Religion Dispatches
…But it occurs to me that it’s a discipline that at least some white progressives—including religious progressives—did manage to learn and put to honorable use during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Those of us who already are, or will soon be, members of the new white minority could do worse than to study and learn from that still-resonant experience. …
Read More
…is its future? The answer seems relatively clear. The Church is growing in South America, in sub-Saharan Africa, and is even making significant inroads in the Far East. And what these emerging Catholic populations want is a culturally conservative theology (recall the uproar in these same regions when the openly gay Anglican bishop, Gene Robinson, was confirmed). The code word for most of that uproar is “anti-Modern.” So the irony of Catholic anti…
Read More
…enforced by the inmates themselves. They’re hoping to export this model to Africa and other countries in South America, so they were eager to be able to say that an American sociologist had survived two weeks in one of their prisons as a way of proving that their experimental model works! What was it like? There were three other inmates in my cell, including a guy from Paraguay who snored louder than anyone I’ve ever heard. Two of the guys were in…
Read More…of Zimbabwe and left 35 injured. Frank Malaba, a gay Zimbabwean living in South Africa said homosexuality in the country is so culturally taboo that people simply cannot come to grips with it. “There are a few things that make people frown upon homosexuals, the main one being people do not understand how a man or a woman is capable of being sexually attracted to someone of the same gender,” he said. “At times a person is just born that way, but p…
Read More…ge. A cursory look across 1400 years of Muslim history will bear this out. Africa is wide and vast, but the places where Islam took root (at least initially) are the places where education, intellectualism, moral imagination, and spiritual creativity took root first. These established a wide-ranging change that affected all aspects of the society. We still talk romantically about al-Andalusia. But what impresses me most was not the tumultuous poli…
Read More…, entitled “Called to Christ,” states: “Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works.” Sen. Obama has good tactical reasons for doing this. First, it reminds people he’s not Muslim. Second, it helps show he’s not an effete, liberal secularist. Third, it helps him to appeal to evangelicals. But I do th…
Read More
…hard enough, you’ll find corporate money behind dissenters on any topic.” South Dakota boasts the first resolution to focus solely on climate change without any mention of evolution, though other states could soon follow. In Utah earlier this month, the House approved legislation that urges the Environmental Protection Agency to put any plans for regulating carbon dioxide emissions on hold, “until climate data and global warming science are subst…
Read More…atened gay Congressman Claudio Arriagada Macaya. Ireland: Interfaith group promotes marriage equality, Catholic bishop warns against As Ireland heads toward a May referendum on marriage equality, an interfaith coalition, Faith in Marriage Equality, has been formed to urge support. Richard O’Leary said the group was created to let people of faith know that they can vote yes, adding that media attention has focused on conservative Christian groups a…
Read More
…ionists’ latest strategy. His is merely relying on what Forrest calls the “code words.” But their long-term goals remain the same: To get God into science class. The full statement in the Texas standards reads: “The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.” (Italics added.) McLeroy considers common…
Read More
…e outnumbered by the more conservative regions of the church, primarily in Africa and the Philippinnes, and to some extent, the American South. Yeah. That’s the crazy thing about this whole thing. What’s happening in our denomination right now is that we’re realizing we’re a global church. Early Christian missionaries went to the continent of Africa and the Philippines and Christianized people with a very, very conservative brand of Christianity….
Read More