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Category: Religion

What early Christian communities tell us about giving financial aid at a time of crises

What early Christian communities tell us about giving financial aid at a time of crises

Apostle Paul and his followers collected aid, likely for early Christians. Giovanni Paolo Panini /Hermitage Museum via Wikimedia Commons By Cavan W. Concannon, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Sometime in the late second century A.D., Christians in the city of Rome organized a collection to send to the followers of Jesus in the city of Corinth. Modern-day scholars don’t know what the crisis was that prompted the donation – it could have been…

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The road to coronavirus hell was paved by evangelicals

The road to coronavirus hell was paved by evangelicals

Katherine Stewart writes: Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown. At least since the 19th century, when the proslavery theologian Robert Lewis Dabney attacked the physical sciences as “theories of unbelief,” hostility to science has characterized the more extreme forms of religious nationalism in the United States. Today, the hard core…

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Iranian clerics keep shrines open, even as coronavirus spreads

Iranian clerics keep shrines open, even as coronavirus spreads

The Associated Press reports: Shiite shrines that attract tens of millions of visitors annually have come under focus in Iran as the country grapples with the spread of the coronavirus. The outbreak of the virus in Iran prompted the government to request the closure of major shrines in cities like Qom, Mashhad and Shiraz, but Iran’s powerful clerics have rejected or ignored the notices. The decision to keep the shrines open shows the power of Iran’s religious establishment and the…

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Why did shamanism evolve in societies all around the globe?

Why did shamanism evolve in societies all around the globe?

Thomas T Hills writes: Shamanism is as varied as those who practise it. Its practitioners range from indigenous lineages who have passed down their craft over thousands of years to the modern ‘plastic shamans’, who represent no specific culture but have adapted shamanism to meet the demands of metropolitan markets. However, there is a common theme to shamanism wherever it is practised: the use of spiritual (or shamanic) trance to facilitate journeys to a non-ordinary reality. Here, in this non-ordinary…

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‘We are not safe’: India’s Muslims tell of wave of police brutality

‘We are not safe’: India’s Muslims tell of wave of police brutality

The Guardian reports: It was midnight at a police barracks in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and in a freezing windowless room about 150 Muslim men and boys sat huddled, bloodied and bruised. Some of the shivering prisoners had raw gashes across their hands and faces, others had broken limbs splayed out at awkward angles. The beatings from police came frequently, according to multiple corresponding accounts; to those who asked for water or closed their eyes in drowsiness or…

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Evangelicals using religion for political gain is nothing new. It is an American tradition

Evangelicals using religion for political gain is nothing new. It is an American tradition

Reverend William Barber writes: Last Friday the Trump 2020 campaign held its first rally at a megachurch. King Jesus international ministries, located outside of Miami, Florida, hosted the Evangelicals for Trump Coalition kick-off. Before boasting about his commitment to fight for the religious right’s agenda, the president bowed his head to receive prayers from prosperity preacher Paula White and other religious nationalists who offer spiritual cover for a corrupt and immoral administration. As a bishop of the church, I am…

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Jews are going underground

Jews are going underground

Deborah Lipstadt writes: In a month of terrible anti-Semitic attacks, including a stabbing yesterday of multiple people at a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, the news that most depressed me did not involve violence. It was not something done to Jews but something Jews did. A synagogue in the Netherlands is no longer publicly posting the times of prayer services. If you want to join a service, you have to know someone who is a…

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Why no one can talk about the attacks against Orthodox Jews

Why no one can talk about the attacks against Orthodox Jews

Batya Ungar-Sargon writes: There’s a poem Jews sing every evening after lighting Hanukkah candles. It’s called “Maoz Tzur” — Rock of the Ages — and was written during the Crusades, one of the many times when Jewish blood ran through the streets; its lines are laced with the tragedy and longing that typifies Jewish liturgy. One chokes me up every time I sing it – eight nights every year: “Our salvation takes too long, and there is no end to…

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The Muslim world’s nightmare decade

The Muslim world’s nightmare decade

Kareem Shaheen writes: As the US prepared to invade Iraq in the winter of 2003, my father and I were in Mecca, taking part in the annual hajj pilgrimage. We surged with a great mass of humanity in the millions to pray atop Arafat, the mountain of mercy. We slept under the open sky on the pebbles strewn throughout Muzdalifa, a plain near the holy city. Before the hajj we had taken evening strolls in Medina, the Prophet Muhammad’s city,…

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Ram Dass 1931-2019

Ram Dass 1931-2019

Douglas Martin writes: [Richard] Alpert went to India in 1967, more as a tourist than as a pilgrim. Events led him to a twinkly old man wrapped in a blanket: Neem Karoli Baba, who was called Maharajji, or great king, by his followers. Maharajji appeared to read Mr. Alpert’s mind by telling him, accurately, that his mother had recently died of spleen disease — information that he said he had told no one in India. The experience caused a spiritual…

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Rick Perry’s belief that Trump was chosen by God is shared by many in a fast-growing Christian movement

Rick Perry’s belief that Trump was chosen by God is shared by many in a fast-growing Christian movement

Energy Secretary Rick Perry speaks during an event about the environment at the White House on July 8, 2019, as President Trump looks on. AP Photo/Alex Brandon By Brad Christerson, Biola University and Richard Flory, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences In a recent interview with Fox News, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry stated that Donald Trump was chosen by God to be president. He said throughout history God had picked “imperfect people” such…

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Why the Christian right remains loyal to Trump

Why the Christian right remains loyal to Trump

Alex Morris writes: Throughout [a Trump Tower meeting with leaders of the religious right on September 29, 2016], Trump was not positioning himself as a true believer — “You know, I went to Sunday school,” he said with a shrug — but rather as a strongman, the likes of which the religious right had never seen. “Liberals are being the bullies here,” the Heritage Foundation’s Anderson told him at one point. “If there is a culture war in the United…

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More than 140 Nazca Lines discovered in Peruvian desert

More than 140 Nazca Lines discovered in Peruvian desert

The New York Times reports: A huge carving of a monkey with its tail twirled in a spiral; vast, geometric images of a condor and a hummingbird; an immense spider — the 2,000-year-old Nazca Lines in Peru have awed and mystified modern viewers since they were first seen from the air last century. Now, 143 more images have been discovered, etched into a coastal desert plain about 250 miles southeast of Lima, the Peruvian capital. The Japanese researchers who found…

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How American anti-Semitism reflects the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of religious liberty

How American anti-Semitism reflects the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of religious liberty

A mother hugs her son at the memorial of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2019, the first anniversary of the shooting at the synagogue. AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar By Tisa Wenger, Yale University Americans recently observed the first anniversary of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which 11 were killed and six wounded. A year earlier, white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanted the slogan, “Jews shall not replace us.”…

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Old religious tensions resurge in Bolivia after ouster of longtime indigenous president

Old religious tensions resurge in Bolivia after ouster of longtime indigenous president

Supporters of former Bolivian president Evo Morales rally with indigenous flags outside the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, Nov. 18, 2019. AP Photo/Juan Karita By Matthew Peter Casey, Arizona State University Days after the powerful Bolivian leader Evo Morales was forced to resign as president after allegations of election fraud, Bolivia’s new interim president made her first public appearance. Climbing to the balcony of the Presidential Palace in La Paz, Jeanine Áñez – formerly a senator representing Bolivia’s weak political opposition…

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Pope Francis: Catechism will be updated to define ecological sins

Pope Francis: Catechism will be updated to define ecological sins

America magazine reports: Following through on a proposal made at the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, Pope Francis said there are plans to include a definition of ecological sins in the church’s official teaching. “We should be introducing — we were thinking — in the Catechism of the Catholic Church the sin against ecology, ecological sin against the common home,” he told participants at a conference on criminal justice Nov. 15. Members of the International Association of Penal Law…

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