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‘Open Mosque’ in South Africa Receives Threats; ‘Blood Test’ for ‘Degeneratism’: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…osexuality, and LGBTI people are being targeted by police from Zimbabwe to Egypt to Senegal. Italy: Church Objects to Mayor Registering Gay Couples Married in Other Countries On Monday, the city of Bologna began to register the unions of gay couples married in other countries. Mayor Virginio Merola moved to implement his June directive over the objection of Bologna’s Prefect (the Italian state’s administrative representative) Mario Ennio Sodano. T…

LGBT’s, Opponents Prep for Vatican Synod; UN Rights Council Adopts LGBT Resolution; Brazil’s Evangelicals Eye Presidency; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ncil before the final vote rejected seven proposed amendments put forth by Egypt, Uganda, Pakistan, South Sudan and other countries that sought to strip LGBT-specific language from the proposal… LGBT advocates earlier this week expressed concern that South Africa would not support the latest resolution, but in the end the country backed it. Ambassador Abdul Samad Minty, who is South Africa’s permanent U.N. representative in Geneva, said after the…

International “Religious Freedom” Agenda Will Only Embolden ISIS

By Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

…shortly after the coup, to discuss the prospects for religious freedom in Egypt. It was only a matter of time until the Baroness and others in the international religious freedom (IRF) lobby sought to capitalize on the moral panic surrounding ISIS to advance their agenda. The call to arms in Oslo is among the first attempts to link ISIS and international religious freedom, but it won’t be the last. As someone who has spent the past few years stud…

God is a Terrifying Monster, and Other Takeaways from the Study of Vampires in Pop Culture

By Jess Peacock

…errifying monster of all, as the narrative of the flood and the plagues of Egypt (where Yahweh is referred to as the Destroyer) paint a frightening picture of an ancient deity. Judeo-Christian narratives and the horror genre are entangled chronicles of the unknown, of what lies beyond human understanding. As such, we can learn much about the former as we analyze the latter. And so the vampire becomes a lens through which to view death, questions o…

Graeme Wood on ISIS: No Such Thing as Objective Critique

By Eric M. Gurevitch

…g: Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million. Scholars of religion like Catherine Wessinger have spilt much ink over the events that lead to the tragic deaths at Jonestown…

Why Republicans Don’t Think Obama Is Christian

By Sarah Posner

…g religious extremism, Obama noted that that Islamic State’s “slaughter of Egyptian Christians in Libya has shocked the world.” Notice, in Walker’s speech, the juxtaposition of the statement that Obama “seems to scoff at the belief that our country has been uniquely blessed by God” (i.e., he’s not a Christian) with his own remembrance of the murdered Egyptian Christians “who clearly died for their faith and their beliefs.” Some of the floor statem…

Amid Uncertainty, Eight Things We Know for Sure About the Boston Bombings

By Ivan Strenski

…y in the Western media for the plight of minority Christian communities in Egypt or Syria today. Or, what of the French mandate that created the modern nation-state of Lebanon largely to protect its Christian population after the fall of the Ottoman Empire? Were the Russian Empire’s campaigns against the Ottomans into Georgia and Armenia similarly devoid of globalizing sympathies with fellow Christians? But, if we insist upon thinking that religio…

State Department Finds Religion, But Whose?

By Melani McAlister

…pment of US policy toward Sudan, which IRFA-associated groups named as the Number One violator of religious freedom for five years in a row, as US policy evolved to support the country’s division into Sudan and South Sudan in 2010. But the law plays virtually no role in US policy toward Saudi Arabia, given that, for 15 years, the president has waived sanctions on the basis of US national security interests.) More recently, people generally mean th…

American Buddhism: Beyond the Search for Inner Peace

By Joshua Eaton

…from this experience. From what I could observe at the conference, a large number of Buddhists are attempting to draw upon principles intrinsic to the Dharma to deal with challenges we face in present-day society. Some, with scientific backgrounds, have been applying mindfulness and meditation practices to alleviate stress and psychological disturbances; others are using the Dharma to aid conflict resolution and still others are helping prisoners…

Who Would Jesus Marry?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…pparent artifact of a late second-century Christian community somewhere in Egypt, merits further study. These are among the salient facts of the discovery at this point, and scholars quickly began queuing up to weigh in on whether or not the fragment is authentic. But the more popular conversation has swirled around an issue to which King herself made clear the fragment was not able to speak: Was Jesus married? Was his wife the historically confus…