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Religious Resistance to Bolivian Gender Law; US Religious Right Celebrates Court OK For Romanian Marriage Initiative; Will LGBTs Be Banned from Indonesian TV?; Global LGBT Recap

…marginalized communities and to honor their country’s commitment to basic freedoms guaranteed in the Moldovan constitution. “Moldova has already made great democratic, constitutional, and economic advancements. It was only three years ago that the nation took an important stand for human rights and basic freedoms when it overturned a similar anti-LGBT propaganda law,” said Representative Lowenthal. “The U.S. values its relationship with Moldova a…

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Sit Down and Shut Up: Pulling Mindfulness Up By Its (Buddhist) Roots

…st cultures. Buddhism absorbed Chinese religion when it spread to China, Tibetan religion in Tibet, and so on. But mindfulness—what we think of as “meditation,” as opposed to prayer or ceremonial observance, for example—does have deep roots in the tradition. The Pali word sati, which can be translated as mindfulness, is frequently used in Buddhist scripture. (The noun comes from the verb sarati, meaning “to remember,” and alternative translations…

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Why Conservative Evangelicals Won’t Let Us Pee in Peace

…acy to SBC traditionalism. If that’s what they want to teach, fine. It’s a free country, and there’s no reason to begrudge anyone their beliefs. But it’s simply horseshit to pretend that there wasn’t a historical process by which conservatives captured the reins of the denomination and have slowly but surely been purging even the mildest dissenting voices for the past 30 years. So let’s be clear: the conservative SBC ethics is only one among many…

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Fascinating History of Search for “Lost White Tribe” Sheds Light on Construction of Race

…diverse. Maybe these explorers did see people whom a modern American would code as white. Maybe not. As Robinson demonstrates in The Lost White Tribe, the better questions here have to do with the interpretation of bodies, not just with the bodies themselves. Basically: why were European and American adventurers so eager to find these far-flung white tribes in the first place? And they were eager. Reports of white Indians and white Africans made h…

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‘Politicized Religion’ Doesn’t Explain Evangelical Support of Donald Trump

…s (e.g., Talal Asad, José Casanova, Charles Taylor, Saba Mahmood, and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd) have argued, the delimitation of the social spheres of religion and politics, and the boundary between them, is socially-constituted, variable, and constantly contested. This does not mean that “there is no such thing” as religion or politics, or that one term can simply be collapsed into the other; it means that what counts as religion and politics will…

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Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

…imed part of the prison as its own. But most importantly, the relationship between the gang and the church mirrored the relationship between churches and people in favelas. There was mutual respect, which was essential to preserving the peace. Gang members could leave the gang and join the church as long as their participation was deemed genuine. It would be very difficult to fake a conversion in prison because someone’s observing your actions 24…

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Declaring a Theological State of Emergency: Trump’s Ignorance Must Not Be Ours

…e of the Muslim faith mirrors that of many Americans. “Islam” has become a code word for terrorism. In fact, it is the name of a monotheistic faith tradition based on the Qur’an which is practiced by more than 1.6 billion people, nearly a quarter of the world. Its practitioners are referred to as Muslims. So our popular pedagogy must begin in order to right the wrongs of misinformation and demagoguery. Just as Christianity and Judaism have many ex…

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Anti-Gay Forces On Offense in Europe; ‘African Islam’ Challenged by Extremists; Irish Marriage Foes & ‘Sounds of Sodomy’; Global LGBT Recap

…d year went into effect on January 1. The country’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, is openly gay. Gambia: Anti-Gay President Survives Coup Attempt The anti-gay dictator-president of Gambia, Yayha Jammeh, survived a clumsy coup attempt last week, which seems likely to lead to even more brutal political repression. Vietnam: New Law Drops Ban on Same-Sex Couples Marrying “Vietnam’s new marriage law, which went into effect New Year’s Day, abolished re…

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Liberal Intolerance, Or, an Occasion for Public Theology

…” theologies, and boldly touts its commitment to tolerance.  Moreover, its code of ethics includes: “We commit ourselves to respecting the diversity of ecumenical, theological, ideological and personal expressions of the various faiths and traditions found in our community.” Since the aforementioned is an ongoing case that most likely contains more details than those I’ve offered, I use it only as a backdrop to illustrate the ease in which orthodo…

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New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

…a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions,” said a YouTube spokesperson at the time. “This can be a challenge because what’s okay in one country can be offensive elsewhere.”  International human rights treaties guarantee all citizens freedom of thought and freedom of expression. But these treaties are binding on states, not on the media corporations that enable the exercise of such freedoms. It rema…

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