Religion Dispatches
…amously, Teddy Roosevelt headed to East Africa in the name of science (and Western Masculinity, I would add) to bag the Big Five for himself. The term morphed into use for the tourist industry, safari-goers paying big bucks for guides to track down the five. Such activities, for sport, usually served to demonstrate the God-given “dominion” of human beings over the “chaotic” and “morally dubious” wilderness of the natural world, women, other cultur…
Read More…angelists, since the 1980s. While Africans argued that homosexuality was a western import, they in turn used a western religion as the basis for their argument. When I have challenged people who are anti-gay, many have said that it is not our culture. However, when you probe further, they argue that homosexuality is not in the Bible. But the Bible is not our historical culture. This shows there is real confusion about Africa’s past. Reinforcing th…
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…had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, and were invaded too. Some ten years ago, Western forces ranged the length and breadth of a Middle Eastern country, and today forces coordinated from the territory of that country have launched attacks on Western territories. It’s very easy to turn this war into an endless seesaw, in which countless innocents become casualties. The only way forward is if our president pursues vigorously a policy of bringing world p…
Read More…t Patheos, Elizabeth Scalia called it “[b]reathtaking condescension from a Western Bishop, whose German church is dwindling and headed for financial ruin, toward the African bishops whose pews and seminaries are indisputably overflowing and joyous.” She went on: In some ways, it’s like a mask coming off. Kasper is an openly progressive Catholic who holds opinions that sometimes skirt along the very thin membrane between authentic Catholic teaching…
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…litary action against them, this would fit perfectly into the image of the Western Crusaders waging war against the forces of Islam. No matter that the Islamic forces of ISIS are terrorists and despised by most Muslims around the world; to their supporters and potential volunteers, they are able to project an image of Muslim resiliency if Western forces do in fact become more militarily engaged in Syria and Iraq. Most acts of terrorism are perform…
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…lobe not usually associated with Orthodox Christianity, from Asia, Africa, Western Europe, and from North America. In and of itself, such a universal gathering represents a singular and significant event in the life of the Church demonstrating the new global reach of Orthodox Christianity. The council should focus the attention of the Churches away from solely parochial and local concerns to a broader perspective on Church life. Nonetheless, there…
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…uality, and make it hard to simply transfer the rhetoric and strategies of Western LGBT-rights movements to Muslim countries. Considering the identity-practice divide also allows for understanding as something more than simple buffoonery the statement by Iranian President Ahmadinejad that Iran has no homosexuals—the category itself is seen as a Western invention. In her article, Aisha Geissinger explores a more fluid understanding of gender and an…
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…s’s Jovana Gec: Serbia’s powerful President Aleksandar Vucic nominated the Western-educated Brnabic for the post two weeks ago amid opposition from hard-line nationalists. Gays have regularly faced harassment and attacks in Serbia. Vucic’s move was widely seen as an attempt to calm Western concerns that Serbia is getting too close to Russia, including having enhanced military cooperation and ties, despite its proclaimed goal of joining the Europea…
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…spirits, and moreover I was doubly skeptical of the notion that the modern Western world had lost its magic. I found myself shifting gears and looking at America and Europe through the eyes of an outsider—with the same sort of gaze often leveled at non-Europeans. When I did so I discovered that the sociological data suggested that the majority of Americans believe in ghosts or demons. Indeed, a surprising 73% of Americans have at least one paranor…
Read More…ry socio-political vision should not be underestimated. It’s a deeply anti-Western, anti-democratic, and anti-human rights worldview which has already had a significant effect on Russian domestic policy and has helped garner Russia’s recent prestige among radical conservatives around the world—particularly in the West. The “axis between Russian Orthodox and American Evangelicals,” as the Economist calls it, has been well documented, and, as Slate’…
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