Religion Dispatches
…lded 50,200 hits at last check, and YouTube contains dozens of videos that promote the October 14 prophecy and speculates on its import—one asks believers to carry their cameras today to record proof of the visitation. Equally significant, mediums channeling different extraterrestrial beings have chimed in, claiming that they have received their own confirmations of this evening’s cosmic denouement. Not all the attention appears to have been good….
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…s also very possibly a death sentence. The Washington Post reports that in Brazil, where abortion is criminalized, children aged 10-14 who become pregnant “are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women over 20, and also have greater chances of suffering uterine ruptures, preeclampsia and anemia.” After Roe v. Wade was overturned by the illegitimate Roberts Court last month, Indiana petitioned the Supreme Court for an expedited decisio…
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At a recent Jesuit-sponsored conference in Brazil focusing on the first five years of Pope Francis’ papacy, scholars waxed poetic about papal documents, quoting chapter and verse, claiming that this papacy is different from every other. Some speakers seemed far removed from the Catholicism that is unraveling throughout the world. Australia leads the way with its highest-ranking prelate set for trial on sex abuse crimes. Cardinal George Pell holds…
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…ardinals are gay, but because they’re a lobby. Lobbies are by nature self-promoting and factious and Francis, whose early work as pope has been to unify and evangelize, has no time for self-seeking lobbyists, gay or otherwise. The pope, it seems, would be much more comfortable with a gay priest who “seeks the Lord and has goodwill” than a coterie of deeply-closeted Vatican prelates working private agendas while pretending to be other than who th…
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…hristianity and efforts at democratization — in South Africa, South Korea, Brazil, Mozambique and Kenya, for example. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? This book is for people seriously interested in the political effects of Pentecostal Christianity. This includes the undergraduate student, the educated lay reader, the policy wonk, the aid worker, as well as the seminarian or pastor. Of course, I’m an anthropologist of religio…
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…ite project. In those early days slavery’s epicenter was the Caribbean and Brazil; North America was peripheral. For at least a century following the introduction in 1640 of a Dutch technique for processing cane, England’s most valuable New World colonies were by far its sugar islands. The enslaved people who cut the cane and converted it into sugar and molasses died of horrific abuse in staggering numbers. These islands were perpetually hungry fo…
Read More…souls to be saved? Or will the situation in South Sudan become similar to Brazil, where cultural religious traditions such as Candomble are demonized, and Pentecostalism is lauded as the progressive religion not connected to a difficult history? I predict all of the above. The fears of the Sudan Ecumenical Forum that South Sudan is “ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous preachers” are well founded. The die has been cast, and the relationship that…
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…nkey-mind” at an Indian ashram; and embarks on a torrid love affair with a Brazilian in Bali. But the real journey, she writes, is inward. Italy is explicitly centered on “pleasure,” India on “devotion,” and Bali on “balance.” By the end, Liz has discovered the “physics of the quest”: If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a tr…
Read More…t of 10 Polish Catholics oppose it (15-78). In Latin America, Catholics in Brazil and Argentina are about evenly split (45-47 and 46-48), with opposition higher in Mexico (36-62) and Colombia (23-71). Filipino Catholics oppose (14-84), while Catholics in Uganda and the Congo almost unanimously oppose same-sex marriage (1-99 and 2-98). Survey results are presented in an interactive format that makes it easy to view results by country and by topic….
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…servative-leaning newspapers. Yes, Javier Bolsonaro lost his reelection in Brazil—but some of his supporters aren’t ready to accept his defeat, violently clashing with the police and calling for the military to overthrow the government. Democracy can never be taken for granted—especially not during a period of economic hardship, looming climate change, and a lingering pandemic. Remember: Fascism offers a seemingly easy solution for crises both rea…
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