Saudi Arabia destroying ancient shrines

Islam, like all religions, is full of contradictions. For example, some of its adherents are very sensitive to slights and in those countries like Myanmar and Sri Lanka, there have been clashes between the majority Buddhists and minority Muslims sometimes resulting in mosques being damaged or destroyed, provoking great anger.

But then we find that in Saudi Arabia, the government is destroying some of the oldest sections of the most important mosque in Mecca and other shrines in that city. [Read more…]

Coda to the burial controversy

So Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body has been finally buried in a small private cemetery in Virginia, which I hope brings to an end a ridiculous chapter in the Boston bombing tragedy.

Martha Mullen, a woman in Virginia, hearing about the difficulty the family and funeral director were having in finding a cemetery willing to accept it, felt it was her Christian duty to help and so quickly organized a local interfaith group in her area to have him interred in a small burial ground. Her action has resulted in the predictable vituperation from local officials, neighbors, and the online community, as if she had committed a heinous crime. [Read more…]

Misinterpreting the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment

We can sometimes forget that the First Amendment of the US Constitution actually imposes two restrictions on the government when it comes to religious matters. The amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The ‘establishment’ part gets the most attention in church-state matters because of repeated attempts to force religion into public life but the ‘free exercise’ part is also important. [Read more…]

A pope and a rabbi write a book …

So that is not the set up for a joke but just a way of introducing the idea that in 2010, current pope Francis (then cardinal Mario Bergoglio) co-authored with rabbi Abraham Skorka, an Argentine biophysicist and rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires, a book titled On Heaven and Earth. In the absence of a significant public record, this book has become a valuable source of information for people trying to figure out the pope’s views on the major issues confronting the Catholic church and the world. This book will become available in English in the US on April 30. [Read more…]

Religious rioting in Bangladesh

The Indian subcontinent is going through turbulent times as religious extremists try to demand that religious dogma drive each country’s legal system and social mores. Pakistan has been subjected to vicioius blasphemy laws. India has seen the rise of Hindu nationalists and Hindu-Muslim clashes, Sri Lanka has seen militant Buddhists, led by monks, attack ethnic and religious minorities, most recently the Muslims. [Read more…]

Film review: The Lord is Not on Trial Here Today

A few days ago I watched an excellent hour-long Peabody-winning documentary with the above title that tells the story of the lawsuit brought by Vashti McCollum. The daughter of freethinkers, she and her husband, who taught at the University of Illinois, were not religious and the family did not belong to any church or send their children to Sunday school, which made them anomalies in the conservative religious community of Champaign, Illinois that they lived in in 1945. [Read more…]

How hippie Christians became evangelical conservatives

I was not in the US during the time of the hippie movement and my knowledge of the Christian hippies, sometimes referred to as the Jesus People, is almost entirely shaped by the dopey 1973 musical film Godspell, not the most reliable source. It transported Jesus and his followers into New York City and portrayed them as hippies dancing and singing all over the place. It had one good song Day by Day and nothing much else going for it. [Read more…]