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For Unto (Some of) Us a Child is Born: Handel’s Messiah and the Voice of Empire Rising

By Peter Laarman

…d defacements) directed against people of color in Christ’s name. Catholic Spain and Portugal got the ball rolling, but no one ever did the displacement/expropriation thing better than the Protestant English (including, of course, their North American “cousins”). Which brings us back yet again to 1742 and Messiah and all the wealth and power of 18th century Britain: a wealth and power extracted primarily from Black bodies. We should note that impe…

Paul for the People: John Dominic Crossan Imagines a “Letter to the Americans” In His New Video Series

By Peter Laarman

…way to ask this: Can you envision a time when more than a relatively small number of Christians will actively challenge and oppose the imperial project? Or is not so much a matter of numbers as it is of intensity? At this point we have to take with equal seriousness both human evolution and the core of the biblical tradition—or either one separately, as I take the same message away from each. For Jesus and Paul, it is never just about being agains…

In Gaza Siege, Atheist Author Sam Harris Finds Yet Another Opportunity to Disparage Islam

By Usaid Siddiqui

…ea of a so-called Golden Age, a Jewish-Muslim interfaith utopia in Islamic Spain and elsewhere in the middle ages, has rightly been called a myth” writes Cohen. “But to say that Muslims have always persecuted the Jews…would be just as wrong indeed, a counter-myth.” Cohen has described many instances during the middle ages and beyond where relations between the two religious groups had remained cooperative and peaceful. He further reveals that the…

Catholic Archbishop Takes On Jesuit Magazine’s Slam on “Ecumenism of Hate”; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…y into line with many other European nations including France, Britain and Spain. “Same sex marriage is a step in the right direction but there is still a lot to do,” said Samuel Monars-Bellmont, one of the revelers. Christopher Street Day commemorates the riots that broke out in New York in 1969 after police raided a gay bar — an event seen as a turning point for the gay rights movement. It has been celebrated in Germany since 1979. Richard Grene…

Founder of Liberal Mosque in Germany Under Guard After Death Threats; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nternational anti-LGBT bus-and-billboard campaign mobilized by HazteOir in Spain and the National Organization for Marriage in the U.S. has made it to Mexico. Taking a cue from NOM President Brian Brown’s description of the bus in the U.S. as the “free speech bus,” the National Front for the Family is calling their version the “freedom bus.” GayStarNews reports that in Guadalajara LGBT activists wrapped the bus in a rainbow flag: Jaime Cobián, a p…

Degrees of Separation

By Amina Wadud

…we are related.” I once spent two weeks with a Sufi community in Albacin, Spain (across from Al-Hambra palace) in the month of December with no central heat. I got used to double and triple layers under my regular clothes, including a woolen cap under my hijab. Then they put me on a sleeper train without gender separation and my “bed” was literally on top of the heater. There I was unable to take off anything because there were strange men all ar…

You Are What You Eat: New Book on Cannibalism Reimagines What It Means to Be Made of Flesh

By Michael Schulson

…und pretext to savage the natives. In 1503, for example, Queen Isabella of Spain forbade Columbus and his crew from enslaving people in the New World, unless those people were cannibals. If they were cannibals, the Queen announced, Columbus could take them, put them in chains, and sell them wherever he pleased, inside or outside Isabella’s many realms. Reports of cannibalism in the New World spiked. In general, cannibalism is widely reported but d…

The ‘Charlie Charlie Challenge’ and Teenage Yearning for Supernatural Encounters

By Joseph Laycock

…stead of two. Some sources claim versions of this game have been played in Spain for generations. In April 2015 a TV station in the Dominican Republic aired a story portraying the Charlie game as a Satanic threat taking over schools. The footage went viral, spreading the game’s popularity to other countries. Although Charlie is most often described as a “Mexican ghost,” it appears that Christian critics reframed the game as Satanic almost immediat…

Catholic Bishops Meeting For Family Synod; South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church OKs Gay Weddings, Ordination; Court in Malaysia Deals Setback To Transgender Advocates; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ng media, challenging the laws through legal cases. Nancy Nicol writes: “A number of themes can be identified throughout this body of work that speak to profound discrimination and violence: random violence in public places; police harassment, extortion, custodial rape; ‘corrective rape’ against lesbians ‘to make them straight’; exclusion and violence perpetuated by friends, family and community; Church fueled hate; state fueled hate; employment d…

Biggest, Best & Worst LGBT Religion Stories of 2016 and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…owed to conceive or give birth to children; and allowed to adopt children. Spain is the most trans-friendly of the nations surveyed; Russia is at the bottom of the list. The interplay of religious beliefs and attitudes was found to be complex, for example, in India: Centuries-old communities of transgender women — most commonly known as hijras — were criminalized under laws passed when India was a British colony, and today often make a living as b…