Religion Dispatches
…inst Christianity—and the same concern can be raised regarding Hinduism in India and Buddhism in Sri Lanka and elsewhere.” Perhaps violence against Christians has increased as the report suggests. However, there is a danger in a one-sided report that names Islamic fundamentalism as the chief cause of the persecution of Christians. This “blame game” breeds more violence and discrimination—only this time Muslims are experiencing the brunt of it. Sin…
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…wo dozen or so people from various walks of life from Arizona to Ithaca to India on Parker’s reflections and questions. And it would have been nearly unimaginable that I would have had the opportunity that unfolded through the day to interact with the renowned thinker himself. I’d add that the Pope’s worry that digital communication is marked by “the tendency to communicate only some parts of one’s interior world, the risk of constructing a false…
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…tiates morality, fosters anonymous cities, and allows the flamboyant rich to corrupt all. Sounds like worthwhile reading for anyone promoting self-government and freedom….
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…to freedom or belief. It also addresses the relationship between religious freedom and equality for LGBT people and others: The right to freedom of religion or belief and the right to equality are intimately linked. It is not enough only to recognize equality as constituting an underlying principle of this right; it would be more appropriate to view the right to freedom of religion or belief as also constituting a right to equality. This right pro…
Read More…ld born in 2008 in Bolivia and another child that died in 2006 in Chennai, India. As for the Dajjal, hadith describe him as being blind in his right eye—not a cyclops. Of course this rumor is no more absurd than the American obsession with the antichrist, which has equated Proctor & Gamble, Ronald Reagan, and even Monster energy drinks with the Beast described in Revelation. Prior to reports of the birth of the false prophet, there were unconfirme…
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…ic or fearful black Southerners who had stayed on the sidelines during the freedom struggle. Comprehending the death of the four girls meant understanding the entire system, the way of life, which had produced those who had murdered them, and a renewed commitment to make the American dream real for those who had never experienced it. Ordinary black Christians such as those from the 16th Street Baptist Church formed the rank–and–file of the civil r…
Read More…w need to prove he’s not a secret Hindu as well. According to the Times of India, a group of supporters in New Delhi have sent Obama a two-foot, gold-plated statue of the monkey god Hanuman. According to Indian politician Brijmohan Bhama, “Obama has deep faith in Lord Hanuman and that is why we are presenting an idol of Hanuman to him.” The apparent source of this pronouncement of Obama’s newly-discovered faith is this photo from Time magazine, wh…
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…cussion of the church’s teaching and their reasons for departing from it.” India: Out LGBT people vulnerable under recriminalization BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder reports this week on the violent consequences of the Indian Supreme Court’s decision to recriminalize homosexuality. An anti-gay police raid and beatings that happened before the decision were being investigated by activists as lawless violence by police; now the victims of the raid wait to be…
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…it her analysis of the global implications of the gang rape and murder of Indian medical student Jyoti Singh Pandey, purity culture, whether in India or America, casts “women’s bodies [as]…primarily for procreation or male pleasure… a culture in which women must cover up or be threatened is a rape culture.” [Emphasis mine] If, as Graff writes, purity culture is rape culture, then the submission culture that exists in many conservative evangelical…
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…sumably, not just to get atheists to be liked. Among other things, it’s to promote critical reasoning; it’s to advance the view that faith is decidedly not a virtue. Calling our worldview a faith does not seem the best way to achieve these objectives.” Unsurprisingly, the thought that interfaith work requires significant tongue-biting makes many atheists very uncomfortable; it was certainly a concern I had before I started working in the interfait…
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