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When a Pride March Means Owning the Shame of Racial and Economic Injustice

By Peter Laarman

…, Sullivan served up the old and discredited “model minority” view of Asian-Americans in a way that was both insulting to Asian-Americans and openly contemptuous of African-Americans. The other galling thing about Sullivan (and so many other overprivileged white gays) is his uncritical embrace of heteronormativity: his fervent wish that we all marry and have kids and settle into a “normal” bourgeois lifestyle. This goes to how generally un-woke th…

Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

By Katherine Kelaidis

…converted; and as we’ve already discussed, in light of the history of East-West Christian relations it’s easy to see this ritual as implying exactly that. And that’s ignoring the fact that consecrating Ukraine and Russia at the same time, because of a prophecy about Russia, is probably less than ideal in the midst of a war in which the independence of Ukraine is at issue. To be clear, there’s almost certainly no ill intent on the part of Pope Fra…

Ian Buruma on the Political Excesses of Religion

By Lisa Webster

…ve in something, whether it’s the 19th century variety or the American left-of-center variety. But it doesn’t seek to impose a particular belief on society at large. And that’s in some ways held against it by those who want society to be overtly Christian, or kick the Muslims out. Can you say something about the new culture wars, or kulturkampf, in Europe now—about multiculturalism versus the defenders of “enlightenment values”? The difference is…

The “F” Word: Feminism in Islam

By Amina Wadud

…s, alcoholics identify (anonymously notwithstanding) as alcoholics, African-Americans as African-Americans, Muslims as Muslims. We identify with Islam. Even when pressed by bad publicity and bad actions by some of us, we still identify with Islam. Either/Or Why do people still think Muslim women must choose between identity as Muslims and identity with freedoms, human rights, dignity and democracy? For the first few decades of my work on gender I…

Will “Church Militants” Be Marching for Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…lling Church militant themes. Bannon, who is Catholic, talked about a Judeo-Christian west that is “in crisis,” a “crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism”: And we’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be…

Be Careful What You Wish For: The Downside of Kicking the Russian Orthodox Church Out of the World Council of Churches

By Katherine Kelaidis

…Orthodox Church and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, left the WCC in the late 1990s. Anti-ecumenist sentiment remains an important pillar of reactionary Orthodox Christian thought with charges of “ecumenism” regularly invoked alongside accusations of “innovation” against their more progressive brothers and sisters to undermine the latter’s commitment to the Orthodox faith. There remain plenty of Orthodox Christians, both clergy and laity, for whom t…

With This Largely Overlooked Shakeup is the Russian Orthodox Church Looking to Westernize? Yes and No

By Katherine Kelaidis

…he Russian Orthodox Church (the Church’s ruling council of bishops), the 37-year-old Metropolitan Anthony now occupies the place largely considered to be the holding pen for the next Russian Patriarch. The vast majority of his life has been lived in post-Soviet Russia and he’s spent the majority of his career in Western Europe, including in Rome and Paris. One would hope that this would make him a more open, progressive (in relative terms), and co…

How Postwar Germany’s Witchcraft Trials Can Help Us Understand QAnon And Other Conspiracy Theories

By Monica Black

…iracies of evildoers? Adherents of QAnon hold that a shadowy group of child-sex-traffickers, including the current US President, Joseph Biden, worship the Devil and have taken over the world. Only Donald J. Trump can thwart their depraved designs. Concerning a seventeenth-century case of devil possession among a group of Ursuline nuns, Michel de Certeau wrote that “the strangeness is deeply rooted in the substance of a society … connected by too m…

Dalai Lama’s ‘Suck My Tongue’ Controversy Reveals Centuries-Old Christian Distortion of Tibetan Buddhism

By Geoffrey Goble

…a and awareness of the so-called “Tibet question” exploded into mainstream Western awareness. In 1989, the Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize “for advocating peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people.” Seemingly overnight, this religious figure exiled from a remote Central Asian territory was mixing with the Western glitterati. He was the subject of two…

‘Iconoclash’ of Civilizations: Missives from the Image Wars

By Eric M. Gurevitch

…rn an altarpiece from the 15th century. The paintings follow the play scene-by-scene until the end, when, instead of being converted to good Catholics, the Jews, because of their mocking, are themselves burned at the stake. *** In the 16th century, but far away from Menocchio and the “olim gratus eram” book-burning scene, the first Christian image from the so-called New World was produced, depicting a scene first found in Paul the Deacon’s 8th Cen…