Browsed by
Category: Religion

Sufis still gather in Afghanistan

Sufis still gather in Afghanistan

Annika Schmeding writes: My introduction into the world of Afghanistan’s Sufism began in 2015, over lunch with my friend Rohullah, the director of a research institute in Kabul. I had been working in Afghanistan in various sectors from government to nongovernmental jobs, and had returned to explore topics for a PhD that I had embarked on, a year prior. I asked what had happened to Afghanistan’s Sufis. Were they all gone? Afghanistan had, after all, once been the cradle of…

Read More Read More

Public Christian schools? Leonard Leo’s allies advance a new cause

Public Christian schools? Leonard Leo’s allies advance a new cause

Politico reports: Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, are working to promote a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma, hoping to create a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The…

Read More Read More

Palestinian Christian pastor slams Western silence on genocide in Gaza

Palestinian Christian pastor slams Western silence on genocide in Gaza

  Through the Christmas holiday, Israel continued its relentless bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip that has seen over 20,000 Palestinians killed. In the West Bank, we speak with Reverend Munther Isaac, pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, which canceled Christmas festivities in the storied birthplace of Jesus to mourn the deaths in Gaza and received worldwide attention for their nativity scene depicting the baby Jesus surrounded by rubble. “Christianity started here and never ceased to exist…

Read More Read More

In Christmas Day message, pope decries Gaza’s ‘appalling harvest’ of civilian deaths

In Christmas Day message, pope decries Gaza’s ‘appalling harvest’ of civilian deaths

Reuters reports: Pope Francis said in his Christmas message on Monday that children dying in wars, including in Gaza, are the “little Jesuses of today” and that Israeli strikes there were reaping an “appalling harvest” of innocent civilians. In his Christmas Day “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and world) address, Francis also called the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants “abominable” and again appealed for the release of around 100 hostages still being held in Gaza. Speaking…

Read More Read More

The rising threat of Christian nationalism

The rising threat of Christian nationalism

Tim Alberta writes: This Christmas season, I have been reflecting on the words of my favorite author, C. S. Lewis, who once observed: “I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” Speaking about American evangelicalism was never my intention. Having grown up steeped in Christianity’s right-wing subculture—the son of a megachurch minister, a follower of Jesus, someone who self-identified as “evangelical” since childhood—I was a reliable defender of…

Read More Read More

Message to the world from Bethlehem: ‘STOP this Genocide NOW’

Message to the world from Bethlehem: ‘STOP this Genocide NOW’

  Christ in the Rubble — A Liturgy of Lament Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church Bethlehem Saturday December 23rd, 2023 We are angry… We are broken… This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful. More than 20,000 killed. Thousands are still under the rubble. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways. Day after day. 1.9 million displaced! Hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed. Gaza as we know…

Read More Read More

Pope laments war in Holy Land on solemn Christmas Eve

Pope laments war in Holy Land on solemn Christmas Eve

Reuters reports: Pope Francis lamented war in the land of the birth of Jesus on Sunday, where Christmas Eve brought only fresh bloodshed and an intensification of fighting across the length of the Gaza Strip. Hours before midnight tolled for Christmas in the Holy Land, Palestinian health officials reported at least 70 dead in an Israeli airstrike on central Gaza. The Israeli military spokesperson’s office said it was looking into the report. Israel reported the highest two-day death toll for…

Read More Read More

Syrians cancel Christmas festivities in solidarity with war-battered Gaza

Syrians cancel Christmas festivities in solidarity with war-battered Gaza

The New Arab reports: Christmas cheer has deserted the streets of Syria’s cities, where the main churches have limited celebrations to prayers in solidarity with Palestinians suffering war in Gaza. “In Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, people are suffering,” the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo, Mor Dionysius Antoine Shahda, told AFP. The northern Syrian city’s central district of Azizia is usually home to a bustling festive market and a huge Christmas tree, while its streets are adorned with lights…

Read More Read More

Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

  BBC News reports: Civilians trapped in a church in Gaza City are living in an “unreal” sense of fear, a relative of one of those confined there has said. Fifi Saba, whose sister is trapped inside the Holy Family Church, said people were scared to move out of fear of being shot. A mother and her daughter were killed inside the church by sniper fire on Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said. Pope Francis condemned the attack. “A…

Read More Read More

Why Christian fundamentalists love Trump

Why Christian fundamentalists love Trump

David French writes: I just finished reading Tim Alberta’s masterly new book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.” It’s a powerful and emotionally resonant account of the transformation in evangelical politics that has brought us to the current moment: A godless man, Donald Trump, may now possess more devoted support from white evangelical Christians than any other president in the history of the United States. And most worrisome of all, that support…

Read More Read More

The bogus historians who teach evangelicals they live in a theocracy

The bogus historians who teach evangelicals they live in a theocracy

Tim Alberta writes: I had never seen a sanctuary so full on a Tuesday night. The people packed into FloodGate Church in Brighton, Mich., weren’t here for Bill Bolin, the right-wing zealot pastor who’d grown his congregation tenfold by preaching conspiracy-fueled sermons since the onset of Covid-19, turning Sunday morning worship services into amateur Fox News segments. No, they had come out by the hundreds, decked out in patriotic attire this October evening in 2021, to hear from a man…

Read More Read More

Tux-wearing Christian nationalists laugh about their influence, live from Mar-a-Lago

Tux-wearing Christian nationalists laugh about their influence, live from Mar-a-Lago

Rolling Stone reports: Christian nationalists were out in force at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, once again demonstrating their proximity to MAGA power. Lance Wallnau — the chief promoter of a “Seven Mountains Mandate” for right-wing Christians to seize control over government and culture — was dressed in a tux and streaming live to his 1 million Facebook followers. The black-tie event was the America First Policy Institute gala at Trump’s Palm Beach estate, where the former president was soon to…

Read More Read More

These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

Talia Lavin writes: On Tuesday, approximately 300,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to show their support for Israel in an ongoing war that has claimed the lives of thousands of people. The lineup of speakers at the March for Israel included Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Jewish-American celebrities like Debra Messing and Tovah Feldshuh, as well as rabbis and cantors. It also included an evangelical Christian pastor from Texas, infamous for his fire-and-brimstone prophecies about the end of…

Read More Read More

The GOP is the party of white Christian nationalism

The GOP is the party of white Christian nationalism

Thomas B. Edsall writes: Mike Johnson is the first person to become speaker of the House who can be fairly described as a Christian nationalist, a major development in American history in and of itself. Equally important, however, his ascension reflects the strength of white evangelical voters’ influence in the House Republican caucus, voters who are determined to use the power of government to roll back the civil rights, women’s rights and sexual revolutions. “Johnson is a clear rebuttal to…

Read More Read More

‘This war is prophetically significant’: Why U.S. evangelical Christians support Israel

‘This war is prophetically significant’: Why U.S. evangelical Christians support Israel

The Guardian reports: It didn’t take long for many evangelical Christian groups in America to show their support for Israel. Hours after Hamas attacked the country on 7 October, killing more than 1,400 people, Christians United for Israel, an evangelical lobbying group which claims to have more than 10 million members, posted a message to on X, formerly known as Twitter. “To the terrorists who have chosen this fight, hear this, what you do to Israel, god will do to…

Read More Read More

The Christofascism of Mike Johnson

The Christofascism of Mike Johnson

Noah Berlatsky writes: It took Mike Johnson just a couple days last week to rise from a relatively obscure Louisiana congressman to House speaker. Suffice it to say his background and policy positions did not hold up well under their first exposure to national attention. Johnson is an opposition researcher’s goldmine. Even over the weekend, news reports and video clips steadily trickled out exposing the new speaker for embracing views that are far out of step with mainstream America. In…

Read More Read More