Religion Dispatches
…ght. If anything, the struggle for gay rights in so many African countries today tells us about a continent still battling the demons of colonialism, a continent that is still in the process of negotiating an identity – as articulated, again, through the lens of the colonial master. Among the greatest challenges many African democracies face today are the continued existence of one-party states and the lack of strong civil institutions. And, in th…
Read More…“Jewish problem:” In any case; educate yourself and learn the difference. Today’s conservatives and want to-be Nazis are ignorant when they obsess so much over the Jews. There is no Jewish problem in Western Europe (with the exception of the UK and France) as we only have 1 million in Western Europe, whereas 800,000 out of these 1 million live in France and the UK. The US on the other hand, with more than 6 million Jews (600% more than Europe) ac…
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…obally, stripped people of a practice vital to their health and community. Today, some researchers report that group drumming reduces anxiety and depression, increases social resilience and boosts the immune system, along with other physical and mental health benefits. “So this thing that was inherently happening in all tribal lineages was healing the very things that were hurting people,” says Pasquale Mateus, adding that they didn’t need science…
Read More…ss of pretense. Our old friend self-deception But the hypocrisy we witness today may not be so much acts of pretense and public false performance as self-deception. In Hypocrisy: Ethical Investigations, Béla Szabados and Eldon Soifer suggest that our perception of hypocrisy has shifted in modern times. If Biblical and Medieval thinkers saw hypocrisy primarily as a matter of pretense, of the difference between the inner morality and outward perform…
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…tinues. “But, Paige, this is your most defiant act of protest yet, because today, you make a public declaration that you are a child of God. Are you ready to be renamed and reclaimed in the name of Jesus?” Paige’s answer? “Absolutely.” A few episodes later, after she does a little more snooping and Elizabeth gently begins to try to tell her about their lives by taking her on a field trip to an impoverished, largely African-American neighborhood wh…
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…traditionally varies according to the Tibetan lunar calendar, in order to promote tourism. Of the various policies implemented by Chinese governmental agencies in recent years two have been the greatest source of friction between the clergy and the government. The control of the number of monks and nuns in monastic institutions, and the implementation of “patriotic re-education.” Since it is largely these policies that have brought the clergy int…
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…f course, referring to the Trump administration’s policy, not to practices promoted and normalized by his own Church in the past.) But, unlike contemporary border politics, Indigenous assimilation policies have always been specifically about land dispossession. California missions were eventually secularized—and the land was given to settlers and settler institutions. And as historian Brenda Child established, boarding schools were always about fe…
Read More…eligious traditions. There are bloody, vindictive religious traditions (as today’s not-so-new atheists insist on reminding us), and there are those which soften the human tendency toward vengeance and violence. Religion does not have the answer, because it has all the answers, the right and the wrong. Religion is less a glossary of terms (justice means this, righteousness that) than a grammar, a framework for moral reasoning. It is a language in w…
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…of this political and theological pluralism challenges the assumption that today’s Christian Zionism has been a unified and de facto stance for even the most right-wing of American Christians. After Israel’s creation in 1948, U.S. Christians were generally more concerned with the humanitarian crisis facing displaced and dispossessed Palestinians than with Israel’s significance to Christian eschatology. This concern wasn’t only informed by reports…
Read More…tarted becoming a shtick.” In an early October interview with Christianity Today, Warren said that he hadn’t worn a Hawaiian shirt “in two years” and that he “doesn’t even own one.” Warren also said that he was tired of being labeled the new Billy Graham: “I’m very tired of it. I have said many times, there is no successor to Billy Graham… If there is any successor to Billy Graham, it’s Franklin, who has continued to do evangelism. Most media only…
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