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Elephant Orphans and Ecological Spiritualities: An Earth Day Reflection

By Jacob J. Erickson

…in my mind today: that ecological spirituality is not innocent and cannot escape the messy violence of humans in the Anthropocene. And even where we might discern or intuit a kind of animal spirituality, emotion, ritual, memory—or a primordial binding of a kind of religious culture—those moments are utterly implicated in a human spiritual history of poaching, ivory trade, colonialism, human-wildlife farm conflicts, and big game hunting in Africa….

LGBT Editor In Bangladesh Murdered by Islamists—and More, In this Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…reminder of how haters in Uzbekistan treat transgender people. “There’s a scar left by a screwdriver next to my liver,” the craggy-bearded and long-haired transgender man says, describing how his college classmates attacked him in 1997 in Tashkent, the capital of this former Soviet republic, a mostly Muslim nation of 31 million. Yan was helped by living in the relatively cosmopolitan city of Tashkent, which he says is a world apart from the count…

Religion Round-Up: What’s Going on in Religion Around the World

By Diane Winston

…are, according to Pew, surprisingly high. Moreover, they represent a large number of people, “nearly equal the estimated number of religiously affiliated adults in the United States” Accordingly, the 1-plus % of the Chinese population that identifies itself as Muslim equals some 20.3 million people—a population almost as large as Saudi Arabia’s. (More to the point, as one of China’s ethnic minorities, Muslims are not bound to the one-child per fam…

Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and Pro-Home Birth

By Katherine Don

…he topic of abortion until she realized she was part of a community with a number of conservative religious midwives and doulas who do not believe that abortion should be legal. “I realized the silence on abortion wasn’t about agreement, but dissention,” Pérez says. That Prentice and Pérez both use the word “choice” when discussing childbirth care can be confusing, until one realizes that, in this context, choice refers to a woman’s right to safe…

Trump’s Pathological Devotion to Border Walls Isn’t Political, It’s Theological

By Alana Massey

…. Terrible,” he said at a rally in Beaumont. It was noted that the 250,000 number was seemingly pulled from thin air, a ghastly specter of invasion at a scale larger than most of our cities. There were later comments about poisonous Skittles made by one of his idiotic children. *** Consider the travel ban clearly targeting Muslim-majority countries (and notably several majority black countries), the pardoning of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the ongoing…

Cafeteria Cockroaches and Synagogue-State Relations in Israel

By Shalom Goldman

…Church) does not recognize the possibility of women’s ordination. Religion scholar James Diamond has noted that, “a significant number of Israeli Jews are secular not only in lifestyle but in worldview.” Diamond cites opinion polls revealing that: a majority of Israelis would like to see sweeping secular reforms implemented including civil marriage and public transportation and shopping malls opening on Shabbat… 63% percent of Israelis polled in A…

Pussy Riot Members Sentenced to 2 Years for Offending Russian Orthodox Church

By The Editors

…representatives of the Church; while the Russian Patriarch, Kirill I of Moscow, is described as someone who believes in Putin rather than in God. Kirill had showed open support for Putin as a candidate before the presidential election. Although the international community, from Madonna and the Beastie Boys to the German Bundestag and Peaches, has been active in opposing this prosecution show trial (during which some spectators were “reportedly th…

Will Pope’s African Tour Change Attitudes on Divorce and LGBTQ Among African Catholics?

By Kaya Oakes

…to counsel an individual about marriage and family issues is a struggle. Oscar Momanyi, a second-year Kenyan seminarian studying at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, has witnessed this problem first hand. His own mother was divorced, and because of cultural pressure, “she had to be silent about it.” She refrained from taking communion at church for twenty years, until “a young priest came and helped.” In Kenya, Momanyi says, “divorce put…

New Poll Reveals Jews May Be Open to Change in Israel Policy

By Benjamin Weiner

…an Jews support Obama’s stance, when that stance, to date, has been best described by observers as “enigmatic”? How well will these numbers hold up if Israel’s “most favored nation” status is truly challenged by an American administration? Despite some American Jewish alienation from Israeli policy, backing for a bold new direction in the peace process is not entirely solid, a fact reflected in the same survey. 40% of respondents continue to suppo…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…tes leading up to Minneapolis (and still ongoing) focused on three issues: scripture, tradition, and justice. Both sides of the debate claim scriptural justification for their positions and both sides claim to be standing within the tradition of the church: opponents arguing that changing ordination policies made a decisive break with historic tradition, proponents arguing that Lutherans understand tradition to be a fluid, ever-reforming process o…