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Burma Bans Time Magazine’s “Buddhist Terror” Issue

By Alan Senauke

…to the consumers.” And in a new and worrying development, according to the Thailand-based independent news source for Burma, the Irrawaddy, “About 200 senior Buddhist monks convening in Rangoon on Thursday have begun drafting a religious law that would put restrictions on marriages between Buddhist women and Muslim men.” Bearing Witness: A Personal Background My first visit to the Burmese border was with a Buddhist witness delegation in 1992. This…

Gay Mormons Tie the Knot

By Johnny Townsend

…nd nieces have served missions in Ireland, Italy, Argentina, Ethiopia, and Thailand. You can’t just leave Mormonism behind when you have that kind of connection. I’m a writer and find that most of my stories still deal with Mormons. (My book, The Abominable Gayman, about a gay Mormon missionary in Italy, was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2011, and my latest, Marginal Mormons, just received a starred review from Kirkus.) I also marched with the…

Steve Jobs Reincarnated as Divine Half-Yak

By Andrew Aghapour

…According to Phra Thepyanmahamuni, the abbot of the Wat Phra Dhammakaya in Thailand, Jobs was reincarnated into a divinity “of middle rank – half a Witthayathorn, half yak.” The Thai Buddhist New Religious Movement posted a three-part essay on their website describing the life, death, and reincarnation of Jobs, claiming that he also invented the wind-mill in a previous life to predict natural disasters. The essay is illustrated with enough CGI moc…

Israel’s Immigration Debate: “Where is the Jewish Spirit?”

By Mati Wagner

…ultural diversity. Most of Israel’s foreign workers (30 percent) came from Thailand but many migrated from the Philippines (18%), and from China (10%), Nepal (6%) and Romania (5%). They were willing to work harder than the average Israeli for longer hours at a lower salary (40% lower on average according to the Bank of Israel). Many stayed on after their permits expired to defray the initial payments made to the middlemen for the chance to come or…

White Christian Nationalism May Not Be Religious, But It Is Christian

By Murali Balaji

…Christian dominance. In a larger context, none of the nationalist and exclusivist movements—Jewish nationalism in Israel; Islamism in parts of Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia; Hindu nationalism in parts of India; Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand—that have grown in recent years are grounded in theology. They’re all connected by a shared sense of grievance and an imagined community based on assumed shared ide…

Religious Conservatives Mobilize Internationally Against Spanish Nondiscrimination Bill; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…“threaten freedom of speech and faith.” Nigeria: U.S. based anti-gay group promotes anti-gay propaganda amid increasing official hostility The Mail & Guardian follows up on the July arrest of 52 men at a party in the state of Kano on suspicion of homosexuality. The men were arrested by the Hisbah Corps, an Islamic security force established by the Kano state government in 2003 to enforce Sharia, Islamic religious law. Speaking to the Mail & Guardi…

Is ‘Beyond Doubt’ Correct About the Decline of Religion? Yes… Sort Of.

By Lucas McCracken

…nized” or “modernizing” nations, like the United States, China, Australia, Thailand, Czech Republic, and many more are becoming less religious by the day. Plus, the authors see good reasons to believe that this trend will continue for years to come. Beyond Doubt is written like a victory speech. It delivers a comforting message to nonbelievers and anyone else worried that Christianity—particularly its evangelical iterations—will continue to domina…

Catholic Groups Leading Mifepristone Ban Are Part of Century-Long Tradition Who See it as Patriotic Duty to Protect the Family

By Lauren Barbato

…med in Catholic settings. Although Catholic officials expanded an existing code of medical ethics in 1948 to include directives on contraception and abortion, Catholic hospitals didn’t share a unified ethical code until 1971. Reports of hospitals in some dioceses performing abortions and providing contraception to patients led the USCCB to publish a new version of the ERDs and require every diocese to adopt them. This would prevent what Father O’R…

Are We Living in a Simulation? Bad Religion, Bad Media Combine in New Doc, ‘A Glitch in the Matrix’

By Shannon Trosper Schorey

…lation theory Mystwood is playing with—he is the universe, the universe is code, his code is part of the important bit, it’s all a simulation, and he’s ready to play. And, importantly, the rest of us might not matter. The language of programming in A Glitch in the Matrix is compelling and difficult. On the one hand, it is literal computer programming. On the other, intentional or not, the movie invokes the language of “deprogramming” that was comm…

No God but Country: The Religion of John McCain Has Something Important to Tell Us

By Kathryn Lofton

…stay, that he did so against his obvious self-interest, in loyalty to the Code, might demonstrate, as Wallace puts it, that McCain is certifiably insane. But we also know… [F]or a proven fact, that he is capable of devotion to something other, more, than his own self-interest. So that when he says the line in speeches now you can feel like maybe it’s not just more candidate bullshit, that this guy it’s maybe the truth. Or maybe both the truth and…