Religion Dispatches
…i and Libya reflects the growing network of radical extremism operating in Africa. 7. The US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is Attacked—US Ambassador Stevens and three Foreign Service workers are killed. 8. Civil War in Syria Creates Over 300,000 Refugees; the frustration of rebels waiting for Western military support brings them closer to al-Qaeda extremists. 9. Malala Yousufzai, Pakistani Teenage Education Activist Escapes an Assassination Attemp…
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…n of women, and reject the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa seemed to signal an unwillingness to confront contemporary issues with a Christ-like openness to the present moment. Neither the Association of Irish Priests (ACP) nor We Are Church, local organizations that, respectively, represent the Irish clergy and laity, are willing to accept the status quo. The abuse crisis provided an opening for their critiques of Church str…
Read More…is special because it’s “less part of the connective tissue of Arab North Africa” than a “demographic and cultural island” enjoying “upwardly mobile European aspirations.” He asserts that Tunisia’s cultural superiority is established by its desire to be European. The lesson: Tunisia revolted because they are culturally superior aspiring Europeans while states to the east have no such capacity. The reality in Egypt belies such simple analysis. For…
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…talk” hurt the LGBT community? It’s not just here in America but in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—there is such real harm that comes from sin talk. People get hurt and get killed. I think if we’re more rooted in being confident in God’s love for us and Christian doctrines it helps us to have armor and these attacks can bounce off. My husband, Michael, and I have gone to church and we just sit on edge during the sermon wondering of the pastor wo…
Read More…lity. “Those U.S conservatives who have lit the brushfire of homophobia in Africa have to bear some responsibility for this tragic death and for the conflagration that now threatens to consume all gay Ugandans.” Those U.S. evangelicals include Scott Lively, the former head of the California affiliate of the American Family Association. He and two others, including Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, have led conferences and work…
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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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Last December, at the end of his tour of Africa, Pope Francis answered a question about Islamic fundamentalism by pointing to the same malady in his own flock. “We Catholics have some—and not some, many—who believe they possess the absolute truth and go ahead dirtying the other with calumny, with disinformation, and doing evil. They do evil. I say this because it is my Church.” He didn’t name names, but for some, it was hard not to take it person…
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…terracial understanding (she and her husband Howard Thurman were the first African-Americans to meet with Mahatmas Gandhi). They and other black clubwomen logged many miles as members of the National Council of Negro Women, traveled the world in support of women’s rights, and were dogged supporters of education and the civil rights movement. They labored for the improvement of women’s lives through protest, dignity, and struggle, not self-help pab…
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…
Read More…r II and subsequent civil conflicts such as the migration from the Horn of Africa in the 1990s. The central feature of these efforts was humility—a willingness to listen to local populations, to respect their agency, and the ability to self-correct. What I’m asking is that we consider the antecedents to Chau’s example and learn from them. Moreover, to remember how self-reflection can and has been an aspect of American foreign missions. One of the…
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