Save the date: May 21, 2011. If preacher Harold Camping is right, that's the exact date Jesus will return and the righteous will fly up to heaven, leaving behind only their clothes. That will be followed by five months of fire, brimstone and plagues, with millions of people dying each day and corpses piling in the streets. Finally, on Oct. 21, the world ends exactly as the Book of Revelation says it will - with a bottomless pit, a lake of fire and, at last, a new heaven and new earth.

Doomsday preachers come and go, but at nearly 90 years old, the spry Camping has managed to ignite a nationwide movement that has garnered national attention.

"God has put his stamp of approval that this is the day," McCann said in a telephone interview. "I don't doubt it, and I don't look at the possibility of May 22 happening."

Neither does Camping. Asked how he arrived at the date, he opened his Bible to Genesis and said Noah loaded animals into the ark in 4990 B.C., a number he said he arrived at years ago after looking at carbon dating, tree rings and other data. Paging forward to 2 Peter, he read aloud, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years is one day."

Leafing back to Genesis, he said that the seven days Noah spent loading the ark was really 7,000 years. He then added 7,000 to 4990 B.C to arrive at 2010. He added one more year, he said, because there is no year one in the Bible.As for the exact date of May 21, he pointed again to Genesis, which says the flood began on the "17th day of the second month." According to the Jewish calendar, which he believes God uses, that is May 21.

Press found that 41% of Americans expect Jesus' return before 2040. But pinpointing an exact date is unusual, said John R. Hall, a sociology professor and author of "Apocalypse," an examination of doomsday groups.

Camping has wiggled before. He first predicted Jesus' return in 1994 in a book named for that year - but with a big question mark at the end. While writing the book, he said the year 2011 began to come up in his calculations, but 1994 was more prominent. When the year came and went, Camping explained that he was wrong and needed more study. "It just was a cudgel to keep studying," he said.

All in all, McLaren says if his "only option for Christian faith required me to be satisfied with the explanations given by Piper, I would be driven away," he wrote in a commentary featured in The Other Journal.

Piper wrote in his blog: "No earthquakes in the Bible are attributed to Satan. ... Earthquakes are ultimately from God. Nature does not have a will of its own. And God owes Satan no freedom. What havoc demons wreak, they wreak with God's permission. And God has reasons for what he permits. His permissions are purposes."

We don't know all ("hundreds of thousands") the purposes for the calamity in Japan and won't know until the end of age, Piper says. But there are possible purposes revealed in the Bible. Piper lists:

• "The end-time earthquakes" are meant as calls to unbelievers to repentance and as a wake-up call to the world that Jesus Christ is coming and God's kingdom will soon be born;
• "God's unilateral taking of thousands of lives is a loud declaration that 'The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away' (Job 1:21)" - in other words, life is a loan from God;
• The powerful earthquake reveals the "fearful magnificence of God" - "most of the world does not fear the Lord and therefore lacks saving wisdom;"
• When the earth shakes, there is a sense that there is no place to flee. Where do you turn? To God.

For those seeking "simple answers" and who are "of a certain theological bent," McLaren has no doubt that what Piper presented will satisfy them. But McLaren doesn't agree with such simplicity, particularly when it comes to the matter of evil and suffering.

"If one were to ask, 'What is God's relationship with the universe?' the only answer from Piper and his colleagues would be 'Sovereignty,' and sovereignty would mean absolute, unilateral control," he points out. "That, I think, is not the only option for a faithful believer in God."  McLaren argues that "it is better to say" that God's sovereignty is not totalitarian.

"God isn't the kind of king interested in absolute control. God wouldn't create that kind of relationship with the universe because God isn't that kind of God," he contends. "Instead, God creates space and time for a universe to be, to become, to unfold in its own story, its own evolution.

Pakistan earlier this month test-fired a nuclear-capable missile from an undisclosed location - the second in a month of try-outs for its short-range surface-to-surface Hataf 2 class rocket, co-developed with the Chinese. It was the latest in a series of arms collaborations between the two nations, which view their strategic partnership as a counterweight to a boldly confident India, which has American support.

Until the mid-1960s, the United States was the principal supplier of weapons to Pakistan, the world's eighth most-powerful nuclear nation. But the U.S. began to back away from the relationship after years of difficult and sometimes unpredictable relations following the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. no longer fully supports the military ambitions of a Pakistan that is being destabilized by an insurgency it cannot control, rising radicalism and anti-Westernism, and a government considered by some too weak and corrupt.

A Pakistani government official was recently quoted as saying it was vital for the navy to acquire more submarines to offset "the pressure we will definitely come under" due to the rapid expansion of India's naval capability. "Our Chinese brothers have always come to our help and we are asking them for assistance once again," he said.

The initiative, promoted by the Pontifical Council for Culture, takes up a suggestion of Benedict XVI to create a space for dialogue "with those to whom religion is something foreign, to whom God is unknown and who nevertheless do not want to be left merely Godless, but rather to draw near to him, albeit as the Unknown" (Benedict XVI, Dec. 21, 2009).

At UNESCO, this dialogue was presented as an "essential element in the quest for peace and abolition of the rejection of the other in the affirmation of one's own identity," explained the Pontifical Council for Culture in a communiqué.

"This dialogue has the same relevance for our time as interreligious dialogue," the council statement affirmed. "From the perspective of globalization, it calls for posing vital questions of a universal character and values."

Several political personalities, among them Giuliano Amato, former Italian prime minister, stressed the point of view of the debate at the political, cultural and social level. "The alliance between believers and nonbelievers will give liberty and democracy their meaning," said Amato.

Henri Lopes, former prime minister of Congo, and the ambassador of that country to France and UNESCO, stressed the importance of this dialogue to promote a culture of peace in the world, beyond European and Western borders.

Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche Community, spoke about the power of transformation that stems from the quality of a look directed to wounded humanity. "Encounter is more important than dialogue to establish a relationship of trust," he said.

Believers and non-believers must continue to coexist, concluded Monsignor Follo, saying this is not just a question of reciprocal tolerance, but a challenge that must be assumed.

The NIV is a popular translation of the Christian Bible. An updated translation was released this month. The translators said 95% of the 1984 translation remains the same. PETA is hoping the move toward greater gender inclusiveness will continue toward animals as well.

"When the Bible moves toward inclusively in one area ... it wasn't much of a stretch to suggest they move toward inclusively in this area," Bruce Friedrich, PETA's vice president for policy, told CNN.

Friedrich, a practicing Roman Catholic, said, "Language matters. Calling an animal 'it' denies them something. They are beloved by God. They glorify God."

"What happens in slaughterhouses mocks God," he said. People know intuitively that "animals are 'who' not 'what.' ... Acknowledging it would better align our practices with our beliefs."

"Do we need to know the gender of the lion Samson slew? What would it give us there?" he said. "You could try to specify that, but you would be doing so entirely inventively if you did. It's not in the original language. ... Nothing is made of it in the story."

Jeffery said he sympathizes and agrees with PETA's position that God calls for humans to care for animals, but he said, "When you get to the point when you say, 'Don't say it, say he or she' when the text doesn't, you're both screwing up the text and missing the main point you addressed."