Religion Dispatches
…give our people a future of prosperity and security the United States and India stand united.” He went on to praise the people of Mumbai, evoking Gandhi and particularly noting that the strength of India—like the strength of the USA—lies in diversity, which was on full display during those attacks when we saw “Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jews, and Muslims, protecting each other, saving each other, living the common truth of all the world’s great r…
Read More…scrimination and harassment, they also have an important symbolic place in India.” The Times of India reports, The Rajya Sabha on Friday unanimously passed a private member’s bill seeking equal rights with dignity for transgenders, who are widely scorned, ostracised and ghettoised in the country. It was historic not only because it was the first private member’s bill to be passed in the Upper House in 36 years, but also since it might turn out to…
Read More…reating serious backlash among BYU students and faculty. Since then, Honor Code enforcement has been conducted through referrals—even third party referrals—of suspect students to a campus Honor Code office, a system of enforcement that has created significant opportunities for abuse. (When I was a BYU student, it was possible to make an anonymous third-party referral.) Honor Code enforcement on campus has been used to bait and target gays and libe…
Read More
…executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, who regularly travels to India for nonviolence trainings. In India, “their action is a little bit more spontaneous.” A New Revolution The March 10 National Uprising Day protest in Delhi was bigger than ever this year. Tempa Tsering, the official representative of the Dalai Lama, says more than 1,000 gathered in front of the United Nations’ office to mark the anniversary of the 1959 rebellion in Tib…
Read More
…ou have basically guaranteed him the nomination for the Republican Party in 2024, and you’re going to give him a big weapon to go after Joe Biden or, you know, whatever Democrat emerges in 2024 if they don’t convict him. While it’s wrongheaded to worry about riling up Trump’s base if there’s evidence he committed criminal offenses, I think Jennings is right to a degree. The stakes are high in this case—for Attorney General Merrick Garland, Preside…
Read More
…of Ron DeSantis, Florida’s rabidly culture-warring governor and a possible 2024 frontrunner for the Republican presidential candidate, as a Catholic politician. He clearly is one, although documenting the ins and outs of how DeSantis’s faith intersects with his politics requires digging much deeper than coverage in the legacy media or cable news. As a child, DeSantis, a descendant of Italian immigrants, attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Schoo…
Read More
Like a comet closing in on Planet Earth, the US presidential election is hurtling toward its destination. With around two weeks left before impact, the stakes of the choice before the American electorate are becoming ever clearer, as are the differences between the parties’ standard bearers. Robert P. Jones, President and Founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), has long been one of the sharpest observers of those consequential diffe…
Read More
…There were fliers portraying President of the current opposition party in India, the Indian National Congress party, Sonia Gandhi and Hillary Clinton as horned demons on a “witch hunt” to “get Modi” and his party for alleged involvement in the 2002 riots in Gujarat. Modi governed the state during the violence that took the lives of more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. In stark contrast, there were large posters displaying Trump in what a…
Read More
…e killed and millions left homeless in the wake of the division of British India into independent India and Pakistan in 1947. The wounds of partition have never healed. The two countries have fought a series of wars; both have nuclear weapons aimed at the other. Speaking by satellite phone, one of the attackers explained that he loved India, but that Muslims could not stand by while their mothers and sisters were killed. This indicates that reveng…
Read More…exual activity,” which could be the lead in to overturn Section 377 of the Indian Penal code that still criminalizes consensual same-sex conduct, a remnant from an 1860 British Colonial Era law that exists in many constitutions across the Commonwealth countries even today. Malta: Civil Union & Adoption Law, Trans Protections in Constitution This week the parliament of Malta passed, and President Marie Louise Coleiro Preca signed into law, a civil…
Read More