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On the Ethics of the Tibetan Self-Immolations

By José Cabezón

…lations as part of a broader critique of Chinese government policies.11 In January of 2013 he was sentenced to five years in prison for the publication of this tract. This is what he wrote (translation my own): The Beijing government claims that the act of self-cremation, or the burning of one’s body, contradicts the Buddhist texts, but this is a confused position. According to Buddhism, giving up one’s life for the welfare of others is an act of…

CPAC 2017: Hypocrites on Parade

By Sunnivie Brydum

…s potential nominees last summer. Priebus went on to complain that Trump’s January 30th executive order on deregulation had been underreported, neglecting to mention any of the coverage from The New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, or NBC News and Reuters. But the former RNC chairman stepped well outside the realm of reality when he claimed that “80 percent of Americans agree” with putting a wall along the nation’s south…

Country of Georgia Considers Constitutional Marriage Ban; Hindu Nationalist Leader Surprises India With Call to Decriminalize Homosexuality; No End to Anti-LGBT Propaganda Campaign in Indonesia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…the backstory: A group of Dominican intellectuals and religious leaders in January urged Medina and the Dominican Ministry of Foreign Affairs to declare Brewster “persona non grata” because of a U.S.-backed education initiative they contend seeks “to turn our adolescents gay.” Gladys Feliz, who is a member of the Dominican House of Deputies, on Wednesday used an anti-gay slur in a tweet she wrote in response to the vandalism of a banner outside of…

French Theologian Urges Islam to Self-Critique, Fails to Notice Log in Own Eye

By Daniel J. Schultz

…shed in Le Point on January 12th (translated and reprinted in Sightings on January 30th) eminent philosopher-theologian Jean-Luc Marion declared, “France is at war; we can no longer doubt that this is the case.” This war, according to Marion, has three fronts: first, the defense against terrorist attack; second, the war to defend secularism (laïcité); and third, the urgent need for Islam to “open itself to critique.” But who is this “we” that Mari…

Could Orthodoxy Be Having its Vatican II Moment?

By Chrissy Stroop

…nd or of Constantinople’s refusal to respond. In fact, only months ago, in January 2016, every single one of the Orthodox Primates and representatives from all of the 14 Orthodox Churches signed that they would convene and attend the Holy and Great Council in June. Indeed, they signed several documents, every single page of those documents and even every single page of the translations of those documents—literally hundreds of signatures of commitm…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…f the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you look at it, $378 billion is a lot of money, or it’s not very much money at all. It’s more than the net worth of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, combined…

Does Record Number of Religious “Nones” Mean Decline of Religiosity?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…an religiosity—about religion as it is lived in the United States today? A number of what I would see as problems in the Pew report suggest to me that our growing fixation with religion-by-the-numbers may be distracting us from richer, more nuanced understandings of American religious practice. Wanted: A Community that Doesn’t Share My Beliefs and Values Take the demographic category of “Nones” itself. The Pew report notes the difficulty with sur…

The Religious Mourning of ‘Saint’ Kobe Bryant Continues

By Terry Shoemaker

…year’s All-Star game, one team wore Kobe’s number 24, while the other wore number 2, Gianna’s uniform number. The MVP award, given this year to Los Angeles Clippers’ star forward Kawhi Leonard, was renamed permanently for Kobe Bryant. Pregame and half-time shows centered on Kobe, his family, and his impact on the sport of basketball and society. The collective grief and bereavement displayed by fans and players alike not only demonstrate the power…

We Can’t Spiritualize Our Way out of American Polarization

By Chrissy Stroop

…l prayers, Christian flags, and “Jesus 2020” banners that showed up at the January 6 insurrection. Worthen writes, “Over the past six months Mr. Biden has been warning us, in his frank and ecumenical way, that Americans have become a bunch of idol worshipers. He’s right. We have transformed political hatreds into a form of idolatry.” And it is this contention that, paradoxically, seems to drive Worthen’s apparent need to “save” conservative Christ…

When Religious Freedom Means Freedom for Religious Violence

By Frederick Clarkson

…nother for the Idaho panhandle—border regions intended to draw the maximum number of attendees. Election, medical, and vaccine conspiracists, along with insurrection veterans like Flynn, Eric Trump, Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell, and Roger Stone grab most of the media attention. But a disturbing religious dimension has received far less attention; that is, until November, when Flynn blurted out their broad intention at a San Antonio rally, “If we ar…