Religion Dispatches
…xample, or to raise children, or to be protected against discrimination on the job. Many religious right leaders vehemently opposed the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned state laws that made gay people de facto criminals. And many are actively urging politicians in Africa and elsewhere to make or keep homosexuality a criminal offense. Given the continuing influence that the religious right has in the GOP, as reflected in…
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…Even the awkward and ultimately unsustainable political compromise that is today’s Bosnia suggests how hard it is to realize democracy and multiculturalism. But in Sarajevo, which has become overwhelmingly Muslim since the war, still you see, along with numerous mosques, Orthodox and Catholic churches. Sarajevo is the kind of city that doesn’t exist anymore in much of Europe, an echo of a messier patchwork of peoples and faiths that was once chara…
Read More…piritual maturity allows individual persons and whole nations (Germany and South Africa, most notably) to pass through a necessary process of self-examination and repentance. Repentance first and foremost requires acknowledgement of the realities of the misdeeds; it requires honest self-examination. Today’s spate of denials, the “many misgivings” responses coming from the liberals, and the bitter attacks on the credibility of the Torture Report al…
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…Americans. He maintained a vital lifelong interest in the independence of African nations, visiting Africa several times. He advocated for labor rights and was a longtime ally of union leader A. Philip Randolph, for whom he continued to work after the March on Washington. And, consistent with the long Quaker tradition of pacifism (“all wars and fightings with carnal weapons we deny”) Rustin was a tireless peace activist, working with both the Fel…
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…spread of Pentecostalism in Brazil, Prosperity Gospel-styled ministries in Africa, and so on. A word of advice to atheists and humanists: deconstruct theistic models of religions—and expose the illogic and destructive thought and practice by those that have done so much graphic damage to human existence; but don’t be delusional concerning the outcomes of such effort.It might be cathartic for atheist and humanists to broadcast their disdain for rel…
Read More…ll prevalent today. To understand Islamophobia in other parts of the world—South Asia, Africa—I would have had to immerse myself in the history and cultures of those parts of the world, and frankly I am just not familiar enough with those regions to undertake such an inquiry. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? The biggest misconception is that Islamophobes are only concerned about Muslim extremists. In fact, the most pro…
Read More…es. As the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, author of a report on anti-LGBT evangelism in Africa, told RD’s Kathryn Joyce last year: When he goes to Uganda, he’s not known as Scott Lively, but as an American evangelical… The Africans don’t always have the resources to follow their statements so they say: this man of God says this is going on in the world. Or Scott Lively goes to the Uganda Anti-gay Conference, and the media says that an American evangelical says…
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…ppelgänger world you created… The Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa are united in a democratic superpower—the UAS—with its capital in Riyadh. Persia, Kurdistan, and Turkey are independent democracies closely allied with the UAS. Israel, as you note, is located in central Europe; the story there is that after the Arabs beat Hitler, they broke Germany in two and gave the northern half to the Jews, something which the Lutherans and Cath…
Read More…rican Center for Law and Justice’s activities in Zimbabwe (where ACLJ also promotes recognition of a “Christian nation”): The Zimbabwe outpost of the ACLJ isn’t Robertson’s first foray into Africa. Earlier this year, prosecutors in the war crime trial of former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor alleged that the televangelist had lobbied the Bush White House on his behalf in exchange for lucrative gold mining contracts—a claim Robertson denied. And i…
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…Improvement Association of the early twentieth century not only pushed for African Americans to move to Africa, but also sold images of Jesus as black. During the Harlem Renaissance, when black poets like Countee Cullen wished that “He I served were black,” artists M. Gray Johnson and Fred Bucholz depicted lynched southern black men as neo-Christ figures. These images, in tandem with poems by Langston Hughes and short stories by W. E. B. Du Bois,…
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