Religion Dispatches
…an race called anthropology? Darwin’s famous voyages on the Beagle through Brazil and the Galapagos, during which he formed and shaped the ideas of natural selection and adaptation that made him famous, have become part of Western myth. But how many of us knew that at many stops on the voyage, Darwin witnessed slavery at its worst? As we learn, Darwin once met and supped with a white general bent on eliminating an entire native South American trib…
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…e launch of the ACLJ’s Brazilian branch and the growing political power of Brazil’s evangelical minority which is resisting efforts to expand legal protections for LGBT people; Queiroz wrote recently in RD about the selection of an anti-gay Pentecostal minister as the head of the Brazilian House of Representatives’ Human Rights and Minorities Commission. *The above article originally indicated that a screening took place at IHOP. The screening t…
Read More…de” was an accommodation to diversity as a reality. Should it be practiced today? No. Is it necessary? No. There were times in Islamic history when treaties created mutual obligations to defense instead of jizya. In a democratic age, I believe in a democratic alternative. Though let’s not get carried away. We in the U.S. practice dhimmitude as well. We believe we have the right to attack anyone, anywhere in the world, and we have the right to prev…
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…ection of religious freedom in church education, (4) Limits on LGBT public promotion. We believe these amendments make explicit what the Constitution already implies. [NEAB Vice President Scott Stirm] also reported that the new Trump administration in Washington has committed to appoint a pro-family values US ambassador to Belize. That is what our recent petition, signed by almost 200 pastors, had requested. We needed such an ambassador in place o…
Read MoreAt 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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…s where evangelicals have appeared to make some impact on democratization: Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, and Peru in Latin America; Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa in Africa; and, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and the Philippines in Asia. Each study in the project addresses the extent to which evangelicalism, a religious movement based on biblical orthodoxy, has helped or hindered the inaugurat…
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…a half million square kilometers, and 9 countries share this great Biome (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela, including French Guyana as an overseas territory).” [Section 1] Yet those countries taken together comprise one of the poorest regions on Earth and the ecosystem described is in meltdown. There are many reasons why the Catholic Church focused on the Amazon. Of global significance, the impact of losing th…
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…on behalf of their descendants in the urban centers of America, favelas of Brazil, shanties of Jamaica, and reservations of the American West. For years, I would anticipate the arrival of spring and Passover season. Meticulously cleaning my house of leaven as I awaited this celebration of freedom. Now when I watched The Ten Commandments I was once again rooting for Moses (albeit a white one) and the Hebrews as they dueled with Ramses and the Egypt…
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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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