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The Myth of ‘Voodoo’: A Caribbean American Response to Representations of Haiti

…gical schema? Robertson would say that Haiti’s centuries-long struggle for freedom, sovereignty, and dignity is indeed a demonic project—but it would have been hard for captive Africans in Saint-Domingue to embrace the divine character of their colonizers’ Christian God. What the colonial ruling class understood to be either divine or demonic in the Christian pantheon, the enslaved African laborers had to have understood as one and the same evil f…

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Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

…(Praeger, release date: May 30, 2009). What inspired you to write Vampires Today? What sparked your interest? Some people think I study vampires simply because they are unusual. I’ve even been asked if I am a vampire myself. The reality is that I became interested in the vampire community when I learned of a massive survey being conducted by the Atlanta Vampire Alliance (AVA). Their project was relevant to the sociology of knowledge: instead of de…

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The Tragedy of Religious Freedom

…agency that refused to place children with a lesbian couple. The challenge today is how to distinguish between, on the one hand, attempts to license discrimination that come cloaked in the language of religious freedom and, on the other hand, genuine disagreements about how people and institutions of vastly different convictions can live together in a pluralistic society. Simply to deny (or, for that matter, to grant) every claim for a religious e…

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A Writer’s Murder Raises Fears of Death-by-Decree

…ions are better than in Saudi Arabia.” He points to the status of women in today’s Iran. More than 60% of university students are women. And, unlike in Saudi Arabia, women in Iran drive. Kadivar delights in telling me that in the holy city of Qom, there are women cab drivers who specialize in taking families on excursions. But most of our conversation was about the murder of Rafiq Tagi. In an open letter to Ayatollah Lankarani, son of the author o…

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A Catholic’s Eulogy for the Harvard “Black Mass” Controversy

…of anti-Semitism and white supremacy, no matter where you are in the world today). Unlike these symbols that are based in reality, however, a thoughtful investigation into the “black mass” would have revealed that this is actually a symbol in search of a reality. Boston University professor David Frankfurter, in his award-winning 2006 book Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, argues that, when we apply the mos…

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Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

Today Gallup announced the results of a survey in which 77 percent of Americans “say religion is losing its influence on American life,” which represents “the most negative evaluation” of religion’s impact since 1970. Writing today in Religion Dispatches, I have to wonder about the future of any publication with “religion” in its name. Is it time for a mission overhaul or simply rebranding? It’s not that RD has been oblivious to the trend. An int…

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When Corporations are “Persons” Under the Law: The Real Problem With Health Care

…me Court to release audio recordings of their questioning, but they did so today, and the revelations were revealing. The answer to my question became clear in the course of Chief Justice Roberts’s insistent questions. The question he kept pressing on those arguing incampaign finance laws and against the (anti)Clinton video was a strange one: “Isn’t a corporation really like an individual, under the law?” And it occurs to me that it is this very c…

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Facing White Christianity’s Role in the January 6th Insurrection

…lgamation of white supremacy and American Christianity that lives among us today. These unsettling connections among white supremacy, white Christianity and support for the former president are not confined to the extremists who attacked the Capitol. There is a strong correlation between voting for Trump in the 2020 election and median scores on the Racism Index—a composite measure of attitudes about systemic racism I developed in my recent book,…

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The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

…eeklies’ born-again fondness for religious authority has not endured until today. Since the explosion of the clergy sex abuse scandals in the media, a curious trend has emerged on the covers of news magazine. In four Time covers—April 1, 2002, November 27, 2006, June 7, 2010, February 25, 2013—the familiar figure of the pope appears, but altered. Unlike the scores of previous covers featuring the Bishop of Rome, the pope now stands either with his…

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Country of Georgia Considers Constitutional Marriage Ban; Hindu Nationalist Leader Surprises India With Call to Decriminalize Homosexuality; No End to Anti-LGBT Propaganda Campaign in Indonesia; Global LGBT Recap

…bullies within the fringe of his own party?” she said. “What we have seen today is the Turnbull government have overturned the decisions that their own government took just a matter of months ago.” The Greens’ sexuality spokesman, Senator Robert Simms, said it was “clear that Malcolm Turnbull has thrown LGBTI young people under the bus today by bowing to the rightwing backbench bullies and stripping back the Safe Schools program”. Meanwhile, the…

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