Religion Dispatches
…ry fast. Chattanooga does lean Democrat, in no small part because it’s 35% African-American. But as anyone familiar with Southern politics can tell you, a city of Southern Democrats is not necessarily a city of social liberals. And, in light of perceptions about a lack of African-American support for gay rights, that should be especially true of support for gay rights in Chattanooga. I grew up in Chattanooga, leaving for college in 2008. As a kid…
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…t, perhaps more remarkable, 34% do not! My work documenting the history of African Americans who have adopted variants of Judaism over the last 120 years demonstrates that Jewish identification can change over the course of decades. The “Black Israelite” movements I study began with Holiness Christian churches in the 1890s, with strong influences from Biblical literalism, freemasonry, and Anglo-Israelism, but in the course of only three decades ma…
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…ies. “Prop 47 affects everybody,” Galedary said. “We have had a dream that African-American and Latino Muslims should work together, especially in South L.A. And we want to build bridges with non-Muslims. Our main objective is to show our Latino brothers and sisters that just by being human, we care.” By staffing phone banks and canvassing registered voters who didn’t cast ballots in the last election, LALMA did far more than take a “tiny step.” T…
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…n for sainthood. In the nineteenth century, several American-born women of African descent also became nuns in Europe. Barred from becoming fully-professed sisters in white and indigenous congregations in the Americas because of their race, these black women crossed the Atlantic Ocean to embrace the religious state. While the majority of these women were extremely-light skinned and could pass for white, at least three dark-skinned, U.S.-born black…
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…. Dame Daphne Sheldrick and her 2012 memoir, Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story. Once a day, strictly between the hours of 11AM and 12PM, the orphanage opens to the public for a visitor’s fee of 500 Kenyan shillings (a little under six U.S dollars at the moment). That strict time is a kind of compromise—a minimal amount of human contact for the orphans so the orphanage can raise some necessary funds for their care. The human animals…
Read More…reserved for foreigners because, in his thinking, homosexuality is not an African practice and has been introduced by unsavoury elements. “Whoever wants to bring it sees Kenya as a dumping ground. Ours is an expression of extreme deterrence,” he said. During a Kenyan talk show debate on the proposed law, Nyakeriga repeated his assertion that the stoning provision is there as a strong deterrent. “The best way to express something is to say it loud…
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…foremost by creating social relationships. When I first began researching African Pentecostalism, the general consensus was that it was a religion for people who wanted to reduce their social obligations. There’s a way to tell the story of Protestantism more generally as an individualizing religion, and when this narrative meets the prosperity gospel, with its emphasis on conspicuous consumption, it was easy for scholars to paint a picture of Pen…
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…actable now—such that, according to the US2010 project, upper middle class African American and Latino homeowners actually live in poorer neighborhoods than do low-income white people. That cold reality belies bromides about post-racialism, colorblindness and meritocracy. And it also underscores why faith-based institutions remain so powerful in black and brown communities. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? Fellow non-believe…
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…amily? Where is the goodness and justice of God for Marissa Alexander, the African-American woman who is presently serving a 20-year prison sentence for shooting a warning shot to ward off her abusive husband from attacking her? She “stood her ground,” shoots and kills no one, but gets 20 years in prison (we’re still waiting to see if Florida’s governor will commute her sentence or if this will remain a travesty of justice); Zimmerman shoots and i…
Read More…oodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile. Sullivan is wrong to cite the Book of Mormon scripture from 2 Nephi 5: 21 (which connects a “cursing” due to “inquity” to a “skin of blackness”) as a pretext for the anti-black segregation of the LDS priesthood and temple worship. This scripture has never been used in LD…
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