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In Repudiation of its Devastating Doctrine of Discovery, Vatican Masks the History and Responsibility of Catholic Church

…rts, for example, that: assimilation policies and land dispossession were “promoted by the governmental authorities of the time”; the Doctrine of Discovery was a specifically political debate, “according to which the discovery of lands by settlers granted an exclusive right to extinguish, either by purchase or conquest, the title to or possession of those lands by indigenous peoples”; and that it was a debate in which these historical/political pa…

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Should We Expect to See a Rise in Christian Nationalist Violence in the US?

…sis in countries as diverse as Brazil, Central African Republic, Pakistan, India, and Myanmar, where vigilantes from dominant religious communities routinely attack the homes, businesses, and houses of worship of religious minorities with impunity. As I show in my recent book The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church-State Separation, similar dynamics appear to be unfolding in the United States today, where a combination of forces—…

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In Hamline Case, the ‘Free Expression vs. Religious Sensibilities’ Frame Obscures a Stark Reality About Higher Education

…LGBTQ employees are treated poorly when it comes to pay, benefits, leave, promotion, and job security. Divide-and-rule is not a new tactic, for it’s well known in the Indian subcontinent that the British pitted one local Raja against the other based on tribe, religion, or caste—among other factors. The same applies to corporations as they stoke divisiveness in society by indulging in performative activism. They misdirect the attention of people t…

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Is Trying Really Good Enough? ‘The Good Place’ Has a C-word Problem

…ystem of heaven rests upon its devastating and pioneering—for sit-coms at least—critique of capitalism. In Season 3, episode 11, where we first begin to glean that the whole system of heaven as it has existed for all of human history is broken, we find out that an already flawed system was made inexorably worse when, five-hundred years ago, life began to become so “complicated” that almost no good deed fails to have some negative implications. As…

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Trump Administration Is Not-So-Subtly Christianizing Foreign Policy and Aid

…government—particularly foreign aid and arms—did not directly intervene to promote the narrative of global Christian victimhood. However, under Trump, foreign policy—particularly foreign aid—is increasingly being shaped in a pro-evangelical way. It shouldn’t surprise anyone given Pence’s constant affirmations of being a Christian first, while Pompeo has openly embraced a hardline Christian worldview that maligns non-Christians. Pompeo and Pence al…

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What’s Wrong With the Virgin Mary Depicted as a Barbie Doll?

…ocation and bad taste?” Commenting on the Barbie dressed as Kali, Times of India noted a long pattern of the West appropriating Hinduism for commercial purposes. Rajan Zed, a Hindu cleric and interfaith leader remarked, “Barbie-fication of Kali is simply improper, wrong and out of place.” The most outraged group appears to be devotees of Argentinian folk saint Difunta Correa (the deceased Correa), who’s also “Barbie-fied.” According to legend, Cor…

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From Elon to Elizabeth: The 7 Seals of the 2022 Apocalypse

…isible link to colonialism. From the West Indies to Ireland, from Ghana to India, the global North and South reminded people living in rich bubbles that their privilege came at the expense of those around the world whom colonizers viciously and violently trampled. It’s a shame that the world is ending so we won’t be around to see the records of the glorious union between Black Twitter and Irish Twitter which gave Elizabeth the send-off she’d never…

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Trump’s Remark to Evangelicals is Straight Out of Global Authoritarian Playbook

…y shrinks and the country has all but been partitioned by sectarianism. In India, a restive young population and dimming economic prospects have helped to fuel the rise of vigilante groups made up largely of Hindu men and tacitly backed by local and state officials from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Even “secular” rulers and political parties have embraced religious institutions when it suited their convenience, tapping into their deep wells…

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Religion in Real Time on CNN’s “Believer”: A Conversation with Reza Aslan

…and practice of widely misunderstood religions. From the ascetic Aghori in India to Vodou in Haiti, from the doomsday cult of “JeZus with a Z” in Hawaii to Scientology in America and Santa Muerte in Mexico, the series takes viewers on an intriguing, and sometimes harrowing, tour of religion in real time—as far from orthodoxy as you can get. A couple of weeks ahead of the show’s March 5th premiere, Reza and I talked about the decline of religious l…

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Peter Berger, Sociology’s Defender of God (1929-2017)

…the absolutists. The discussion came to the case of sati, the practice in India of widow-burning, where the grieving widow was supposed to throw herself onto the funeral pyre of her departed husband and achieve a kind of divine immortality as a result. Berger listened to the cultural defenses of the practice for a moment or two, and then he had had enough. Berger stood up, his voice thundering as he pointed an accusing finger at each of us. “If t…

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