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…year Radio Free Europe dubbed Milonov “Russia’s Orthodox Culture Warrior.” South Korea: Human Rights Watch urges govt not to let religious views keep sexuality from sex ed Human Rights Watch has urged the South Korean government to halt the roll-out of its new sex education policy in order to revised it to include information on sexual minorities. The Ministry of Education began training district education officers on new sex education guidelines…
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…monism this year will be The Book of Mormon, a Broadway musical written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone with help from Avenue Q’s Robert Lopez, telling the tale of two naive but well-meaning LDS missionaries to Uganda who, faced with the realities of mass human suffering, collide with the limits of their insular Book-of-Mormon-Belt worldview. Reviewers are reporting that despite the shock value of the show’s obscenity-laden music…
Read More…nother two African provinces ordain women only to the diaconate, restricting their access to the priesthood and the episcopacy. The ACSA, however, has maintained a more progressive practice with regard to women that reflects the generally more liberal South African approach to social issues. The consecration service for Wamukoya will be presided over by current ACSA Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, who holds the archiepiscopal seat most famously occupied…
Read More…ass met with LGBT African American activists to discuss the best ways that African American LGBTs can support LGBT people in Africa. According to Frontiers LA’s Karen Ocamb, the question that dominated the discussion was asked by Pastor Kevin Sauls: “How do we as activists—as people of faith—respond to this so it’s in the long-term interests of our brothers and sisters on the continent, so they are empowered and protected?” Uganda: Religious, Poli…
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…s to make use of those “golden six months” to communicate with the public. South Africa: Pastor teams up with US pastor banned from country for anti-gay extremism Last September, the government banned extremist anti-gay American pastor Steven Anderson from the country. Anderson, who preaches that gays should be put to death, responded to the massacre at the gay nightclub in Orlando by saying “there’s 50 less pedophiles in the world.” The Mail & Gu…
Read More…ing an (often liberal) Orientalist approach to covering the Middle East or South Asia. For example, on March 5, 2008, as the death toll due to Israeli attacks in Gaza was mounting, the New York Times chose to publish an article just below its report on the Israeli military incursions that focused on the sentencing of a Palestinian man in Israel for an honor killing; the report was deemed worthy of international coverage because the Palestinian wom…
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…r own local pastors have gone: in Tijuana, in DC, and one in Johannesburg, South Africa. And then we have churches that started coming to us and wanting to be a part of us, and we didn’t have a mechanism. So we became UCC after about 6 years. And that’s when we started the Fellowship, which happened in 1999. It’s gone fast. Yes, all of a sudden we had 15, and then 20 and then 30. Like I said, we’re not unique. We’re just the place that left the li…
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…ent, the U.S. groups dwell at length on the differences between Israel and South Africa, ignoring that the crime of apartheid is distinct from the specific case in South Africa from which it was named. It’s time to end these frivolous accusations of “antisemitism,” a tactic that cheapens the term and avoids discussing what’s truly at stake. Instead, we need to focus on the issues themselves, particularly ongoing crimes in the West Bank. Instead of…
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…Africa and worked for a Muslim. He had Muslims with him in the struggle in South Africa. He came back to India and had Muslims with him in the struggle for Indian independence, including Ghaffar Khan and many others I mention in the book. Unfortunately, even within South Asia, some of that has been obscured by the fact that his chief antagonist or counterpart was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, who had a different vision for Indian M…
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