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Russian Politician Wants to Ban Apple CEO Who Says Being Gay is God’s Gift; Violence After Preachers Blame Liberian Gays for Ebola; Global LGBT Recap

…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,…

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No Sacred Cows on this Eid

…gesture. More than that, it’s part of a healing process that includes toning down eid celebrations; though India seemed hopelessly torn apart just a couple of weeks ago, Indian Muslims are pulling together with other Indians to help heal their country and the people they share it with….

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Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God

…for most of Western history “belief” has meant nothing like what it means today. Today, when someone asks me if I believe in God, for example, they are asking if I assent to the proposed verity or the factual existence of God—and usually it is in reference to a very specific understanding of that God. Similarly, if I’m asked if I have “faith in Christ”, the question is whether I agree with the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth was divine, died o…

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Famous Atheists, Fat Ministers, Papal Tweets, and a Mega-Hoax

…atican, and the World Evangelical Alliance have worked together to issue a code for how Christians ought to evangelize. No word on how this code effects the use of Chick Tracts. A village in the Philippines celebrates its patron saint, John the Baptist, with a Mud People Festival. Reminds me of my weekend at Bonnaroo 2004. The Pope tweeted—from an iPad, no less. It’s all part of the Vatican’s new multimedia news portal, news.va. Biblical criticism…

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Oedipus Complexity: Is it Enough to Fire Men Accused of Sexual Misconduct?

…t in certain kinds of crimes. Early Christians who lapsed from their moral code in particularly serious and public ways were subjected to canonical public penance. They sat outside the church doors, sometimes in literal sackcloth, begging for the prayers of those who could come to worship until they were restored to fellowship by receiving pardon. This ritual evolved into a method of addressing political quarrels and public disgrace in the Middle…

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Black Women and the Sacred: With “Lemonade,” Beyoncé Takes Us to Church

…om multiple sources. Christianity as it exists and is practiced in America today owes much of its theology, ritual, and doctrine to the experiences and beliefs of enslaved Africans. Within most of these traditional African-born religious practices, women served as powerful healers, conjurers and priests. To evoke these traditions in “Lemonade” contrasts with the skewed demographics of contemporary Christianity, where black women represent more tha…

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Where Christianity and Islam Collide

…al rule of law than the government does. [They] lay out a social and moral code that governs human interaction, and supplies a context for suffering and poverty, constructing a group identity through which followers can hope to secure their worldly needs, and find some certainty about the hereafter.” It follows that in such places, religion may be the only guiding principle, the only social, moral, even legal code to abide by. Somalia, for example…

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Creationism: Don’t Use the “C-Word”

…chool boards “to create and foster an environment” in public schools that “promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” In addition to state-approved textbooks, teachers “may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze,…

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What American Flag-Worship Looks Like to a New Citizen

…for all when white supremacists were using the same symbols to profess and promote their hatred? Still today, he says, “For me, the words ring hollow. They do not speak to my experience as a Black man in this country, with two African American sons, and Black colleagues, and Black friends—it is a lie.” All of this preceded the realization, as his faith matured, that the flag and the Pledge and the Anthem were all idols, and that people seem often…

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Indonesia Allows Abusive Sharia Laws to Stand; Kenyan Priest Joins Challenge to Anti-LGBT Laws; Dominican Republic Bishop Slams ‘Gender Ideology’ at OAS; Global LGBT Recap

…al acts, while zina violations carry a penalty of 100 lashes. The criminal code also allows Islamic courts to dismiss charges against rape suspects who take an Islamic oath, sumpah dilaknat Allah, asserting their innocence – so long as the court determines there’s a lack of incriminating “other evidence.” Within days of Aceh’s bylaws coming into force, special Sharia police arrested two “suspected lesbians” – women aged 18 and 19 – who were spotte…

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