Lego can help you to understand the timeline of the Bible.

A devout Christian couple have been cleared of insulting a Muslim guest because of her faith.
Benjamin and Sharon Vogelenzang were accused of launching a tirade against Ericka Tazi at the Bounty House Hotel in Aintree, Liverpool, in March.
She claimed the couple became enraged when she wore a hijab on her last day and accused Mr Vogelenzang, 53, of asking her if she was a murderer and a terrorist.
She also told the court Mr Vogelenzang called the Prophet Muhammad a murderer and a warlord and likened him to Saddam Hussein and Hitler.
But the couple denied her version of events and claimed Mrs Tazi told them Jesus was a minor prophet and that the Bible was untrue.

I love this! I really do not understand why religious people have to fight against science all the time.

(The Raw Story: More Americans believe in angels than humans’ role in global warming)

How scary is this?

Muslim woman 'abused' over dress by Christian hotelier

The couple arrived in court in Liverpool earlier

A Muslim woman was asked by a Christian hotelier if she was a terrorist and a murderer because she was wearing Islamic dress, a court has been told.

Ericka Tazi told Liverpool magistrates she faced a tirade of abuse from Benjamin Vogelenzang and his wife Sharon, at their hotel on Merseyside.

She said it was because she was wearing a hijab head covering and gown.

Mr and Mrs Vogelenzang deny using threatening, abusive or insulting words which were religiously aggravated.

Members of campaign group The Christian Institute demonstrated in support of the couple outside the court.

Mrs Tazi, who converted to Islam 18 months ago, spent a month at The Bounty House Hotel on Church Avenue, Aintree, Liverpool, while attending a course at Aintree Hospital.

Clothes 'mocked'

Prosecutor Anya Horwood told the court Mr Vogelenzang, 53, called the prophet Mohammed a "warlord" and likened him to Saddam Hussein and Hitler.

And his 54-year-old wife told Mrs Tazi her Islamic dress represented "oppression" and was a form of "bondage", the court heard.

Mrs Tazi had worn European dress during her four-week stay, but the row flared after she came down on her last day in traditional Islamic dress.

She said Mr Vogelenzang asked her "Why are you wearing those clothes?" and began laughing at her, the prosecutor told the court.

Ms Horwood said the hotelier then began to discuss his Christian faith but became angry - at which point his wife joined in.

He asked me if I was a murderer, if I was a terrorist Ericka Tazi, hotel guest

Mrs Tazi walked away but was followed by Mr Vogelenzang, who was acting like "a whirling dervish", repeatedly asking her if she was a "terrorist".

Giving evidence, Mrs Tazi told the bench that dressing in her hijab seemed to "trigger something" in the hotelier.

The 60-year-old, who suffers from fibromyalgia and lives with chronic pain, said: "He just couldn't accept the way I was dressed.

"He asked me if I was a murderer, if I was a terrorist. I'm a 60-year-old disabled woman, I couldn't understand where it was coming from, it was shocking to me."

Mrs Tazi said Mr Vogelenzang followed her into the dining room "flailing" his arms and "jumping up and down".

She added: "Sharon came running in, she was shouting 'you started this with your dress' and she was pointing in my face and I was frightened at this stage. I was absolutely traumatised by it all."

Beatles fan

Later that night Mrs Tazi contacted Merseyside Police. When detectives questioned the couple they claimed they had been sharing their "faith views".

Mrs Tazi told Hugh Tomlinson QC, for the defence, that she was not trying to make a statement by wearing the hijab and denied having robust arguments about religion with other guests.

She told him she tried "many religions" before converting to Islam when she married.

Mrs Tazi said: "My journey has been a long, long journey, it was a very difficult decision to wear these clothes... I'm a normal Warrington girl who liked the Beatles."

Guests at the hotel told the court that Mrs Tazi was left distraught by the row.

Pauline Tait, 52, a committed Christian, described it as "a very upsetting and volatile exchange".

Another guest, Shirley Tait, said she was in her bedroom when she heard Mr Vogelenzang shouting the words "nazi" and "warlord".

The case was adjourned until Wednesday.

Good to see some of that old fashioned Christian tolerance in action!

The new Roman Catholic archbishop of Birmingham has been officially welcomed to the city in a special Mass.

In October the Vatican announced Bishop Bernard Longley, 54, would succeed Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who is now archbishop of Westminster.

The archbishop of Birmingham is one of the most senior appointments in the Roman Catholic Church in the UK.

The official Mass of Installation took place at the city's St Chad's Cathedral. His new archdiocese covers areas including Stoke-on-Trent, Stafford, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Birmingham, Worcester and Oxford.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has expressed his concern at the election of the second openly gay bishop in the Anglican Church.

Rowan Williams said the move raised "very serious questions" for both the Episcopal Church in the US and the Anglican Communion as a whole.

But he noted that the election of the Reverend Mary Glasspool in the diocese of Los Angeles had yet to be confirmed.

Nowadays not even theologians are interested in theology. They tell me it's because Kant proved that theology was impossible and the logical positivists nailed it by showing that theological claims were not merely unknowable but unintelligible. Most theologians are therefore "non-realists" when it comes to religious claims – that is, they don't believe in God.

By the late 20th century "mainline" churches in the US, even if they did not profess non-realism, operated as if theology were unimportant and uninteresting. Convinced that their primary purpose was social improvement, church leaders regarded theological differences as inconsequential and denominational divisions as an impediment to their collaborative work for social justice. And so liberal ecumenism was born, the first moment in what we can now see was a great realignment.

The second soon followed. Conservative evangelical groups, once bitterly divided over theological minutiae, coalesced to form the religious right.

Like liberal ecumenists, conservatives united to promote a social agenda: evangelicals joined forces to campaign against modernity. Conservatives insisted that their own programme was backed by real theology. But they happily collaborated –and collaborate still – with anyone, including conservative Catholics, who was on board with their social vision. Any theology would do so long as it supported "family values": sex roles, sexual abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage, and discipline to maintain a social order threatened by the collapse of traditional social arrangements. Theology was negotiable; lifestyle was not.

Politics were also negotiable. Once evangelicalism had become the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in America, a new generation of evangelical mega-church pastors cultivated a softer image and went mainstream on a range of political policies. But on core social issues there was no compromise. Evangelicals might take up environmentalism or criticise American military adventurism, but they would not repudiate "family values."

The Roman Catholic church too, though politically centre-left, was uncompromising when it came to sex roles and sexuality. Anglican and Roman Catholic ecumenists painstakingly negotiated fine points of theology while everyone knew that women's ordination was a deal-breaker. Sex roles were central to the Catholic church's conservative communitarian vision: the doctrine that gender was ontologically grounded was non-negotiable.

For now, the conservative social agenda still sells. Conservative churches flourish in the global south where their social vision, of a world where women's lives centre on the family under male headship and paternalistic clergy provide moral guidance and leadership, is still acceptable.

Where social change has disrupted lives, conservative churches provide a refuge from modernity. During the late 20th century, without strong labour unions or social safety nets, the American working class suffered disproportionately from the shift to a service sector economy. Nostalgic for an idealised past, when manufacturing jobs provided a "family wage," marriages were stable and neighborhoods safe, they cling, in Obama's words, to guns and religion.

Conservatives note with satisfaction that Christianity is thriving in developing countries, amongst immigrants, and within the American working class. Modernity, they believe, is a failed experiment. Fertile, socially conservative immigrants will replace declining secular European populations and the balance of power will shift to the global south, where "family values" persist.

But fertility rates have fallen precipitously in many developing countries. Female literacy and the economic emergence of women lower fertility rates, promote economic development and track the passage from an agrarian society to a modern one. Conservatives who look to the developing world as the church's hope for the future can only pray for an increase in poverty and female illiteracy to stem the tide of modernity.

In the US, conservative churches are still growing though not as rapidly as America's fastest growing "religious group": the unchurched. In light of statistical analyses, some evangelicals are already predicting the collapse of evangelical Christianity as evangelical churches approach a "generational horizon".

Christianity insofar as it is identified with a social agenda, whether liberal or conservative, will lose. Liberal churches are dying. Non-realist theology has little popular appeal: most laypeople who don't believe in God see no reason to go to church. There are innumerable secular organisations devoted to promoting social improvement and no reason why they should work for social justice under religious auspices. Conservative churches are identified with a social agenda that an increasing number of people find unacceptable.

Maybe it's time for churches to re-engage with theology, arguments concerning the existence and nature of God, and even with mysticism, the quest for direct experience of God. Almost one fifth of Americans call themselves "spiritual, but not religious." Organised religion has failed them. They reject conservative churches' social agendas and liberal churches, having gutted their liturgies to strip out every last bit of the numinous, have little to offer them.

Arguably, theology and mysticism are all Christianity has to offer. The illusion that churches "witness" to the world and have an essential social role to play is unsustainable. The best churches can do is provide religious goods and services for the minority of consumers, among whom I include myself, who have a taste for religion.