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Tokyo Governor Says Tsunami is Divine Punishment—Religious Groups Ignore Him

By Levi McLaughlin

…er recorded earthquake was a means of washing away the “egoism” (gayoku in Japanese) afflicting the Japanese people. While the Tokyo Governor said that he felt sorry for the victims, he concluded that “We need a tsunami to wipe out egoism, which has rusted onto the mentality of Japanese over a long period of time.” Ishihara, who will seek a fourth term as Tokyo Governor in a 2013 election, apologized publicly the next day, following comments by Mi…

“Japan Gave Us Pokemon, God Gave Them an Earthquake”

By Anthea Butler

…bulk of the tweets are about God helping the Japanese, and prayer for the Japanese, but a number of the tweets are weighing in about God either being involved (see also here, and here) or meting out punishment (or refuting this response). Some tweets have also incorporated the Mayan calendar and the purported 2012 “end of the world” to explain the seismic activity. I’ve collected a sample of these below for you to see through Google’s real-time t…

Catholic Bishops End Family Synod With Little To Say To Gays; World Congress of Families Has Plenty To Say, None of it Good; How Same-Sex Marriage Came to a Buddhist Temple in Japan; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…reasons why LGBT people are not accepted are different in the West than in Japan,” Kawakami said. “In Japan, there is no religious pressure from groups like Christian conservatives. So you don’t see the same sort of strong opposition as in the West. On the other hand, in Japan, there is an underlying pressure to conform, a sense of ‘We are all the same; we are all heterosexual’ — and that makes it hard to live as an LGBT person.” “I thought that i…

Disaster Theology: Blame and Powerlessness in Japan

By Clark Strand

…. And there plenty of wonderful people living along the northeast coast of Japan. Nevertheless, Ryokan’s is a pretty common response to events of this kind throughout history—whether we’re talking about ancient Rome, 18th century Japan, or Pat Robertson in 21st century United States. The desire to regain control in the face of terrifying events is so strong we might as well call it an imperative. We will do or say almost anything to put ourselves…

The Jersey Shores of Tripoli: MTV and Arab Revolution

By Haroon Moghul

…ddle East, but a major influence on these revolutions was actually distant Japan. Because, in 1904, Japan went to war with Russia. The world powers’ consensus was that the white European power would handily defeat the Asian nation, as had been the case across the world for the previous century. But Japan did something its race and continent was not supposed to allow it to. Japan won. For the first time in a very long time, a non-white power had ha…

Pricey Tickets, Cranky Citizens, and Priests Behind Bars as Philadelphia Prepares For Papal Visit

By Anthea Butler

…to continue to shrink into the insularity and disorganization that caused the Philadelphia Archdiocese to decline so precipitously? It remains to be seen. Meanwhile, faithful Catholics and others who want to see the Pope may be losing heart. 10,000 tickets for the Pope’s Speech at Independence Mall sold out in two minutes on Tuesday, with 394k people trying their best to get a few. Tickets are already being scalped at $100 and up on craigslist. I…

Mormon Leaders Slam ‘Counterfeit’ Gay Families; Vatican Resists Gay Ambassador; ISIS Executes Man for Homosexuality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s Mark McLelland, a UK-born academic and author of Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realties. “You could be prosecuted there, whereas the Japanese are fairly laid-back about sexual scandal – it’s not personally harming in the way it is in the West.” While cops elsewhere were still busting men in toilets and public parks, Japan did not even have an anti-sodomy law. Nor did it have what McLelland calls the “anti-homosexual ra…

Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…, not the fourth century … You’re not free to practice your religion in my airline seat.’ ‘This is male entitlement .. the height of male arrogance.’ One comment referred to this as a ‘back of the bus’ issue; as in, women being asked to move in such circumstances was tantamount to assigning them a lesser status as citizens and lower dignity as human beings. Other readers proposed that airlines set aside special seating for men requiring such accom…

The Key to Understanding the Federalist Society Isn’t Originalism — It’s This 800-Year Old Tradition

By Peter Schwartz

…notions of “human dignity” and “human flourishing,” Catholic natural law—an 800-year-old tradition dating back to Thomas Aquinas—is a lens that offers utter clarity to conservative Catholic jurists, activists, policymakers, and scholars as they observe, describe, and engage the world. The power and sharpness of this lens allow them to confidently snap every human movement—every human desire and motive and act—into its divinely appointed and proper…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…