Religion Dispatches
…ll, of the religious right leaders endorsed Santorum. What does Gingrich’s South Carolina win say about that? It says, for one thing, something I’ve been arguing since 2007: that grassroots activists don’t care about those leadership endorsements. But it also says that the “one of us” formulation is off the table. (Recall, if you can, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, the quintessential “one of us” candidates.) That “character” doesn’t really count…
Read More…mpaign has published an in-depth report on the World Congress of Families. South Asia: International Consultation on Religion and Sexual Minorities The first-ever regional consultation under the UN’s Multi-Country South Asia Global Fund HIV Program brought faith leaders together with government and civil society representatives from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.on August 18 and 19 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. According to a…
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…an Italian missionary who fought the slave trade in Sudan, is a holiday in South Sudan. Momanyi says that the church holds South Sudan together. “If the Church withdraws,” he says, the whole country will crumble.” Catholic NGOs have remained in the country when other NGOs have left. The recently formed Catholic NGOs Solidarity with South Sudan and the Comboni Missionaries in particular, according to Momanyi, are training teachers and nurses, runni…
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…pulation worldwide would dip slightly, to 30.9%. But if China is more like South Korea—another largely secular society but one that is seeing an increase in religious affiliation—then Christians would make up closer to 35.3% of the global village. What if everyone in China who is currently unaffiliated were to become a Christian? That would bump the number to 38.5% of the world’s population. While that’s an unlikely scenario, China’s religious “un…
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…oted that Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey and the Korean Republic were among the countries voting to sustain the independent expert position. And, as the AFK Insider reports, South Africa’s government, which had criticized the independent expert position, ultimately voted against the African Group’s effort to kill it. But as Reuters notes, some countries have already vowed not to cooperate: Russia and Egypt, speaking on be…
Read More…as pet blessings grow in popularity. Reverend Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, warned Christians that, “The embrace of yoga is a symptom of our postmodern spiritual confusion.” Do you ever get chain letters or, even worse, chain emails… “forward this on to fifteen people and you’ll have good luck. A guy in Lisbon didn’t forward the email and he was eaten by a bear.” Well, guess who you can blame for those pesky…
Read More…Judge Publishes Memoir In response to a parliamentary question this week, South African President Jacob Zuma refused to condemn Uganda’s anti-gay law, writing, “South Africa respects the sovereign rights of other countries to adopt their own legislation. Also this week, Edwin Cameron, an openly gay judge who joined South Africa’s Constitutional Court in 2009, launched a book that traces his personal journey as well as the country’s journey toward…
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…ll be easily accessible for those to whom contemporary Islamic thought, or South Asian philosophy, are familiar subjects. Nevertheless, the subject of this work, since Muhammad Iqbal has had a profound impact on contemporary Islam, far out of proportion to awareness of him in Western societies, this book is a tremendous introduction to a very fertile although often ignored topic. To give you a sense of Iqbal’s reach, he is considered the intellect…
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…uples. The third criterion Dr. King identifies is that “an unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.” For same sex couples to have legal access just like heterosexual couples…
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…: Independent justice reform group criticizes Aceh’s harsh anti-LGBT legal code The Jakarta Post reported on April 1 that the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform “has lambasted the Aceh administration’s Islamic criminal code bylaw, or Qanun Jinayat, saying it could potentially provoke discrimination and over-criminalization of LGBT communities and other vulnerable groups.” The Aceh province is governed by the conservative Islamist legal code. No…
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