Religion Dispatches
…od-ravaged Pakistan, which is 98% Muslim. To make matters worse, a local Southern California LDS Church representative who had pledged to join seventy other religious leaders at Friday’s interfaith press conference against Islamaphobia failed to show. Certainly we can do better. Whatever one thinks of the Park51 Islamic community center (and the project is not without problems, as my RD colleague Hussein Rashid pointed out in this must-read…
Read More…of America. The lesson then connects the site of Prince’s prayer, the Old South Church, to Samuel Adams and thus to the American Revolution. It trumpets the role of the “Black Robe Brigade,” putting ministers at the center of the revolution while ignoring the fact that Christian ministers could be found on both sides of the conflict. This is an incredible distortion of American history, and it highlights a tremendous irony: by adopting this expli…
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…lowed by thousands of immigrants from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and South Asia and by African Americans, who converted to varying forms of Islam, some of which, such as the Nation of Islam, were distinctly a product of African American experiences. They built American mosques and Muslim institutions in such diverse places as Brooklyn, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Ross, North Dakota, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The mosque built in Ce…
Read More…s (in fact many of them owned slaves). The rule resulted from a compromise between the pro-slavery delegates to the Constitutional Convention (who wanted slaves to count as full persons because it would increase the representation of the southern states in Congress) and the anti-slavery delegates (who wanted slaves not to count at all in order to decrease the representation in Congress of the slave states). One can certainly say the compromise dim…
Read More…ericans. The Ahmadis are a movement that originated in the 19th century in South Asia. They are generally considered to be the first group to come to the United States in an organized way and were heavily involved in converting African-Americans to Islam in the early part of the 20th century. In Pakistan, they are targeted by certain sectors as being heretics. This history of being a persecuted minority, but also being fairly cosmopolitan, should…
Read More…a satisfied, not bloated sensation. As I negotiated my way back and forth between the food bars and my seat, I noted the morbidly obese appearance of some of the other patrons. And I thought about gluttony. I always feel uneasy eating at a buffet-style restaurant. Their very existence seems an invitation to gluttony—both in personal diet and in wasteful consumption of natural resources. But then, one could say the same thing of bars. Their very e…
Read More…burqas and hijabs at meetings. And in case you’re unsure of the difference between a burqa and a hijab, take a look at this explanation. A piece of artwork in the Sacramento County Public Law Library has caused a kerfuffle. The piece features a Bible with a label across the front reading “Warning! May Impair Judgement.” Speaking of poor judgment, a non-denominational Florida church plans to host “International Burn a Qur’an Day” on the anniversary…
Read More…e more likely to feel a sense of stigma, highest among those living in the south. For instance, 57 percent of U.S. respondents said they felt they would suffer at least minor social repercussions in the workplace if they came out as an atheist, compared to only 35 percent of respondents in Canada, 24 percent of Australians, 15 percent of residents of United Kingdom, and 12 percent of Western Europeans. The post sparked a great discussion in the co…
Read More…ery interact to create ever-evolving notions of the “natural” relationship between the races. She’s interested in how “knowledge” is constructed, that is how people come to “know” what they believe they know. Knowledge that seemed unassailable just a generation ago is now obviously wrong to all but the most tone-deaf among us. Botham shows explicitly how, as American institutionalized racism evolved from slavery to segregation, people used Bible s…
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…elievers and others) could live as neighbors. An accomplishment not won by better theology nor a love of peace, but because each lacked the ability to oppress one another by controlling the government. We have created a land where church and state are separated to protect them from one another, not to diminish the role of either. The integrity of the church is jeopardized when politicians can appeal to spiritual leaders and gain their endorsement…
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