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

…e religious, Armstrong explains: Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching remained opaque and incredible. The Ascent of Intellectual Orthodoxy For most of Western history, religion has been primarily a matter of orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. In fact,…

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How Robert Bellah (1927-2013) Changed the Study of Religion

…ovements were emerging in other traditions in other parts of the world. In India, for example, bhakti movements of social rebellion were erupting throughout the subcontinent, eschewing Brahmanical authority for the fellowship of devotees of a new breed of eclectic saints and teachers who could be outcastes, blind, female, or partly Muslim. Elsewhere in Asia, what has been called a “Protestant Buddhism” was appealing to the masses in the way that a…

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Population Growth Divides Climate Change Advocates

…thoritative reports, the group does acknowledge that regions in Africa and India with extremely dense populations are most at risk to massive suffering.  The Catholic Church has studied and worked on issues of protecting the poor from climate change disaster for at least the last ten years. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is one of four members of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE), which also includes th…

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This Just In: College Will Make You an Atheist

…a in the United States and beyond took up the topic as well; from Texas to India and back to New Hampshire, the notion that college major and religiosity are linked seemed to require attention. A lot of attention. Of course, all this probably resulted from the well-executed press release issued by the University of Michigan, where the co-authors work. Here’s how the press release opened: College students who major in the social sciences and humani…

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Why the Obama/Hillary Clinton Approach to Middle East Peace is Doomed to Failure

…States, the permanent members of the UN Security Council—and yes, Iran and India as well—and allow that international conference to impose a solution that provides security and justice to both sides. Only an imposed settlement has the slightest chance of being just to Palestinians—the precondition for a lasting peace, and hence the strategy that those who yearn for a secure Israel must pursue. Just as the international community decided to support…

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For God or for Fame? The Making of a Teenage Bomber

…mbai attacks were reportedly carried out by Lashkar-e Taiba, which targets India over the dispute in Kashmir, and not al Qaeda. Perhaps in his mind it was all jihad on the news! Well, when I was fifteen you know I had a, I was—I made [a special prayer for guidance] about whether I should you know… should go you know and make jihad in a different country or to make like an operation here you know like, something like Mumbai. You know, it would be s…

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Six Overlooked Gems from the Future of World Religions Report

…guess, the largest Muslim population in the world by 2050 will actually be India. 2008 Summer Olympics – Opening Ceremony – Beijing, China 同一个世界 同一个梦想 – U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program – FMWRC. Photo via U.S. Army/Flickr 3. Because China: That Thing about Muslim Plurality in 2070 Might Not Actually Be True The wild card that could sink item 2: China. Five years ago, China’s Christian population was an estimated 65 million—just 5% of the coun…

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It’s Not Yogaphobia, It’s Theology

…r). To take a somewhat parallel case, Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has promoted an appreciation for Jesus, but not for the Christian theology writ large. After all, a Buddhist would rightly be critical of a system that posits a belief in an essential soul. But where some Catholic voices (and Protestant ones as well) go out of their way to disparage yoga, Thich Nhat Hanh never uses incendiary rhetoric to tell his audience not to become Christia…

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Global LGBT Recap: Francis’s First Year; Homophobia and Development; African Activists Push Back

…Lee Badgett from the University of Massachusetts presented a case study on India, which concluded that the economic costs of homophobia and LGBT exclusion ranged from .1 to 1.7% of the country’s GDP – a figure she said represented the tip of the iceberg because it was based only on labor and health impacts on which data is available. Luiz Loures, deputy executive director of UNAIDS and assistant secretary general of the United Nations, said that e…

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“The Slut Assumption”: Myths About Jewelry Reveal Diamonds Aren’t Always A Girl’s Best Friend

…cropped the Ingres painting to make it more mysterious and suggestive. The Indian edition also has a lovely cover, a painting by Raja Ravi Varma of an Indian woman covered in jewelry and smiling seductively. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? Sure: Anna Karenina. Or The Eustace Diamonds. Or Alice in Wonderland. I always wanted to write a novel, and did write one once, but it was awful (I showed it to some of my fri…

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