Browsed by
Category: Religion

Raphael Warnock is the man to bring the gospel back into public life

Raphael Warnock is the man to bring the gospel back into public life

Rev. Otis Moss III writes: On a Sunday morning in 1989, during my freshman year at Morehouse College in Atlanta, I listened to a sophomore chapel assistant named Raphael Warnock. Extraordinarily composed, Warnock delivered from the pulpit a thoughtful, powerful sermon — one that challenged us, as people of faith, to “sound the trumpet” on behalf of children forgotten at the doorstep of America’s promise. When he finished, we all rose to our feet in applause. Warnock once again stands…

Read More Read More

How Einstein reconciled religion to science

How Einstein reconciled religion to science

Brian Gallagher writes: Not long ago, I heard an echo of Albert Einstein’s religious views in the words of Elon Musk. Asked, at the close of a conversation with Axios, whether he believed in God, the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla paused, looked away from his interlocutors for a brief second, and then said, in that mild South African accent, “I believe there’s some explanation for this universe, which you might call God.” Einstein did call it God. The…

Read More Read More

How Amy Coney Barrett’s religious group helped shape a city

How Amy Coney Barrett’s religious group helped shape a city

Adam Wren writes: In 2002, when Amy Coney Barrett moved [to South Bend, Indiana] to begin her academic career, she joined the faculty at the law school where she’d been a student, attended Notre Dame football games and eventually joined a Primal Fitness gym where she’s currently known for her fierce pullup workout. She also connected with one other local community: People of Praise, a charismatic Christian group founded here in 1971. Many aspects of her life dovetail with a…

Read More Read More

‘Christianity will have power,’ Trump promised

‘Christianity will have power,’ Trump promised

Elizabeth Dias writes: They walked to the sanctuary in the frozen silence before dawn, footsteps crunching over the snow. Soon, hundreds joined in line. It was January 2016, and the unlikely Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump, had come to town. He was the boastful, thrice-married, foul-mouthed star of “The Apprentice.” They were one of the most conservative Christian communities in the nation, with 19 churches in a town of about 7,500 people. Many were skeptical, and came to witness the…

Read More Read More

White supremacy across America is sustained by white Christianity

White supremacy across America is sustained by white Christianity

Robert P. Jones writes: Over the last several weeks, the United States has engaged in a long-overdue reckoning with the racist symbols of the past, tearing down monuments to figures complicit in slavery and removing Confederate flags from public displays. But little scrutiny has been given to the cultural institutions that legitimized the worldview behind these symbols: white Christian churches. A close read of history reveals that we white Christians have not just been complacent or complicit; rather, as the…

Read More Read More

White supremacist ideas have historical roots in white American Christianity

White supremacist ideas have historical roots in white American Christianity

NPR reports: When a young Southern Baptist pastor named Alan Cross arrived in Montgomery, Ala., in January 2000, he knew it was where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had his first church and where Rosa Parks helped launched the famous bus boycott, but he didn’t know some other details of the city’s role in civil rights history. The more he learned, the more troubled he became by one event in particular: the savage attack in May 1961 on a…

Read More Read More

Conservative Christians see ‘seismic implications’ in Supreme Court ruling

Conservative Christians see ‘seismic implications’ in Supreme Court ruling

The New York Times reports: For conservative Christian groups, Monday’s Supreme Court ruling protecting the rights of gay and transgender workers was not only the latest sign that they are losing the American culture wars over sexuality. It also caused widespread concern that it could affect how they operate their own institutions. Many faith-based organizations, like schools or nonprofits, do not allow L.G.B.T. people to work there, citing religious beliefs that sex should only be between a man and a…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

‘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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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,…

Read More Read More