Religion Dispatches
…ss affirmed. There is a profound deficiency in the public understanding of African American fatherhood. Cliff Huxtable aside, African American fathers are all too often represented as absentee sperm donors; socially and economically irresponsible. This is even true in the one place that one might think African American men might be celebrated, the black church. Over the years, I have come to have little appreciation or tolerance for Father’s Day S…
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…was the language? Well, the principal thing about the catechism was: if an African was going to be included in the church, they had to first take a vow that if they saw any of their sister or brother Africans disobedient to their masters, or seeking to run away, that they would disclose that information to people in authority—and if they didn’t, that would constitute a reason to put them out. That’s one thing. Secondly, that they would understand…
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…ene, as the Egyptian authorities did in 2007 when they banned The Da Vinci Code. The Coptic community—which accounts for roughly 10 percent of the nation’s 80 million citizens—had raised alarm and demanded that both the book and movie be banned. Now, three years on, Zeidan’s bestselling novel is is prompting angry demands from that same community. In early May a group of Coptic lawyers demanded that the government imprison the author for five year…
Read More…one of the same sex is 15 to 20 years in jail and a fine of 50,000-500,000 Central African francs (£60-£600), according to a document seen by Agence France-Presse. The cabinet claims that the measure is intended to “protect the family and to comply with Chadian society”. It will go before MPs and President Idriss Déby to be rubber-stamped. Graeme Reid, director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights programme at Human Rights Watch, s…
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…rse, those of you who study religion may have a good deal to say about the centrality of free will (i.e. law over code) in different religious traditions. One thing that strikes me week by week is how much the show takes as given our understanding of the digital realm: our ability to think in terms of interfaces, memory, avatars, virtual world economies, and the like. I might contrast that with how fundamentally indecipherable a film like Tron was…
Read More…we find an investment advisor named Sean Hyman pushing “The Biblical Money Code,” which claims that advice “woven” into Scripture has helped him go from earning $15,000 to giving away up to $50,000 a year. Unlike Hovind, Hyman is giving away his system for free. All you have to do is sit through an hour-long video, during which Hyman explains how “to unlock vast amounts of wealth safely and ethically.” Fancy explanations are provided, but it’s act…
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…n and Tajikistan have also taken similar steps but the two other ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, have not. Kyrgyzstan would, however, be the first of them to ban “gay propaganda” among minors… “We supported this bill, because it reflects the hopes and expectations of our voters willing to protect the traditional family,” Kurmanbek Dykanbayev, one of the initiators of Kyrgyz bill, said. “And from now on, there will…
Read More…ot benefit from our Allah-given vast natural resources that we have on the African continent.” “This being the case, the Republic of The Gambia will never be a party to the so-called EPA with the European Union as it is designed to continue the same exploitation and impoverishment of the African continent. We will rather die than be colonised twice, enslaved twice and be robbed of our resources; our dignity and our humanity twice.” “Our relationsh…
Read More…laws and who have continued to call for respect for diversity and for all Africans to embrace the African idea of Ubuntu –our shared humanity. Ugandan ambassador Christopher Onyanga Aparr defended the country’s anti-gay law last week, telling the UN Human Rights Council that sexual orientation is “not a fundamental human right” protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Last week an Islamic court in northern Nigeria ordered four men…
Read More…erican sister. While police brutality is both unbridled and rampant in the African American community, this story carries a special shock. When an African American woman is hit repeatedly by an officer with with handcuffs wrapped around his knuckles, and an African American nurse goes directly to the offending white officer to see if he’s okay we get a hint of another cultural marker—Johnson is a transsexual. Monica Roberts, founder of the African…
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