Religion Dispatches
…a psychiatry degree at Moscow State University, and then travelled around India and Japan, ultimately settling in China to study Chinese herbs. “In the mid-1990s,” reports the site, “Dr. Dabic” returned to mother Serbia for good.” The website concludes by asserting that he has since “emerged as one of the prominent experts in the field of alternative medicine, bioenergy and macrobiotic diet in the whole of the Balkans.” And, to top it all off, Dr…
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…ation practices took place in a community of aspirants abiding by a common code of conduct and observing a shared set of rituals. While deemed necessary for liberation, meditation practices like mindfulness were not sufficient. The accompanying rules and relationships were just as important. Modern-day mindfulness takes this twentieth-century shift to lay meditation one step further, sanctioning meditation as a technique developed in the midst of…
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…tities and prophets” under articles 98, 160, and 161 of the Egyptian Penal Code. According to Egypt News Daily, the prosecution first sought to charge him in connection with disseminating Innocence of Muslims but when this accusation was proven false, they revised their strategy to target the content of Saber’s video blog. Though sentenced to three years and released on bail he was subsequently locked up due to a clerical error before being releas…
Read More…own, who were loud and proud political progressives. I did service work in India, Uganda, Kenya, Detroit, and post-Katrina New Orleans. I worked for a nonprofit and a church in inner-city L.A. I was given a worldview that enabled me to make sense of all of the injustice and oppression I saw, and that worldview was Christianity. It was a Christianity different in many ways from the one I grew up with, but it is still recognizably and unabashedly Ch…
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…ld to join him. China: Book about gay Catholics shunned by publishers UCAN India reports that a book of stories about “gay Catholics and their family members from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Chinese communities in Malaysia” is having a hard time finding a publisher. One Catholic publisher in Hong Kong said, If we publish a book about pro-gay Catholics, we have to publish another one with an opposite opinion.” Romania: Party leader wants to separa…
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…ely and help people think imaginatively? Or does he focus on impieties and promote the virtues of paraphernalia like the dress code and the mandatory length of facial hairs? If the imam is as wise as the religious leader in the Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie, it will be a huge step up. Mosque committees share their burden of responsibility too. Often they appoint preachers by applying the lowest and cheapest standard; theological div…
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…ay. ** Did it make a difference to his followers that Sri Chinmoy was from India? Did it give him extra authority? In the late 1960s, there was a trend to look to the East for alternatives to Western religions and philosophies. Many people felt that the ancient traditions of the East might hold the answers to their modern longings. As a result, there were many gurus, yogis, and spiritual teachers that headed to America eager to establish themselve…
Read More…than ever to set Cameroonians against each other, ignoring its mission to promote love, tolerance and peace. Has history not taught it a lesson? From slavery to the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide — now it’s the turn of homosexuals. If Pope Francis seems to have a more conciliatory approach to the subject, it is clear he is struggling to implant this approach within the church he leads. Georgia: Church officials oppose marriage equality, ask po…
Read More…serve in the military, and the Ministry of Education requires textbooks to promote tolerance for gays and lesbians. In recent years, legislators here have passed protections for gays, including a law against workplace discrimination. A bill to legalize same-sex marriage has been introduced in Taiwan’s legislature, although it still faces strong opposition from Christian activists and their allies in the governing Kuomintang…. Religious life here,…
Read More…rstood and felt empathy for the PFLAG members and for the LGBT community.” India: Recriminalization of homosexuality leaves gays vulnerable to violence, blackmail Reuters reports that thousans of LGBT Indians have faced persecution since the country’s high court reinstituted the colonial-era sodomy law in 2013. The article recounts the story of a gay man whose attackers filmed the sexual assault and threatened to tell report him to police. “What i…
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