awesome prizes:

“Second runner up received a double barrel shot-gun that we nicknamed ‘The Biden,’ and when we presented it we made sure to say what ‘not’ to do with it in a real situation. The prize for runner up was a Navy Seal sniper rifle that we named ‘The Chris Kyle’ in honor of the American Sniper. We felt that it was appropriate,” added Kirkwood, “given the insulting way that this administration ignored the death of this American hero, yet had the crust to send a delegation to the memorial service for Hugo Chavez.”

What was the top award? Kirkwood smiled and noted, “You know, I stood in the toy aisle for a good half an hour to choose just the right one and it turned out to be the biggest Nerf gun that I could find, and the kicker – the box was marked ‘semi-auto’ and ‘high capacity,’ so we named that one ‘the Feinstein.’”

And this from Clash Daily:

What was the general response to this rather unique worship service? “Well one couple did walk out, though I was told it was for another engagement, but overall the response was tremendous and we plan on doing it every year … and next year the prizes will be even better.  Our Bible Boot Camp class (High School age) will be challenged to come up with a 5 minute speech on the right to bear arms and the winner will walk away with a Ruger 10/22,” said Kirkwood, “who knows, maybe by then we’ll have sponsors.”

Last two photos via Clash Daily (where the comment thread is... interesting).

I'll defer any commentary.

Collegiate "student secular organizations"

Excerpts from an essay at Salon:

Secular groups on college campuses are proliferating. The Ohio-based Secular Student Alliance... incorporated as a nonprofit in 2001. By 2007, 80 campus groups had affiliated with them, 100 by 2008, 174 by 2009, and today there are 394 SSA student groups on campuses across the country...

The Secular Student Alliance provides its affiliate groups with support and materials, including banners, pins, and informational materials with titles like What Is An Atheist?, a brochure with cheerful graphics and information about the identities of secularists, including “non-theist,” “freethinker,” and “humanist.”

Oddly enough, in the geography of on-campus student groups, atheist organizations fit within the category of faith-based groups like the Campus Crusade For Christ, which recently (and controversially) changed its name to Cru. At Stanford University, the Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics (AHA!) register with the Office For Religious Life, just like Cru, and are a member of Stanford Associated Religions...

The Secular Student Alliance is essentially a support network for the autonomous atheist, agnostic, and humanist student groups that choose to be its affiliates. The rapid growth of the SSA is analogue to the general growth of the American secular movement. Atheist groups were once fringe organizations that didn’t get along. That began to change around 2007, on the heels of bestselling books from atheist authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Suddenly, the movement had leaders, a sense of direction and a common purpose. Today, the Secular Coalition For America is an umbrella lobbyist group for a number of once-competing groups, including American Atheists, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the American Humanist Association.

More at Salon.

The "sin-eater"

As described in Wikipedia:

The term sin-eater refers to a person who, through ritual means, would take on by means of food and drink the sins of a household, often because of a recent death, thus absolving the soul and allowing that person to rest in peace. In the study of folklore sin-eating is considered a form of religious magic.

This ritual is said to have been practised in parts of England and Scotland, and allegedly survived until the late 19th or early 20th century in Wales ... as well as certain portions of Appalachia in America (documented in the Foxfire cultural history series).

Traditionally, it was performed by a beggar, and certain villages maintained their own sin-eaters. They would be brought to the dying person's bedside, where a relative would place a crust of bread on the breast of the dying and pass a bowl of ale to him over the corpse. After praying or reciting the ritual, he would then drink and remove the bread from the breast and eat it, the act of which would remove the sin from the dying person and take it into himself...

The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica states in its article on "sin eaters":

"A symbolic survival of it (sin eating) was witnessed as recently as 1893 at Market Drayton, Shropshire. After a preliminary service had been held over the coffin in the house, a woman poured out a glass of wine for each bearer and handed it to him across the coffin with a 'funeral biscuit.' In Upper Bavaria sin-eating still survives: a corpse cake is placed on the breast of the dead and then eaten by the nearest relative, while in the Balkan peninsula a small bread image of the deceased is made and eaten by the survivors of the family. The Dutch doed-koecks or 'dead-cakes', marked with the initials of the deceased, introduced into America in the 17th century, were long given to the attendants at funerals in old New York. The 'burial-cakes' which are still made in parts of rural England, for example Lincolnshire and Cumberland, are almost certainly a relic of sin-eating".

I wonder if any of this custom morphed into the present-day custom of sharing food after a funeral (cf The Big Chill).

Image via The Oddment Emporium.

St. Bartholomew skinned alive

Christian tradition has three stories about Bartholomew's death: "One speaks of his being kidnapped, beaten unconscious, and cast into the sea to drown. Another account states that he was crucified upside down, and another says that he was skinned alive and beheaded in Albac or Albanopolis", near Başkale, Turkey. The account of Bartholomew being skinned alive is the most represented in works of art, and consequently Bartholomew is often shown with a large knife, holding his own skin (as in Michelangelo's Last Judgment [below]), or both. Bartholomew is also the patron saint of tanners.

Sculpture by Marco d’Agrate, 1562 (Duomo cathedral, Milan-Italy).  Image from detail-detail-detail via The Oddment Emporium.