Douglas Todd: The promise and pitfalls of foreign-trained clergy in Canada

2021/06/21 Leave a comment

Interesting read:

It didn’t take too long for Father John Alex Pinto to realize he didn’t have nearly the authority in Canada as he did in his homeland of India.

In Pinto’s old city of Mangalore, the 4,500 loyal Catholic families who belonged to his mega-parish looked up to him as a powerful community and religious leader.

After Pinto moved to Canada 15 years ago, the Indian priest not only had to improve his English and get used to winter, but had to realize that Roman Catholics in Canada were less devotional than in India, were highly educated and much more “independent.”

Now serving as a priest in downtown Vancouver after time in Calgary, Pinto is one of more than 60 foreign-trained priests in the 200-clergy Catholic archdiocese of Vancouver.

Most of the imported priests in the Catholic church, Canada’s largest denomination with 14 million adherents, are from the Philippines and India, with others from Africa, parts of East Asia, the U.S. and Europe, says Rev. Gary Franken, the archdiocese’s vicar general. They’re needed to make up a priest shortage as the church welcomes an influx of Catholic immigrants, mostly from Asia.

Foreign-trained priests in Catholicism, however, are just the tip of the phenomenon. Thousands of clergy in a variety of Canada’s faiths received their religious preparation outside the country.

While the proportion of Catholic clergy in Canada who are foreign-trained range as high as one third in some dioceses, that is low compared to the ratio with Sikh, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu and Jewish clergy in Canada.

Among Canada’s minority religious groups, a solid majority of imams, rabbis, priests, granthis and pastors are born outside the country, where they also receive their religious training.

There are many reasons why religious organizations in Canada rely heavily on foreign-trained clergy.

Outside Canada’s Catholic and large mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations, many leaders of faith groups say they do not have enough adherents to justify creating their own theological colleges in Canada.

It can also be enriching and reassuring for immigrants to attend a place of worship in Canada led by someone from one’s ancestral homeland. Angus Reid Institute polls show faith communities can ease immigrants’ transition to this new land.

And many congregations, according to scholars, believe there is status in having their clergy educated in places like the Punjab, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Iran — where they are typically steeped in a religious tradition that penetrates every aspect of the nation’s life and norms.

But foreign-trained priests also run into challenges, including adapting to Canadian culture, where secularism dominates and freedom and equality, particularly for women, are premier social values. Practically, language barriers can also be difficult.

While Pinto, 62, intends to stay in Canada for the rest of his life, most foreign-trained clergy, including in the Catholic church, come here for only a short time.

“On loan,” as Franken says.

Harjit Singh Gill, who is involved in gurdwaras in Surrey, says most Punjabi-trained priests who work in Canada come for less than a year. They are appreciated by older Sikhs, he says, but tend not to appeal to younger ones.

The situation is similar, but slightly different, for most of the rabbis who serve Canada’s 350,000 Jews. Almost all are trained abroad, usually in the U.S. or Israel. That is true even for those born in Canada, like Vancouver-born rabbi and writer Yosef Wosk.

Now retired from the rabbinate, Wosk studied formally in New York City and Jerusalem. “Many, perhaps most, Canadian congregations hire rabbis from the U.S.,” Wosk said, “with not enough Canadian-born individuals available to fill all positions.”

Abdie Kazemipur, a University of Calgary sociologist and the chair in ethnic studies, says the issue of foreign-trained clergy is a “very important” and sometimes sensitive one within religions, rarely discussed in wider society or studied by academics.

There are no theological schools for imams in Canada, Kazemipur said, even though the country has a Muslim population of more than 1.2 million, centred largely in its major cities.

Although every imam must know Arabic, since it is the language of the Qur’an and the religion, Kazemipur says many Muslims outside the Middle East aren’t fluent in the language.

Foreign-trained imams are respected in mosques, said Kazemipur, but in secularized Canada adherents sometimes struggle with how to respond to imams who often expect Canada to be like the Muslim-majority country they are from.

‘In India society is totally different’

“In India, society is totally different. It was a multicultural shock to come Canada,” says Pinto, who serves the West End parish of Guardian Angels in Vancouver.

“There is more of a fear of God in India. In India, the priest is like a leader on all sorts of issues. People listen to him on everything. But in Canada the priest is not as much an authority.”

Since many of the parish members Pinto served in India lived in villages and were not highly educated, he acknowledges he initially expected in Canada to be seen as the person in command. But he soon realized that didn’t work.

“I was so impressed by the Canadian parishioners’ in-depth knowledge of religion. They don’t necessarily fear God; there is more of a relationship,” Pinto said.

All in all, Pinto said he has loved the transition to Canada, appreciates his congregation’s friendly tolerance of his lack of administrative skills, and thinks the Canadian Catholic church would not survive without foreign-trained priests.

Andrew Bennett, Canada’s former ambassador for religious freedom, says that while most Sikh, Muslim, Jewish and Eastern Orthodox clergy are trained outside the country, there are ways to ease the cultural disconnect that can be experienced.

As a deacon in the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Bennett supports occasional efforts by small denominations like his to invite would-be clergy from other countries to spend a year in Canada before they start leading a congregation — to help them immerse in the culture.

Gill, an orthodox Sikh, said virtually every priest who serves the large Sikh populations in Metro Vancouver, Greater Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton is trained in seminaries in the Punjab region of northern India. And most only work in Canada on six-month visas. Many are not paid much.

Like Bennett, who is director of Cardus think-tank, Gill shared concerns that Canada’s Immigration Department lacks expertise to regulate the cross-border movement of foreign-trained clergy, including assessing applicants’ qualifications.

Since Gill was raised in the Punjab, he says he’s fortunate to be able to understand the India-trained spiritual leaders when they routinely speak the language of the homeland, while often toiling in English.

“It means,” Gill said, “they’re good for my generation, but they’re not good for my kids.”

Many Canadian-born Sikhs, Gill said, are not fluent in Punjabi, which contributes to them drifting away from the faith — a trend confirmed by the Angus Reid Institute, which found immigrants are more devoted to their religion than their second- and third-generation offspring.

Gill believes Sikhism and other minority religions would hold on to more followers if they had more Canadian-born priests trained in Canada.

Foreign-trained clergy face steep learning curve

Kazemipur, author of The Muslim Question in Canada: A Story of Segmented Integration, says many foreign-trained imams who travel to serve in Canada don’t realize that Muslims in North America, being a minority, live dramatically different lives from those in Muslim-majority countries, where Islam pervades every aspect of life, including laws.

“The imams are often not very good at grasping that,” Kazemipur said. “They would come to Canada as if it didn’t matter which country they go to.”

All foreign-trained imams are fluent in Arabic, in which they often lead prayers and services, but many struggle in English, which can contribute to “a cultural sense of alienation in the Muslim community.”

There are two major conversations about foreign-trained clergy, said Kazemipur.

One is what he calls the “outside conversation,” in which non-Muslims focus on the potential politicization or radicalization of Muslims. The other is the more refined “conversation within,” which focuses on adapting Islam to democratic societies that orient to free expression and sexual liberation.

It is largely the internal conversation that’s reflected in a new book by Ed Husain, an Arab scholar who quietly toured many of the 2,000 mosques serving Britain’s three million Muslims. While his book, Among the Mosques, applauds the way many Muslims have integrated into British society, Husain also found some Muslim communities distancing themselves from British culture while advocating strict versions of the faith, including religious literalism, gender separation and negative attitudes to gays and lesbians.

Kazemipur does not support attempts by politicians in countries like France, who are responding to such self-segregation by what he calls “over-regulating” mosques and religious training.

But he says clergy born and religiously educated in places like Turkey or Iran have to find ways to respond effectively to Canadian adherents facing issues that don’t exist in their native land. “If they end up in Denmark, Germany or the U.S., many would just give the same kind of sermon.”

For instance, Kazemipur said, some clergy trained in socially conservative nations are not equipped to instruct teenage Muslims about how to respond when exposed to sex education and gender-diversity programs in public schools.

A foreign-trained imam might also teach that Canadian Muslims should avoid taking out a loan that requires paying interest, since that’s forbidden in traditional Islam. “But that would basically mean Muslims in Canada can’t get a mortgage,” Kazemipur said, “or a car loan or put their money in the bank.”

Pinto has run into similar cross-cultural experiences in the Catholic realm. Until he came to Canada, particularly Vancouver’s West End, he had never ministered to Catholic parishioners who are openly gay and lesbian.

Despite the inevitable cultural challenges that occur when Canadian religious organizations import spiritual leaders, Franken, of the Catholic archdiocese, is not alone in concluding: “Ultimately, foreign-trained priests have been a gift.”

Source: Douglas Todd: The promise and pitfalls of foreign-trained clergy in Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , , ,

Saudi seeks religious reset as clerical power wanes

2021/06/21 Leave a comment

Of note (change from when I lived there in mid 80s):

Muezzins issuing high-decibel calls to prayer have long been part of Saudi identity, but a crackdown on mosque loudspeakers is among contentious reforms seeking to shake off the Muslim kingdom’s austere image.

Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest Muslim sites, has long been associated with a rigid strain of Islam known as Wahhabism that inspired generations of global extremists and left the oil-rich kingdom steeped in conservatism.

But the role of religion faces the biggest reset in modern times as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, spurred by the need to diversify the oil-reliant economy, pursues a liberalisation drive in parallel with a vigorous crackdown on dissent.

Chipping away at a key pillar of its Islamic identity, the government last month ordered that mosque loudspeakers limit their volume to one-third of their maximum capacity and not broadcast full sermons, citing concerns over noise pollution.

In a country home to tens of thousands of mosques, the move triggered an online backlash with the hashtag “We demand the return of mosque speakers” gaining traction.

It also sparked calls to ban loud music in restaurants, once taboo in the kingdom but now common amid liberalisation efforts, and to fill mosques in such large numbers that authorities are forced to permit loudspeakers for those gathering outside.

But authorities are unlikely to budge, as economic reforms for a post-oil era take precedence over religion, observers say.

“The country is re-establishing its foundations,” Aziz Alghashian, a politics lecturer at the University of Essex, told AFP.

“It’s becoming an economically driven country that is investing substantial effort in trying to appear more appealing — or less intimidating — to investors and tourists.”

– ‘Post-Wahhabi era’ –

In the most significant change that began even before the rise of Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia neutered its once-feared religious police, who once chased people out of malls to go and pray and berated anyone seen mingling with the opposite sex.

In what was once unthinkable, some shops and restaurants now remain open during the five daily Muslim prayers.

As clerical power wanes, preachers are endorsing government decisions they once vehemently opposed — including allowing women to drive, the reopening of cinemas and an outreach to Jews.

Saudi Arabia is revising school textbooks to scrub well-known references denigrating non-Muslims as “swines” and “apes”.

The practice of non-Muslim religions remains banned in the kingdom, but government advisor Ali Shihabi recently told US media outlet Insider that allowing a church was on “the to-do list of the leadership”.

Authorities have publicly ruled out lifting an absolute ban on alcohol, forbidden in Islam. But multiple sources including a Gulf-based diplomat quoted Saudi officials as saying in closed-door meetings that “it will gradually happen”.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that Saudi Arabia has entered a post-Wahhabi era, though the exact religious contours of the state are still in flux,” Kristin Diwan, of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told AFP.

“Religion no longer has veto power over the economy, social life and foreign policy.”

– ‘Eliminated rivals’ –

In another shift, observers say Saudi Arabia appears to be turning its back on global issues affecting fellow Muslims, in what could weaken its image as the leader of the Islamic world.

“In the past its foreign policy was driven by the Islamic doctrine that Muslims are like one body — when one limb suffers the whole body responds to it,” another Gulf-based diplomat told AFP.

“Now it is based on mutual non-interference: ‘We (Saudi) won’t talk about Kashmir or the Uyghurs, you don’t talk about Khashoggi’.”

Prince Mohammed, popularly known as MBS, has sought to position himself as a champion of “moderate” Islam, even as his international reputation took a hit from the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.

He has vowed to crack down on radical clerics, but observers say many of the victims have been advocates for moderate Islam, critics and supporters of his rivals.

One such cleric is Suleiman al-Dweish, linked to former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef, MBS’s key rival.

Dweish has not been seen since his detention in the holy city of Mecca in 2016 after he tweeted a parable about a child spoiled by his father, according to London-based rights groups ALQST and a source close to his family.

It was seen as a veiled insult to MBS and his father King Salman.

Another is Salman al-Awdah, a moderate cleric detained in 2017 after he urged reconciliation with rival Qatar in a tweet. He remains in detention even after Saudi Arabia ended its rift with Qatar earlier this year.

“Politically, MBS has eliminated all his rivals, including those who shared many of the same goals of religious reform,” said Diwan.

Source: Saudi seeks religious reset as clerical power wanes

Filed under Religion Tagged with ,

Boessenkool: Crossing the line

2021/06/10 Leave a comment

Good self- and broader reflections:

As I reflect on vile attack on five members of the beautiful Azfaal family — Salman, Madiha, Yumna, Talat and Fayez — I was initially deeply angered by how quick some were to use this vile, hate-motivated act of terrorism to confirm their political priors. 

And yet. 

The fact that the alleged attacker, Nathaniel Veltman, is a young Dutch blond boy who could well have come from my own religious community hit close to the heart. 

Now let me be clear. I apportion no blame for this act on Conservatives, religion, or even the Dutch privilege in which I assume Veltman, like me, grew up in. If guilty of this crime, Veltman is a hate-motivated terrorist who committed multiple murders. That would be on him. May the justice system rain down. 

And yet. 

My reflection called to mind times when, as a religious social conservative, I should have felt more uncomfortable with some of the things my fellow conservatives have said in recent years about terrorism, culture and religion. Times when we too easily crossed lines that conservatives — and religious conservatives in particular — should not have crossed.  

The line got crossed when some seemed to weigh their critique of a terrorist act based entirely on the motivation for that terrorist act. To put it another way, they became more interested in combatting terrorism motivated by some beliefs than terrorism motivated by other beliefs. Compare, for example, the disgustingly light-hearted condemnation of the far-right, neo-Nazi terrorist act in Charlottesville by the same populist U.S. president that proposed banning all Muslim immigration as part of an effort to prevent domestic terrorism. Or those who called for a “values test” to root out radical Islam one day — and then stood with a street preacher who flagrantly breaks the law the next. 

The line got crossed when we got more concerned with the actions of individuals within the institutions of our liberal capitalist democracy than the ideas underpinning those institutions. As a religious social conservative I hold freedom of religion extremely dear. In my world of competing rights, religious freedom comes out near the top. But that means holding expressions of other religions — like a turban, kirpan, hijab or burka — as dear as holding symbols of one’s own religion. Banning or restricting any of these things should make me deeply uncomfortable. Religious freedom should be religion blind. 

The same goes for religious practices. If something is a criminal act, call it a criminal act and treat it as such. If something is a part of one’s religious practice or tradition, leave it at that and leave it alone. Blurring the lines by referring to “barbaric cultural practices” crosses the line. The use of the word “cultural” kind of gives it away. 

The line got crossed when some tried to use the power of the state to impose their own religious views. Now let me be clear. I attend a Christian church — honestly, I need it more than most — and I hold my religious views as truth. I’d not be much of a religious person if I didn’t. I don’t go to a mosque, a synagogue, a temple, or a Richard Dawkins book club to practice my religion. Yet I want my public square to have room for all of these, and many more.  

The investigation into the horrible attack in London continues. If the early information is confirmed, it appears that Veltman alone is responsible for the hate-inspired terrorism of which he is accused.

But an act this vile, particularly when its perpetrated by a member of your own community also warrants deep reflection.  

I spent the afternoon writing down the lines I have crossed. I pray others do the same. 

Source: https://theline.substack.com/p/ken-boessenkool-crossing-the-line?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMDcxOTUwNywicG9zdF9pZCI6MzczNzU5MTUsIl8iOiJ3SVY5SCIsImlhdCI6MTYyMzI1MjA1NSwiZXhwIjoxNjIzMjU1NjU1LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNzAwMzIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.VW8EnzY8EetTQ6xFCZuxZ1uSaKQIcC1pmRPzalJCcpc

Filed under Hate crimes, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

ICYMI: Fortress Europe: As Islam Expands, Should the US Imitate the ‘Christian’ Continent

2021/06/07 Leave a comment

Interesting discussion among European evangelicals along with related issues:

Within three decades, Muslims may comprise 14 percent of Europe.

The face of the historically Christian continent, tallied at 5 percent Muslim in 2016, may dramatically change by 2050 if high migration patterns hold.

And as Muslim families have a birth rate one child higher than the rest of the continent, the Pew Research Center projects nearly 1 in 5 people will be Muslim in the United Kingdom (17%), France (18%), and Germany (20%). Sweden is projected to become 30 percent Muslim.

And Austria, with its 20 percent projection, is on guard. The majority-Catholic nation recently published an online Islam Map, to identify mosques and other centers of politicized religion.

According to European religion experts, however, one-third of European Muslims do not practice their faith.

Conversely, this suggests that two-thirds of Muslims believe in and practice Islam. Contrast this with the 22 percent of Western European Christians who attend church at least once monthly and the 27 percent who believe in God according to the Bible.

Could the fear of some European Christians be plausible: an eventual Eurabia?

Or is it Islamophobia to say so?

Or, to the contrary, should Americans look across the ocean and consider French separatism laws and Swiss burqa bans in pursuit of a shared secularism?

For concerned evangelicals, Bert de Ruiter has his own questions—about their own faith.

“If Islam is taking over Europe, is that a problem?” asked the European Evangelical Alliance’s consultant on Muslim-Christian relations. “Will God suddenly be in a panic?”

Muslims will not take over the continent, he believes, noting Pew’s other 2050 Muslim population estimates of 7 percent if “zero” migration and 11 percent if “medium” migration.

But more important is that under any scenario, God will be faithful to his church, says de Ruiter. Once chairman of a Dutch political party, he has a “passion for Muslims, to reach out with the love of Christ.”

Yet too many European Christians, he said, act instead like politicians. Worse, they betray the love of Christ for neighbor.

According to statistics collected in the 2019 European Islamophobia Report (EIR), 37 percent of Europeans have negative views of Muslims, while 29 percent would not feel comfortable working with Muslims. And in Denmark, 28 percent at least partially agreed with the idea that Muslims should be deported.

But again, flip the statistics, and substantial majorities treat Muslims just fine.

Farid Hafez, coeditor of the EIR report, said that among the main drivers of Islamophobia is propaganda pushed by far-right networks seeking to create a scapegoat. Amplified by politicians and aided by counterterrorism narratives, perception then creates the reality.

“The more hostility people go through, the more they feel attached to their religious community,” said Hafez, also a lecturer at the university of Salzburg in Austria. “But I don’t see the problem that others do; Muslims are a part of society.”

Labels like “no-go zones” and “parallel societies,” he said, reflect Europe’s inability to adopt an American mentality that accepts multiple identities. And the relationship with Muslims is not fixed but boils down to a collective choice.

“Austria once suffered the siege of Vienna, but it also allied with the Ottoman Empire,” said Hafez. “History provides many options for how to tell your story. So will we choose a narrative of cooperation or conflict?”

In his column for Evangelical Focus, an online news site focused on Europe, de Ruiter said there are many actors trying to shape the narrative.

Among them are majority-Muslim nations such as Turkey and Morocco that build mosques and supply imams. Transnational networks such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Sufi orders compete to gain adherents and to define Islam. Wahhabi preachers on the internet break down traditional lines of authority. And state-linked Muslim councils strive for integration within secular society.

Muslims came to Europe largely as invited migrant labor in the 1950s, following the destruction of World War II. Over time, they brought their families, married, and had children. Initially isolated because of language, increasingly they put their stamp on society, building mosques and opening schools.

A European society that once welcomed them began to grow uncomfortable.

“We invited guest workers,” said de Ruiter, quoting a frequent saying. “But it turned out they were actually people.”

People created in the image of God.

Therefore, the task for Christians, he recently wrote in an analysis for Evangelical Focus, is fourfold:

  • Research: Matthew 10 speaks of finding the worthy person in a village you come to. Likewise, Christians must learn the real situation of actual Muslims, not media-driven images.
  • Reflect: Psalm 139 invites God to search our hearts. Anti-Muslim prejudice is often unconsciously ingrained, and with humility Christians can repent and develop attitudes of compassion.
  • Relate: In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul describes how he shared his life with those he was trying to reach. Christians must develop relationships with Muslims, in hope of also sharing the gospel.
  • Relax: In Psalm 46, the Lord reminds believers to “be still, and know that I am God.” Whatever changes happen in Europe are according to God’s sovereignty, and he will be exalted among the nations.

In America, Warren Larson adds a fifth R: represent.

“As Christians, we must speak up in defense of persecuted Muslims,” said the senior research fellow and professor at the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies at Columbia International University.

“We must take the initiative through acts of kindness, warmth, and generosity to Muslims, in our midst and around the world.”

A former missionary to Pakistan, Larson said his life was spared when Muslims defended his family against a mob that believed America was conspiring to undermine Islam. Today, he highlights the genocide underway against the Uighur Muslims in China’s northwest Xinjiang province.

But Larson has noticed something curious in his mentorship of Chinese Christians. Many are unaware of the atrocities or, like their government, deny them altogether. Some of it may be fear, he said, as China uses sophisticated technology to surveil its diaspora around the world.

But there may also be a parallel to Islamophobia in Europe and the United States. Chinese Christians from the mainland, he has noticed, speak out in defense of Hong Kong but not Xinjiang.

“One missionary to the Uighurs even said China was only dealing with terrorism,” said Larson. “Is it possible that she, along with most Chinese, fears what the Uighurs might do?”

Citing ethnic violence and acts of terrorism in Xinjiang that began in 2009, the Chinese media campaign against the Uighurs has been relentless. The United Nations has recognized a similar, though not state-run, pattern against Muslims in Europe.

A European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance report found that in the Netherlands, media descriptions most frequently call Dutch people “average,” even “beautiful.” Muslims, however, are predominantly described as “radical” and “terrorist.”

And in Switzerland, a federal commission found that news reports on Muslims focused on their failure to integrate, while only 2 percent of media coverage was of their normal lives and successful examples of integration.

In a statement supporting the UN report on Islamophobia, issued in March, the World Evangelical Alliance praised its Swiss branch for condemning an arson attack on a mosque and contributing financially to its repair. Similar efforts at solidarity were praised in India, Sri Lanka, and the Central African Republic.

“We reaffirm the unique value of each and every member of the human family,” it stated. “We believe each one of us is created in the image of God.”

But of Muslims, said Asma Uddin, there is a different image.

“Many evangelicals view Islam as a satanic deception, fundamentally violent and evil,” said the Muslim author of The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America. “They then mistake standing up for Muslims as standing up for a religion they despise or distrust.”

Evangelical advocates she has worked with are devoted, she said, but “outliers.”

Nearly 2 in 3 white evangelicals (63%) said Islam encourages violence more than other faiths, according to a 2017 Pew survey. This was the highest level among religious groups.

But the issue is also partisan.

Over half (56%) of Republicans said there was at least a “fair” amount of extremism among US Muslims. Only 22 percent of Democrats said the same.

Since liberals are associated with defending the rights of Muslims, Uddin said, political tribalism leads many conservatives to dismiss the severity of discrimination.

The setting is different in Europe, according to Hafez.

While Muslims in the UK are well represented in academia and politics, they also represent a disproportionate 16 percent of the prison population. Germany continues to have issues integrating its large migrant community.

And France’s vision of secularism separates not just church and state but also religion and society. Combined with a lingering colonial superiority, Hafez ranks the nation as Europe’s worst for Muslim communities.

But Islamophobia, he emphasizes, is not about anti-Muslim cartoons. Neither is it the critique of Islam or the criticism of Muhammad. It is the construction of a scapegoat with a generalized identity, which is then excluded from the rights afforded to all.

Protestants in Europe, he said, often feel it also. In Austria, only since 1861 were they allowed to build a steeple. Today, many of them sympathize when Muslims want a minaret.

And similarly, many are troubled by the publication of the Islam Map.

Michael Chalupka, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Austria, said he would not accept this for his own community, joining the calls to take it down.

“When you are weak, you stand by the weak,” said Hafez, a Muslim. “Jesus also stood with the weak, and in Europe, Muslims are among the weakest.”

De Ruiter finds greater solidarity with Muslims on moral issues than he does with the secular Dutch. And he too knows the pain of generalization. Preaching once in Russia, he was queried repeatedly not about his sermon but about Holland’s lax laws on drugs and prostitution.

The state, he told CT, has a biblical obligation to provide security, justice, and human rights. But the believer is to welcome the stranger and love the neighbor. If the Christian values that shaped Europe are taken advantage of, the Christian cannot retreat.

After all, Jesus was crucified.

For this message, de Ruiter is often accused angrily: “Don’t you care to preserve what your grandfathers built?”

But the values they cherish, he said, usually center around materialism, identity, and place in society. If they desire instead to reverse the losses suffered in a post-Christian society, there is a better way than fearmongering of Muslims.

That fight employs the weapons of the world, and must be rejected.

It will lose the gospel, for all.

“If we want things to change, Muslims will have to see something real in us,” said de Ruiter. “But they cannot if we shut the door.”

Source: Fortress Europe: As Islam Expands, Should the US Imitate the ‘Christian’ Continent? | News & Reporting

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , , , , ,

How Religion, Education, Race And Media Consumption Shape Conspiracy Theory Beliefs

2021/05/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

Religion, education, race and media consumption are strong predictors of conspiracy theory acceptance among Americans, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute.

The survey of 5,149 adults living across the United States released on Thursday finds a strong correlation between consuming right-wing media sources and accepting conspiracy theories such as QAnon.

The poll examines ties between religious beliefs and belief in false conspiracy theories. White evangelicals and Hispanic Protestants were the most susceptible to the QAnon theory. 

About 1 in 4 respondents from those religious groups said they believed that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation,” a statement associated with the false QAnon conspiracy theory. 

That’s notably higher than the 15% of Black Protestants, as well as 15% of Americans overall, who agreed with that statement. At 8%, Jewish Americans were the religious group least likely to say they agree.

The report also looks at education and media consumption. Americans who said they consume far-right news sources reported the highest rates of conspiracy theory acceptance; close to half said they believe in the tenets of QAnon. The survey defined outlets such as Newsmax and One America News Network, or OANN, as “far-right.”

Source: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjXmNvkpuzwAhXMWM0KHUiiBaEQxfQBMA96BAgVEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2021%2F05%2F27%2F1000865185%2Fhow-religion-education-race-and-media-consumption-shape-conspiracy-theory-belief&usg=AOvVaw2fhbiM630IQeArZMOpHr4W

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Who Gets to Wear a Headscarf? The Complicated History Behind France’s Latest Hijab Controversy

2021/05/21 Leave a comment

Of note:

The head of French President Emmanuel Macron’s political party withdrew support late last week for one of the party’s own candidates, Sarah Zemmahi, after she wore a headscarf in a campaign poster.

Stanislas Guerini, one of the co-founders of Macron’s centrist Republic on the Move party (LREM), took to Twitter to critique Zemmahi, an engineer who is running for her local council, for wearing her hijab, a religious head covering worn by some Muslim women, in a promotional image.

“Wearing ostentatious religious symbols on a campaign document is not compatible with the values of LREM,” Guerini wrote, after a prominent far-right politician shared the photo. “Either these candidates change their photo, or LREM will withdraw its support.”

While Zemmahi has not yet responded to Guerini’s statements, he received pushback from others in the party. LREM lawmaker Naima Moutchou defended Zemmahi on Twitter, calling Guerini’s criticism “discrimination,” while fellow LREM politician Caroline Janvier called out Guerini’s response in a scathing tweet.

“Undignified. Running after (far-right) votes will only allow their ideas to prevail. Enough is enough,” she wrote.

The conflict over one woman’s choice to cover her head comes in the wake of controversy surrounding an amendment passed by the French Senate last month that would ban girls under 18 from wearing the hijab in public. As part of a proposed “anti-separatism” bill, it was presented alongside amendments that would also prevent mothers from wearing hijabs on their children’s school trips and would ban the “burkini,” a full-body swimsuit.

While some French politicians have defended the amendment as a reinforcement of the country’s adherence to secularism, others have slammed it as yet another instance of part of an ugly strain of Islamophobia in the nation, which is home to the largest Muslim population in Western Europe—a population that has experienced increased discrimination in recent years, in the wake of terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists in recent years and the rise of far-right politics. One 2019 report found that 44.6% of the country considered Muslims a threat to French national identity, while a government survey from the same year listed that 42% of Muslims (other studies put the figure at 58%) reported experiencing discrimination due to their religion, a number that increased to 60% for women who wore a headscarf.

But understanding why the hijab is the site of so much controversy in France also requires understanding the deep history behind the debate.

While the proposed legislation still needs to be approved by the lower house of French Parliament before it can become a law, it’s already drawn significant backlash from many Muslim women around the world, who see the law as not only xenophobic and discriminatory, but an attack on their agency—a sentiment that has grown over the years as French politicians have argued that laws restricting religious symbolism are in service of women’s empowerment and public safety.On social media, the hashtag #HandsOffMyHijab has become a rallying cry to protest the amendment, started by Somali-Norwegian model Rawdah Mohamed, who used the phrase in a now-viral Instagram post to call out the potential ban. It’s since garnered support from the likes of U.S. congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad.

“How can you have a discussion about my identity, and not include me?” Mohamed told TIME. “I don’t think politicians are the ones who are supposed to define what it means to be a Muslim woman.”

France’s history with headscarves

Scholars trace France’s focus on Muslim head coverings and the women who wear them back to the country’s imperial past in North Africa and the Middle East—particularly in Algeria.

“Banning the hijab is about colonialism,” Alia Al-Saji, an associate professor of philosophy at McGill University, tells TIME. “French colonization of Muslim countries was often about controlling and managing populations that were of diverse religions… The hijab is a way of clearly showing that you are Muslim, which is colonially constructed as being opposed to colonialism. But it’s also a site of potential resistance.”

French colonization in Algeria began with an invasion in 1830 and was characterized by violent genocide, settler colonialism and a series of shifting laws called the “indigénat,” which, among other things, determined who could be a French citizen. Al-Saji notes that these laws were influential in emphasizing difference for the Muslim majority in Algeria; for example, while Jewish Algerian natives were recognized as French citizens in 1870 with the Cremieux Decree, Muslim Algerian natives were not eligible for French citizenship unless they renounced their religion and culture and adopted a French identity.

Inherent in the colonial attitude is the belief that one’s “civilization”—its language, its values and its practices—is an improvement on the lives of those who are colonized. This belief manifested itself drastically in the attitude toward Algerian Muslim women, who were seen as both oppressed and exotic. Under this mindset, their “liberation” could become the moral justification for imperialism’s violent casualties.

This dynamic is perhaps best illustrated during the Algerian War of Independence, when a series of public unveiling ceremonies were organized in 1958. During these ceremonies, many of which were arranged by the French army, Algerian women removed their haiks (traditional wraps worn by North African women) or had them removed by European women, before throwing them to the ground or burning them. Often, speeches were given afterwards in support of the French and the emancipation of Muslim women.

While these highly-publicized ceremonies were framed as spaces of empowerment for Muslim women, other accounts of this history tell a different story. In his book, Burning the Veil: The Algerian War and the ‘Emancipation’ of Muslim Women, 1954-1962, Neil MacMaster notes that some of the women who took part in these ceremonies were very poor, recruited from high schools or, in some cases, pressured to participate with threats to their safety and that of their families. In one harrowing case, when the army could not find a Muslim woman to lead the ceremony, they enlisted Monique Améziane, a young woman from a wealthy and pro-French family who had not previously worn a veil or heik, to speak—in exchange for sparing the life of her brother, whom they had already arrested and tortured.

The symbolic power of the veil during this time, however, was not only recognized by the French, but also by those fighting for Algerian liberation. In his essay Algeria Unveiled, Frantz Fanon makes the case that the veil can be a tool of anti-colonial resistance and a way of limiting access to oppressors, going so far as to call it a “bone of contention in a grandiose battle.”

During the war, the veil also became a literal tool of resistance. Some female freedom fighters for the National Liberation Front used haiks to conceal weapons and classified information; after this tactic was discovered, they used unveiling to their advantage, adopting European dress as a way to fly under the radar of the French.

How the veil has been reclaimed—and weaponized

Within France, at the intersection of gender, ethnic and religious identities, the Muslim veil or head covering took on new significance in the 20th century. Because of the popularity of orientalist art during this time, the veil already had stereotypes of the foreign and forbidden. But veiling was no longer just a physical marker of religious or cultural difference—it was also seen as an affront to assimilation, a visible symbol of resistance to colonization.

This meaning was intensified by the state’s staunch espousal of a unified French cultural and social identity, in opposition to multiculturalism. This belief can be traced all the way back to the French Revolution, which has also been credited with planting the seeds for laïcité, France’s principle of secularism. Although laïcitéoriginated in a 1905 law about the separation of church and state, it has been used in recent years as the driving force behind the anti-hijab policies.

In 2004, Muslim headscarves were among the array of religious symbols banned from being worn in French public schools. And in 2010, the country prohibited full-face veils like niqabs in public spaces like streets, parks and public transportation, becoming the first European country to enforce a nation-wide ban and even launching a government campaign that proudly stated, “the Republic is lived with an uncovered face.”

This sentiment took on a new irony at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 when France mandated mask-wearing in public spaces, while still banning Muslim face coverings.

“Muslim women who wear the hijab have always been on the receiving end of Islamophobia for their visible identity,” Nazma Khan, the founder of World Hijab Day, told TIME. “Simply put, the proposed hijab ban is a systematic vilification and discrimination against Muslim women in hijab.”

The Collective against Islamophobia in France, a non-profit that was forced by the French government to dissolve in 2020 in a move that Human Rights Watch called a “threat to basic human rights and liberties,” reported in 2019 that 70% of Islamophobic hate speech and acts in France were directed at women.

To advocates, the intense focus on a physical marker of otherness, along with the rhetoric touting women’s empowerment, can distract from what’s really at stake: what they see as France’s attempt to control citizens, as territorial residents were controlled in the past.

“If it was about giving Muslim women more agency, then in that case, you could let them or let all women wear whatever they wanted,” says Al-Saji. “But It’s actually about controlling what women wear and how they appear and what gets seen and that their bodies are seen, this kind of colonial male desire, that constructs Muslim women as trapped and pawns of their culture and needing to be unveiled.”

Source: Who Gets to Wear a Headscarf? The Complicated History Behind France’s Latest Hijab Controversy

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Khan: It’s critical to ask why, even today, some Canadian Muslim organizations have no female leaders

2021/03/30 Leave a comment

Another good column and series of questions by Sheema Khan:

Since its inception in 1966, the BC Muslim Association, which calls itself “the largest Muslim organization in the province representing Sunni Muslims,” has never had a woman on its executive council. The women are relegated to a “Women’s Council,” which is subordinate to the executive. The original BCMA constitution explicitly banned women from serving on the executive council. While that wording has since been removed, in practise little has changed, and female voices haven’t been given a chance to shape the governance and future of the organization.

There is no theological basis for this arrangement at the organization, which was founded by immigrants from South Asia and Fiji and holds $41-million in assets. Apparently, the (male) powers-that-be see no contradiction with this discriminatory practice and the BCMA’s stated aim of “building a healthy congregation.”

Unhappiness with this approach came to a head last summer, when the BCMA excluded women from all prayer spaces throughout the province, as it partly reopened mosques in the wake of COVID-19. Priority had been given to men.

And then came the bombshell in December, when the CBC broke the story of BCMA imam Abdur Rehman Khan, who was convicted for a 2016 sexual assault against a woman he knew through his role in the community. He was sentenced to three years in prison and placed on the registered sex offender list for 20 years. The imam was released on bail after being charged in 2017. He was later convicted at trial in January, 2020, released pending sentencing, and imprisoned in August, 2020. During this four-year period, he continued to serve as an imam of the BCMA’s Masjid-Ur-Rahmah mosque in Surrey – leading prayers, working with youth, engaging interfaith communities and officiating marriages. Last August, he resigned for “personal matters” – he was going to prison – which the BCMA said it accepted, without any inquiry or follow-up.

The BCMA says Mr. Khan passed a police background check when hired, and that the organization had not been made aware of the allegations and conviction, although some community members say they knew of the situation. If you look at BCMA’s online platforms, you would never know that one of its imams had been imprisoned for sexual assault just a few months ago. No statement whatsoever – no pledge to do better, no commitment to protect female congregants, no calls for other victims to come forward. It’s as if the crime never happened.

Congregants, on the other hand, were furious, demanding answers that never came. Activist and student Sumaiya Tufail organized a community drive-by protest in solidarity with the survivor, demanding transparency from the BCMA, protection of vulnerable congregants and an end to the all-male executive council. A special vote held in February to do away with the archaic setup that keeps the women’s role subordinate to the men’s failed by a substantial margin. The BCMA says that the current executive board anticipates that with increased awareness and engagement, the motion will pass successfully in the near future.

There should be consequences for keeping such draconian policies in place. Sunni Muslims in B.C. should make it clear that the BCMA does not represent them. Congregants should cease donating to the BCMA and instead support institutions that are more inclusive of women and more transparent. In 2019, the BCMA received $3.6-million in donations, accounting for almost half its revenue. Taking a cue from Lieutenant-Colonel Eleanor Taylor, who quit the Canadian Armed Forces in disgust after reports of alleged sexual misconduct, the BCMA’s Women’s Council should resign en masse in protest.

Schools, community associations, NGOs and interfaith groups can engage with Muslim organizations other than the BCMA. Pose tough questions – it’s not Islamophobic to ask why a Canadian Muslim charity doesn’t have any women serving on its executive council. While it may be common elsewhere, this should have no place in Canada.

Roughly 66 per cent of all Muslim charitable organizations registered with Canada Revenue Agency have an all-male board, with Quebec as the worst at 82 per cent. The BCMA, the Islamic Foundation of Toronto, Masjid al-Hidayah(Port Coquitlam) and Baitul Mukarram Islamic Society (Toronto) have each had an employee charged or convicted of sexual assault; all have been governed exclusively by men between 2014 and 2018.

All of these incidents would remain hidden if it were not for courageous survivors, who not only endure the trauma of the original abuse, but face shame, blame and accusations of “making the community look bad.” They need compassion and our full support to heal. For too long, the reputation of abusive “leaders” has trumped justice for victims, leaving a trail of human wreckage. Activists working with survivors are all too aware of the tragic outcomes of Muslims abused by imams, preachers and teachers over recent decades. With their pain never addressed, many have struggled with mental-health issues, addictions, dysfunction in relationships and in some cases have even committed suicide.

This has to stop. We need real leaders – both women and men – who will address this serious issue head-on. Leaders who will make paramount the welfare of the vulnerable; who will educate communities about the trauma induced by abuse; and collaborate with agencies to help survivors with sensitivity and due care. Leaders who will hold abusers to account and live by the Islamic principle of standing up for justice – no matter who the perpetrator.

Sheema Khan is the author of Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-its-critical-to-ask-why-even-today-some-canadian-muslim-organizations/

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Switzerland’s Mid-Pandemic Burqa Ban Doesn’t Protect Liberal Values or Security. It Marginalizes Muslim Women.

2021/03/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

Switzerland, hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, has been in a partial shutdown since January. Face masks are mandatory everywhere from public transportation to the country’s idyllic ski slopes. But that reality didn’t stop a slim majority of Swiss voters from approving a ban on full-face coverings in public spaces in a March 7 referendum.

The new ban wasn’t motivated by anti-mask sentiment. In fact, it won’t apply to facial coverings worn for health reasons—now or after the pandemic. Rather, the measure was aimed at a minuscule minority of Muslim women who wear the burqa or niqab. And while similar initiatives in France, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Austria have always been controversial, the deeply ironic timing of Switzerland’s burqa ban proves once and for all that efforts to ban face coverings were never really about supposed security concerns surrounding face concealment in public spaces. At their core, burqa bans have always been an attempt to marginalize Muslim women—and they have succeeded in bringing anti-Muslim sentiment into the mainstream.

Switzerland’s referendum was the product of a people’s initiative launched by the Egerkinger Komitee, an advocacy group that includes members of the right-wing, national conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and aimsto organize against “the claims to power of political Islam in Switzerland.” Arguing that “free people show their face” and “the burqa and niqab are not normal clothes,” the group in 2017 collected the required 100,000 petition signatures to put the issue to a referendum. On March 7, 51.2 percent of Swiss voters approved it.

The deeply ironic timing of Switzerland’s burqa ban proves it was never about supposed security concerns.

Clamping down on the visibility of Muslims in Switzerland is nothing new. Swiss Muslims have been under scrutiny since 2004, when Switzerland held a pair of referendums on measures that would have eased access to citizenship for second- and third-generation immigrants. The SVP’s strong mobilization against the initiatives transformed them instead into cultural referendums on whether Muslims are part of the Swiss national community, a notion the majority of Swiss voters rejected. Then, in 2009, the Egerkinger Komitee proposed an initiative that sought to ban minarets on the grounds that they are a symbol of political Islam. It was approved by 57.5 percent of Swiss voters despite the opposition of domestic Muslim organizations and church leaders from other religious groups.

In December 2014, the SVP first sought to prohibit full-face coverings via a parliamentary initiative to amend the Federal Constitution, arguing that burqas are a threat to national security. But the Swiss Council of States rejected it in March 2017 on the grounds that the small number of burqa-clad women in Switzerland meant public order was not disturbed. There was also concern that a ban would have a negative impact on tourism from Gulf countries.

Though the SVP and Egerkinger Komitee have been active for decades, Switzerland’s burqa referendum can’t be explained without the broader regional context: namely, Europe’s crisis of identity in a globalized, multicultural world. Switzerland is only the latest country to express and assuage this cultural insecurity by managing the visibility of Muslims and Islam, which are perceived as a political, ideological, and national security threat to European values and civilization.

Muslims have been part of Europe’s fabric for centuries, but they continue to be misunderstood and misrepresented in media and politics, where Islam is often framed as an inherently violent religion and Muslims are portrayed as incapable of integrating into European societies. While there is certainly some cultural anxiety—the natural result of rapidly changing demographics on the continent—most of the sensationalism is constructed, encouraged, and egged on by political parties that have a vested interest in creating a supposed “Muslim problem.” The purveyors of these ideas seek to convince the broad populace that Islam is a religion inherently at odds with Western values and that Muslims must be tamed and domesticated. Right now, they are winning.

In Switzerland, demonizing Islam, Muslims, and immigrants as hostile to human rights and freedom—of expression, religion, and sexual orientation—has long been a pillar of the SVP’s electoral strategy, as well as that of other populist national conservative parties such as the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland and the Ticino League. Because this fixation has contributed to countless electoral victories for the SVP—transforming it into one of the most powerful parties in the country—others have adopted its strategy.

In left-wing circles, too, there is now a narrative claiming that Islam violates democratic standards and practices. Many Swiss leftists believe that Muslims are particularly susceptible to the use of violence or terrorism, and that they seek to create a society based on religion as a pillar of the social, cultural, and political order. In Geneva, the far-left is split between advocates of a hard-line interpretations of secularism—like the Swiss Party of Labor and its coalition partners—and those supportive of an open and inclusive model that recognizes multiculturalism, like the Solidarity party.

The nascent Swiss debate about secularism mirrors that of its more established French neighbor. In France, the promotion of laïcité—the French brand of secularism—has become a rallying cry for the political and intellectual elite who wish to erase Muslim visibility and enforce assimilation under the guise of legal neutrality.

Once a liberal tool that protected religious freedom and freedom of conscience, laïcité has been weaponized to target the public expressions of Islam that are deemed incompatible with French values, however vaguely defined. In recent years, both the right and the gauche laïcarde (the secularist left) have expressed support for a more restrictive and narrow understanding of laïcité that effectively makes religious Muslims—especially women—disappear from public spaces.

Keeping “political Islam” ill-defined is a boon for Islamophobes.

The French debate about laïcité and Islamic dress reached a fever pitch in the summer of 2016, when several cities across France banned the wearing of burkinis. The bans, which have since been overturned by the Council of State, were introduced as an ostensible effort to curb “political Islam.” At the time, former President Nicolas Sarkozy denounced the full-coverage bathing suits as a “provocation” in support of radical Islam. Likewise, in Switzerland, the new burqa ban was won through allusions to the specter of “political Islam.” Across Europe, the term has proved an effective electoral weapon

The problem is that “political Islam” is a vague notion that can mean virtually anything when alluded to under the mantra of fighting terrorism. For some, wearing a visible Muslim religious garment, eating halal food, or simply having conservative social beliefs is considered a step too far. As a result, authorities can interpret a mandate against “political Islam” very broadly, which can lead to the curtailment of civil liberties. France’s controversial new bill “strengthening republican principles,” which aims to fight “separatism,” is a case in point.

Keeping “political Islam” ill-defined is also a boon for Islamophobes. The SVP’s initiatives have succeeded largely because the party has been able to convince broad swaths of the public that Muslims who choose to make their presence visible simply by practicing their religion—whether by constructing a minaret or wearing a burqa—are attempting to “Islamize” the Swiss public. Then come referendums aimed at erasing any sign of a Muslim presence in Switzerland, with the implication that Muslims must remain invisible to fit into Swiss society. But these bans create an inevitable paradox: Targeting Muslims makes them even more visible, only contributing to an increase of racism and Islamophobia. The process is cyclical.

While Muslims are targeted as a collective, veiled Muslim women bear the brunt of Islamophobic outrage—framed as being victims of patriarchal norms or blindly following religious dictates. But far from liberating, burqa and burkini bans often only serve to exclude Muslim women from public life. Authorities, politicians, pundits, and certain groups of feminists claim to want to “free” Muslim women without including them in that process. And if these women do speak up, there is a systematic distrust of the true freedom of their choice, and therefore of their moral autonomy.

In all of this, it is important to remember that the number of Muslim women who conceal their faces remains vanishingly small in Europe. In 2009, the French newspaper Le Figaro estimated that only 2,000 women in France—out of a total French population of 65 million—wore a face veil for religious or philosophical reasons. In Switzerland, population 8.5 million, that number is estimated between 21 and 37. These are fractions so small they barely register on a calculator.

If the statistical insignificance of Europe’s burqa-clad population seems surprising, that’s because anti-Muslim parties across the political spectrum have successfully inflated the Muslim population in order to provoke fear in voters. In a 2017 survey conducted by Tamedia, a Swiss media company, respondents estimated—on average—that Muslims make up 17.2 percent of the Swiss population. In reality, that number lies at 5.1 percent, according to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office.

Besides burqa bans, it’s hard to think of another instance where the public would support a government initiative that targets so few people. But it makes sense in a climate where political success depends on fear—convincing voters that the “traditional culture” of Europe (whatever that may be) is in decline.

What Europe must recognize is that the hypersecuritization of Islam will only lead to deeper-entrenched segregation, thereby jeopardizing the liberal values it claims to stand for. Switzerland’s burqa ban is proof that the continent has yet to view its Muslim citizens as fully capable of autonomy and self-determination and able to formulate their own political will. If Europe really wants to save itself from cultural decline, recognizing Muslims as full citizens is where it should start.

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Douglas Todd: The ‘diversity’ beat is full of surprises, often conservative

2021/03/06 Leave a comment

Todd’s personal reflections on his beat:

“Migration, diversity and spirituality writer.” That’s how my signatureblock describes my beat specialties.

The “diversity” tag draws some funny reactions. I once went on a radio talk show where the host joked about it. To him “diversity writer” sounded like liberal-virtue signalling — conjuring up the dream of people of diverse creeds and colours sitting around campfires singing Kumbaya in mutual harmony.

While I quite like the song Kumbaya, as well as the ideal of intercultural harmony, covering the diversity beat for decades has led to the discovery of scores of surprising ethno-religious realities. The diversity beat offers a great journalistic ride for anyone who is curious, since, after all, the word diversity means “a range of different things.”

Source: Douglas Todd: The ‘diversity’ beat is full of surprises, often conservative

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ICYMI: Evangelical Leaders Condemn ‘Radicalized Christian Nationalism’

2021/02/27 Leave a comment

Of note and overdue:

A coalition of evangelical Christian leaders is condemning the role of “radicalized Christian nationalism” in feeding the political extremism that led to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by supporters of former President Trump.

In a new open letter, more than 100 pastors, ministry and seminary leaders, and other prominent evangelicals express concern about the growing “radicalization” they’re seeing, particularly among white evangelicals.

The letter notes that some members of the mob that stormed the Capitol carried Christian symbols and signs that read, “Jesus Saves,” and that one of rioters stood on the Senate rostrum and led a Christian prayer. It calls on other Christian leaders to take a public stand against racism, Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, and political extremism.

The letter reads, in part:

“We recognize that evangelicalism, and white evangelicalism in particular, has been susceptible to the heresy of Christian nationalism because of a long history of faith leaders accommodating white supremacy. We choose to speak out now because we do not want to be quiet accomplices in this on-going sin.”

‘Baptizing’ extremism with religion

“I am not trying to assign to people something that they didn’t want assigned to them — that they were moving and marching in Christ’s name,” organizer Doug Pagitt said during a recent Zoom call with other signers of the letter. Pagitt, who leads the progressive evangelical group Vote Common Good, highlighted the prayer shouted from the Senate rostrum, which was conducted in a style typical of many charismatic and evangelical churches.

“People from our very communities called people to this action in the days before, unleashed them into the Capitol, and then chose to baptize that action in the name of Christ,” Pagitt said. “And this is our time where we need to stand up.”

White evangelical Christians made up a critical part of Trump’s base, and a majority supported him in both 2016 and 2020. A recent survey by the American Enterprise Institute found that three in five white evangelicals believe – falsely – that President Biden was not legitimately elected.

Prominent white evangelical leaders have been among Trump’s most vocal supporters. Several, including Ralph Reed of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and Dallas-based pastor Robert Jeffress, have condemned the insurrection but remained steadfast in their support for Trump.

Signers of the open letter calling out Christian nationalism include Jerushah Duford, a granddaughter of the evangelical preacher, the late Rev. Billy Graham. In an interview with NPR, Duford said she was “heartbroken” by the events of Jan. 6, a feeling she said she experienced throughout the Trump years as she watched many white evangelical leaders align themselves with him.

“It felt like this was a symptom of what has been happening for a long time,” she said.

‘White evangelical brothers and sisters, where are you?’

During last week’s Zoom call, Mae Elise Cannon of the ecumenical group Churches for Middle East Peace, called out unnamed evangelical leaders who she said have declined to sign, citing concerns including how it would go over with their churches or religious organizations.

“White evangelical brothers and sisters, where are you?” Cannon said. “There’s a few of us on this call today, but let me tell you how many people said ‘no.’ ”

Another signer, Kevin Riggs, pastors a small church near Nashville affiliated with the Free Will Baptist denomination, which he describes as “to the right of everybody.” Riggs said in an interview with NPR that he may receive pushback from other pastors for signing the statement, but he expects his congregation, which devotes much of its time to working with people facing homelessness, incarceration, and addiction, to support him.

“I wanted to sign this statement just to say that Christian nationalism is not only wrong, but it’s heretical,” Riggs told other leaders on the Zoom call, adding that evangelical leaders must take responsibility for “rooting out this evil in our churches.”

Source: Evangelical Leaders Condemn ‘Radicalized Christian Nationalism’

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