The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

Josh Hawley tweets fake quote about US founding, sparking allegations of Christian nationalism

The quote, which was falsely attributed to Patrick Henry, originated in a 1956 edition of a magazine known for espousing antisemitic and white nationalist beliefs.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, speaks during a hearing on artificial intelligence, May 16, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

July 6, 2023
By Jack Jenkins

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is fielding allegations of Christian nationalism this week after he tweeted out a quote falsely attributed to a Founding Father claiming the U.S. was founded “on the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and later tweeted out a thread of other quotes along similar lines.

The controversy began on Tuesday (July 4), when Hawley marked the U.S. celebration of Independence Day with a tweet erroneously quoting Patrick Henry, the Founding Father known for his declaration “Give me liberty or give me death!”

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” read the quote. “For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

As others were quick to note, Patrick Henry never said those words. Rather, as Willamette University professor Seth Cotlar pointed out, the quote appears to originate from a 1956 edition of The Virginian, a magazine known for espousing antisemitic and white nationalist views.

Prem Thakker, writing for liberal outlet The New Republic, derided the tweet as a “vessel to rear for Christian nationalism.”

Despite the criticism, Hawley has not yet deleted the inaccurate tweet. Instead, the Republican senator claimed in a tweet on Wednesday that liberals were “major triggered by the connection between the Bible and the American Founding,” and proceeded to post six quotes from early U.S. leaders that tied the founding of the country to Christianity.

Among them is a quote from an address delivered by John Quincy Adams in 1837, in which he declares, “Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission on earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity … ”

Hawley also cited Daniel Webster as saying “I have heretofore argued to show that the Christian religion — its general principles — must ever be regarded among us as the foundation of civil society.”

The quotes — which, unlike the original tweet, appear to be correctly attributed — promote a historical argument popular among purveyors of Christian nationalism that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.

It’s also an argument Hawley has increasingly embraced in public, such as during a speech titled “Biblical Revolution” at the National Conservatism conference in September.

“We are a revolutionary nation precisely because we are the heirs of the revolution of the Bible,” Hawley said during the speech.

He later added: “Without the Bible, there is no modernity. Without the Bible, there is no America.”

Hawley’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the misattributed quote, or field questions regarding his views on Christian nationalism.

America was never a Christian nation: Constitutional attorney demolishes right-wing myths about the Founding Fathers


America was never a Christian nation: Constitutional attorney demolishes right-wing myths about the Founding Fathers

PAUL ROSENBERG, SALON - COMMENTARY
 

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The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

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July 12, 2023

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Secular Coalition for America confronts Trump’s attacks against atheists

‘He has used nonreligious people as a punching bag, as he has with many other groups for many years,’ said the director of the coalition.

July 12, 2023
By Fiona André

(RNS) — The Secular Coalition for America, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for the separation of religion and government, has issued a letter in response to derogatory remarks about atheists made by former President Donald Trump last month at the Faith and Freedom Coalition gala in Washington.

Trump, the keynote speaker of the three-day Road to Majority conference, declared, “Together, we’re warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, globalists and the Marxists,” stirring up the estimated crowd of 2,000 conservative evangelical leaders. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence also attended the conference’s 14th annual gathering.

In their letter, the 21 groups that form the Secular Coalition for America denied having any links with Marxism or promoting globalism. They also reasserted the coalition’s commitment to fighting hatred targeting religious minorities worldwide and called for more respect and tolerance regarding atheist citizens.

“Just because we don’t go to church, doesn’t mean we are unpatriotic,” read the statement.

The attack didn’t surprise Steven Emmert, the coalition’s executive director, but the affiliations the former president suggested are what struck him.

“He has used nonreligious people as a punching bag, as he has with many other groups for many years. This just seemed like an odd collection of people to go after. I mean, we are opposed to arsons as well,” Emmert said.

Trump has long enjoyed the support of conservative evangelical voters. In 2020, he won 76% of the white evangelical vote, 59% of whom said his administration had served evangelicals’ interest, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center poll.

The appearance at the gala, his eighth, signaled Trump’s eagerness to win over evangelical leaders again as he faces a crowded race for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination. In his 90-minute speech, the former president reminded his audience of all his efforts to serve the religious right, particularly his realization of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

Trump’s declaration goes alongside a growing disdain Republican politicians have shown toward nonreligious people over the past years, said Emmert. A longtime advocate for the separation of church and state, he noted that the coalition worked more easily with Republicans in Congress 25 years ago than today. But overlooking atheists as an electorate is a political mistake, Emmert said, as 17% of atheists consider themselves independent voters.

“Nonreligious people made up nearly 30% of the population. We are not exactly some fringe group,” he said.

Emmert said the atheist-Marxist affiliation is a common trope dating back to the 1950s, noting Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s 1950 Wheeling, West Virginia, speech, in which he called for an “all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity.”

“I mean, I think that’s always been (Trump’s) goal, to bring us back to the 1950s, on several levels,” said the director, who hopes conservative leaders will become more aware of their nonreligious constituents.

The Washington-based organization comprises groups such as the Ex-Muslims of North America, the American Humanist Association and the Society for Humanistic Judaism. It counts over 100,000 members.

US Supreme Court ruling in favor of mail carrier celebrated across religious spectrum

Many U.S. religious minorities said the ruling was a much-needed corrective to the challenges they face in balancing their work with their sincerely held religious practices.

Gerald Groff, a former postal worker whose case was argued before the Supreme Court, stands during a television interview near a "Now Hiring" sign posted at the United States Postal Service, March 8, 2023, in Quarryville, Pa. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

June 29, 2023
By Yonat Shimron


(RNS) — In siding with an evangelical Christian mail carrier who quit the U.S. Postal Service after he was forced to deliver packages on Sundays, his Sabbath, the Supreme Court on Thursday (June 29) did something rare: It brought a whole panoply of U.S. religions together.

The unanimous ruling in Groff v. DeJoy clarified that employers must do more than the minimum to accommodate workers’ requests related to religious observance.

The ruling mostly vindicates Gerald Groff, a former mail carrier from Pennsylvania, who sued the post office, saying the requirement that he work on Sundays violated his deeply held belief that Sunday was his day of rest. (U.S. mail is not usually delivered Sundays, but in 2013, the USPS signed a contract with Amazon to deliver the company’s packages, including on Sundays.)

Groff was represented by First Liberty Institute, the conservative Christian legal powerhouse based in Plano, Texas.

But in ruling in favor of the Christian mail carrier, the court also united a host of non-Christian religions in the U.S., who saw the decision written by Justice Samuel Alito as a much needed corrective to the challenges they face in balancing their work with their sincerely held religious practices.

Whether it’s accommodating Sikh health care workers who are required by their faith not to shave their beards or Jewish teachers who want to take time off for religious holidays not officially recognized by the public schools or colleges where they work, the ruling has the effect of forcing employers to accommodate their worker’s religious practices.

“The court’s ruling is going to help many people, from many different faith communities across the U.S.,” said Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy for the Orthodox Union, the nation’s largest representative Orthodox Jewish organization.

RELATED: Conservative Christians aren’t the only ones asking for accommodation in mailman case

The Orthodox Union was one of a diverse group of faith-based and religious liberty organizations that filed amicus or “friend of the court” briefs with the Supreme Court supporting Groff. They included the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, the American Center for Law and Justice, the Sikh Coalition, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the American Hindu Coalition, Becket Law and the Baptist Joint Commission.

Organizations opposing Groff’s petition included the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Center for Inquiry, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and American Atheists. The latter argued the ruling would shift more work burdens onto atheists, humanists, nonreligious Americans.

In their ruling, justices clarified a decades-old Supreme Court decision that allowed employers to deny religious accommodations that would cause them more than a minor inconvenience.

Historically, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act required employers to provide religious accommodations unless they create an “undue hardship” for the business. But the Supreme Court undercut this standard in 1997 when it ruled in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison that employers need only suffer minimal hardship to deny a religious accommodation. This low threshold, referred to as a “de minimus standard,” was often used to deny religious accommodations.

While the court did not overturn Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, it clarified that the burden for employers denying religious accommodation must be substantial.

“We think it is enough to say that an employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business,” Alito wrote in his ruling.

Over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly sided with religious plaintiffs and has appeared to privilege religious claims — and specifically Christian religious claims — above all others.

It sided with a football coach in Washington state who was suspended from his public high school for refusing to stop leading Christian prayers with players on the field. It ruled in favor of two Christian families from Maine who were excluded from a private religious schools tuition assistance program. It sided with a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his religious beliefs.

The Groff case is another win for Christians, but religious minorities were equally willing to celebrate this victory.

“For too long, American Muslims have been denied the right to perform daily prayers at work, wear hijab or kufi, or attend prayers on Fridays,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Today marks a new era.”

Joining CAIR in celebrating the ruling were a host of powerful conservative Christian legal groups and religious denominations, including Becket Law, the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

The ruling also brought cheers from many religious minorities who embrace liberal social policy, saying diversity initiatives in workplaces often leave out religion.

“I hope that this causes workplaces, whether that’s a private company or a public university campus, to say we need to take religious identity as seriously as we take other dimensions of identity,” said Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith America, a nonprofit dedicated to building religious diversity. “No matter how uncomfortable we are with religion, no matter how little we might know about religion, it’s time to engage, it’s time to lean into this and let’s consider it an asset and not a risk.”

RELATED: Co-workers could bear costs of accommodating religious employees in the workplace if Supreme Court tosses out 46-year-old precedent

California’s caste discrimination bill is a vote for all civil rights
In the fight for equal treatment under the law, one instance of discrimination is too many.
State Sen. Aisha Wahab listens to speakers during a news conference where she proposed SB 403, a bill that would add caste as a protected category in the state’s anti-discrimination laws, on March 22, 2023, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/José Luis Villegas, File)

Opinion
July 6, 2023
By  Nirvair Singh

(RNS) — The bill to ban caste-based discrimination in California, SB 403, moved a little closer to passage on Wednesday (July 5) as the state Assembly’s Judiciary Committee passed the bill 9-0 with two abstentions. The measure, which has already passed the Senate, now heads to a vote in the full Assembly, where its opponents have vowed to “educate lawmakers on the issue” to avoid its passage.

Much of the opposition to SB 403 has focused on the supposedly unnecessary nature of the measure. Those who oppose the bill assert that caste discrimination simply is not an issue — and that any attempt to address or even discuss it is, in fact, discriminatory.

But the argument that “talking about discrimination is the problem, not the discrimination itself” is tired, illogical and misleading. The voices making this argument must not be given precedence above the experiences of those who have suffered discrimination — nor should they deter the California legislature from moving this important bill forward.

In California, caste discrimination has been reported across every kind of industry — technology, education, construction, restaurants, domestic work and medicine. Documentaries and reporting by reputable news outlets have shown how caste discrimination particularly pervades the information technology industry, where many workers are South Asians or South Asian Americans.

RELATED: Caste discrimination laws remain fraught. Here’s why they shouldn’t be.

But while caste-based systems are strongly associated with South Asia, their analogs exist in South America, Asia and Africa, among other places. Caste discrimination is also found across several different communities of religious practice.

Data from Equality Labs shows that 1 in 4 caste-oppressed people have faced physical and verbal violence, 1 in 3 have faced education discrimination, and 2 out of 3 are impacted by workplace discrimination.

The reporting of these incidents may be more anecdotal and less scientific than both opponents and proponents of SB 403 would prefer, but reporting incidents of hate and bias has always been fraught. Those facing discrimination are often concerned that their experiences will be minimized or ignored. Especially with an issue as complex as caste, it is easy to imagine an affected individual not wanting to spend the time and energy to report discrimination to employers who at best don’t understand their situation or at worst willfully ignore it.

Without a law recognizing their experience, arguments that “there just isn’t enough proof” of caste-discrimination become a self-fulfilling prophecy: Why speak up if no one is going to listen?

Still, whether or not the numbers understate the problem doesn’t matter that much. In a nation that strives toward equal treatment under the law, even one instance of discrimination is one too many. At one point or another in our nation’s history, every kind of discrimination has been minimized or belittled — look no further than the battle over so-called wokeism, or the denial of systemic racism.

As a Sikh American, I am no stranger to bias. Our community has experienced hate firsthand since our earliest arrival in the United States, from the anti-Sikh violence in Bellingham, Washington, in 1907 to more recent discrimination in the aftermath of 9/11. To those outside our community, this persecution may seem insignificant. But when it is you, your parents or your children who suffer, you gain an appreciation for the need to do anything you can to make society safer and more inclusive for all.

As I was born in India, I can also attest to the pernicious nature of casteism: It is a daily burden and threat for those who are oppressed, but the rest barely notice. B.R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, wrote: “Caste is another name for control. Caste puts a limit on enjoyment. Caste does not allow a person to transgress caste limits in pursuit of his enjoyment.”

I choose to take a stand against caste discrimination because it is the right thing to do as a human, but also because it is fundamental to my faith. Sikhism was founded in the 15th century in opposition to the social inequalities of its time, including casteism. The cultural context of caste in the present-day United States is vastly different, but as long as such informal power structures persist, it is incumbent on all of us to make sure they are not left unopposed by the legal structures meant to govern and protect us.

RELATED: What California’s Ravidassia community believes and why they want caste bias outlawed

There is no denying that caste discrimination is real and that it affects us, but progress is being made. Cal State has updated its policy against caste-based discrimination. Tech companies such as Apple, IBM and Dell have done the same. Earlier this year, the Seattle City Council passed a law against caste-based discrimination.

Now, SB 403 gives all Californians a pathway to clearer data, a safer workplace and a more thriving community. All we need to do is have the courage to listen to those who are asking what more we can do to help, rather than those who are urging us to do less.

(Nirvair Singh is an IT professional in California. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

HINDUTVA IS FASCISM 

Smithsonian Folklife Festival on National Mall explores often-unfamiliar spirituality

The lead curator of the 'Creative Encounters' program hopes it will give the public a chance to 'pull back the curtain' on spiritual practices.

Elena Terry, right, leads a "Corn Futures" workshop in the Kitchen Theology tent during the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Thursday, June 29, 2023, on the National Mall in Washington. 

RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

June 30, 2023
By Adelle M. Banks

WASHINGTON (RNS) — In one corner of an array of colorful booths and tents on a hazy day in the nation’s capital, Elena Terry prepared to “celebrate the beauty of corn” through ancestral-inspired dishes like corn crepes on the first day of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

“I want to be able to educate people about our life and our connection to food, the land, to each other and what that means as a Native woman in today’s world,” said the traditional Ho-Chunk woman from Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, in a Thursday (June 29) interview at the “Kitchen Theology” tent on the National Mall.

“I would like them to understand that we are still here, we do still live our religion daily and that it isn’t something that is structured anything like this other idea of what religion might be in that we are just spiritual people.”

Terry, the founder and executive chef of Wild Bearies, a nonprofit catering and community outreach organization, is one of dozens of participants featured in the festival’s program, titled “Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S.” Steps away from her tent were booths about a Hindu temple in Illinois, Arabic calligraphy by a D.C. artist, and images of “santos,” or saints, from a New Mexico carver.

Michelle Banks, lead curator of the “Creative Encounters” program, said organizers hope it will give members of the public a chance to “pull back the curtain” on spiritual practices they know little about but that may be embraced by their neighbors.

Michelle Banks is lead curator of the “Creative Encounters” program of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

“One of the things we asked ourselves when we first started looking at this was: How often do people from any religious or spiritual community or tradition visit another place of worship?” she said in an interview in the Creative Encounters’ area across the street from the National Museum of American History.

RELATED: Finding spirituality on Earth’s ‘most secular’ continent

“We’re hoping to start a conversation,” she added, expecting some may use the festival as a way to “ask this question that I’ve been curious about but haven’t quite been sure how to ask about in the past.”

The program focuses on key ways faith practices are expressed, from “body and spirit,” including gestures and dance, to “sound religion,” including music, stories and mantras.

As she sat for an interview, a bell rang intermittently from a nearby booth of the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago.

Bhanoo Sharma, president of the temple in Lemont, Illinois, later explained that the sound accompanies prayer for priests and devotees alike.

Bhanoo Sharma at the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, titled “Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S.”, Thursday, June 29, 2023, on the National Mall in Washington. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

A Hindu booth at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Thursday, June 29, 2023, on the National Mall in Washington. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

“When we’re praying, it’s kind of like we’re awakening ourselves,” he said. “The bell is almost a rhythmic chant while we’re singing. It helps, in a way, keep time as well. It’s also almost as if we are feeling like we are awakening God to listen to our prayer, symbolically.”

In the first couple of hours of the festival, Sharma said he was learning about the other traditions demonstrated nearby and found connections with lessons being taught by a New Mexico artisan who made carvings of saints using the wood available in his state.

“It’s very similar to the way our artisans carve our deities in India out of marble, and it’s just whatever material is available,” he said. “It’s kind of neat that everybody uses what’s convenient and what’s around them.”

Nicolás Otero, an Albuquerque teacher and artist, said he views the materials of his artwork as a divine gift.

“The earth is provided for us, so the paints come from the earth; the wood that we carve comes from the earth, given to us from a greater power, the creator,” said Otero, whose roots are Indigenous, Hispanic and Catholic. “That’s how I see and believe — how I’m able to do what I do.”


“Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S.” at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Thursday, June 29, 2023, on the National Mall in Washington. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

Bob and Ann Wicks, of Oxford, Ohio, said the exhibits helped them gain better understanding of traditions practiced around the country through conversations and interactions with the presenters.

“For me the most important thing is that these are traditions that are infused with meaning and have religious significance — more spiritual significance — within the community. That really helps provide a sense of unity,” he said.

His wife said they visited a table where they were told to “think of your ancestors” as they helped make flowers out of colorful tissue paper for the “ofrendas,” or offerings, for the Indigenous holiday Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead.

“There’s a lot of things that we had no idea that — on the surface, oh it’s just a flower and it’s just an arch — but actually it’s a lot more,” he said.


Alec Esparza, right, creates flowers with Smithsonian volunteer Seona Jung, left, and Smithsonian intern Paloma Sanchez on the National Mall. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

Alec Esparza, one of the East Los Angeles artists with Mexican roots, was creating the flowers with a Smithsonian intern and volunteer.

“It’s a celebration of life, not how they passed away or died,” he said of the recollection of ancestors. “So what we remember is how they lived, and we do that so that we never forget who they are and how they lived.”

As he spoke, to his left, shaped-note singers sang the tune often used with the song “Just a Little Talk with Jesus,” and to his right, a group demonstrating the work of the Threshold Singers, a hospice music ministry, encircled a woman stretched out before them as they sang gentle music.

The Threshold Singers, a hospice music ministry, demonstrate their singing around a lounging individual, Thursday, June 29, 2023, on the National Mall in Washington. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

Arabic calligrapher Josh Berer describes himself as nonreligious but said his work immerses him in the sermons and other messages of the Muslim faith.

“Islamic calligraphy and the religion Islam are intrinsically and forever linked — without one there cannot be the other,” he said.

He pointed to a colorful illustration on display behind him as an example, featuring words from a sermon from Ali Ibn Abi Talib, an early leader of Shia Muslims and a relative of the Prophet Muhammad.

“It’s ultimately just life advice — how to be a good person in the world,” Berer said, noting that one part of the framed art can be translated to say: “One who rejects worldliness is not affected by poverty.”

He said being able to talk to passersby at the festival helped reinforce that this work of “sacred art” is a modern-day practice and not solely relegated to the status of a museum artifact: “It’s something that people aren’t really aware exists anymore.”

Hawaiians Kumu Micah Kamohoalii, center, and Arleen Wright-Kauahi, right, explain using bark to make clothing during the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Thursday, June 29, 2023, on the National Mall in Washington. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

The festival, which returned to an in-person event on the Mall last year after going virtual in 2021, had to cancel its opening ceremony because of unhealthy air quality in the D.C. area — due to smoke drifting from wildfires in Canada.

Banks said some participants stayed away due to the conditions. She hoped for more robust participation during the rest of the festival, which is held through July 4 and again July 6-9.

RELATED: PHOTO GALLERY: The history and diversity of African American religious rituals

Why do we remember Srebrenica?

We must recall the daily, routine dehumanization that leads to genocide

.
Omar Suleiman visits the Srebrenica Memorial Center, the site of a genocide from the 1990s in Bosnia. Photo courtesy of Suleiman

Islam Beyond Phobia
July 11, 2023
By Omar Suleiman

(RNS) — The genocide that occurred in Srebrenica 28 years ago this week, when some 8,000 mostly Muslim Bosniaks were killed by a Serbian nationalist militia, was the largest genocide Europe has seen since the Holocaust. It didn’t come out of nowhere: In the three years leading up to this genocide, an estimated 100,000 people were killed, 80% of whom were Bosniaks, one of three ethnic groups that called the fledgling state of Bosnia and Herzegovina home.

But in July 1995, Bosnian Serbs troops slaughtered Srebrenica’s men and boys before burying them in mass graves, raped an untold number of Bosniak women and removed an estimated 23,000 women, children and elderly, putting them on buses and driving them to Muslim-controlled territories.

It was the horrific climax of a disgraceful war. The international Muslim community mobilized, and the shame of the genocide prompted the West to act. A NATO-led bombing campaign led to the cessation of the Serbian murder machine.

On the 28th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, how do we reflect on the murder of thousands of Bosniak Muslims in a matter of hours? How do we avoid “statistical numbness,” one where casualty counts, past and present, are merely numbers, absent souls?
RELATED: Two years after US recognized Uyghur genocide, rights groups warn time is running out

The attitudes that allowed a genocide to occur in Srebrenica continue to inform our view of Muslims today. One phenomenon of the genocide that comes through is a dehumanization of the Muslim, apart from race, geography or identity. Despite their location in Europe and their Caucasian identity, Bosniaks were demonized, dehumanized and consequently assigned for slaughter precisely because of their Islam.

Post-World War II decolonization had already normalized the Third World Muslim victim of Africa and Asia, but in Europe itself, only a few decades separated from mass murder of millions of the continent’s Jews, the citizens of the world’s most prosperous region had told themselves they had left the savagery of the past behind. Insert Islam, however, and the Bosniak Muslim is transformed into a natural casualty.

Simply put, would the genocide of Srebrenica have been possible if the victims weren’t Muslim? Or did this prove that being Muslim alone potentially disqualifies one from being considered European or even human?

These questions about Srebrenica are especially relevant in our 21st century, whose futile wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in thousands of unnamed and unknown casualties.

What does it mean to remember? What good is remembering without pause, reflection and internalization? It’s important to frame the genocide of Srebrenica and similar atrocities primarily through the lens of personal accountability. In looking inward while reflecting on atrocity, we properly remember Srebrenica, converting remembrance from a ceremonial annual ritual to a transformative exercise of self-accountability.

When I visited the Srebrenica Memorial Center, I was chilled to the bone by the sheer number of graves, most of them containing bodies of Bosniak Muslims recovered from mass graves. They cover the ground as far as the eye can see. In Srebrenica, the air itself seems to bear witness to the bloodshed. Statistical numbness is impossible. Every grave is important. The difference between one casualty or two, much less 8,000, is the difference between night and day.

RELATED: Time to remember more than one atrocity? A defense of Holocaust Remembrance Day

At the memorial center, the shoes of the victims remain on display, each pair a reminder that we must humanize the statistic and bring life to the virtual. Every human being who once stood in those shoes had tried to escape the horrific cruelty of the tormentors. The victims thought of ways to run and hide, and dreamed of walking freely without fear. They were children, parents, spouses and siblings. But to those who massacred them, assembly line-style, they were less than insects.

Remembering genocide means remembering that it can only happen with this systematic dehumanization of a people. It doesn’t happen in one day; it takes sustained neglect of a fellow human’s plight. We are inundated with the news of casualties and tragedies every day, on our phones, televisions and computers. Over 10 killed here, 25 killed there. 700 killed there. Without proper remembrance, a cycle of empty condolences and endless anniversaries continues.

28 years after genocide, Bosniak Muslims mourn their dead but celebrate a return of Islamic life to Srebrenica

Though the area was depopulated of Muslims by the genocide, many survivors and their children have come back. 

Attendees gather around the rows of coffins returned to the memorial center in Bosnia in early July. Photo by Shahar Azran/WJC

July 13, 2023
By David I. Klein

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (RNS) — Nearly three decades later, Srebrenica’s dead are still coming home. Earlier this month, the remains of 27 men and three teenage boys were delivered to the remote valley that played host to Europe’s second genocide of the 20th century.

The victims, identified by the International Commission on Missing Persons, will be buried alongside the more than 6,600 graves that dot the Potočari valley in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, now home to the Srebrenica Memorial Center honoring the 8,372 Bosniak Muslims, mostly men and boys, murdered at the hands of Serb militias in 1995 amid the Bosnian war.

The Srebrenica massacre, carried out in an area the United Nations had declared a safe zone for refugees, has since been deemed an act of genocide by successive courts within the U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, or ICTY.

The funeral honoring the 30 massacre victims, conducted by Bosnia’s highest-ranking Islamic leader, the Reisul-Ulema or grand mufti, Husein Kavazović, was part of a number of events commemorating the 28th anniversary of the genocide, including a march that drew thousands and, on Monday, a conference dedicated to both Srebrenica and Holocaust remembrance that was hosted jointly with the World Jewish Congress.

The conference was the project of Menachem Rosensaft, the WJC’s associate executive vice president and the son of two Holocaust survivors. Rosensaft has spent most of his life working in the field of Holocaust remembrance but in recent years has become an impassioned advocate for awareness of the Srebrenica genocide.

“We commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, because they’re our families, our communities, our people, but also because they were the victims of a genocide, they were the victim of a horrendous crime against humanity,” he told Religion News Service. “And we have to, in equal force, acknowledge and commemorate the tragedies perpetrated against others. Never again does not mean never again just to Jews, it means never again to anyone. We will not stand by when anyone is victimized, when anyone is oppressed. That has to be the basic basis of remembrance. It is what motivates the World Jewish Congress to be here and it is certainly what motivates me.”

On Tuesday, ahead of the funeral, Rosensaft gave a speech at the commemoration event. “If we forget them, our souls will turn to stone, our eyes will never again shed tears,” he said of the genocide’s victims.

“Our Bosniak nation is a nation that carries pain and sorrow,” Kavazović said in a statement to the wider Islamic community before the funeral. “I ask God to grant the families of the victims every good thing, that their children be strong, that they be a message to all those who did this, but also to those who may harbor the same in their souls for some future time.”

The dead of Srebrenica are not the only ones returning. Though the area was depopulated of Muslims by the genocide, many survivors and their children have come back.


Attendees join together for a presentation during the Srebrenica Genocide Commemoration in early July in Bosnia. Photo by Shahar Azran/WJC

Today, Srebrenica’s population is about half Muslim and half Orthodox Serb. The 23 mosques of Srebrenica destroyed in the war have all been rebuilt thanks to donations from around the world.

Damir Pestalic, the chief Imam of Srebrenica, stressed that though once empty, the community now has multiple full Islamic schools. Speaking alongside leaders from the World Jewish Congress on Monday (July 10), he recalled suggesting to his daughter that they move to California. He said she dismissed the idea, telling him she would “take one tree in Srebrenica over all of California or America.”

“We want the children who are born here to stay in Srebrenica,” Vahid Fazlović, the mufti of Tuzla, said during a commemoration event in Potočari on Tuesday. “The Islamic community will not falter in its relationship with Srebrenica, and in addition, it will constantly encourage all other institutions, all factors in our society, the state, to fulfill their obligations toward Srebrenica.

“It is up to us to pass on the awareness of this place to the generations that are growing up,” he added. “We have rejuvenated families here. Perhaps few expected that we would have new and good sprouts in Srebrenica. Thank God that is so. This is due to the people who returned here, with so much courage and daring, even after the crime.”

The return of Bosniak Muslims to Srebrenica has not been without conflict, though.

The crowd of attendees at the Srebrenica Genocide Commemoration lift the first coffin of remains overhead outside the memorial center in early July in Bosnia. Photo by Shahar Azran/WJC

This year’s commemoration comes at a time when tensions between Bosnia’s three constituent ethnic groups — Muslim Bosniaks, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs — are running higher than they’ve been in decades.

Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartate presidency, and the leader of Republika Srpska, the Serb majority enclave within Bosnia — where Srebrenica is located — has spoken openly of secession and continues to deny that Serb forces committed a genocide in Srebrenica in 1995. In March, Bosnia’s prosecutor office opened a case against Dodik for genocide denial, after remarks he made in Republika Srpska’s capital, Banja Luka, in February.

On Tuesday evening, after most mourners had left the area, a Serb church in the town of Srebrenica itself held a concert with nationalist songs, according to Bosnian Media.

Pestalic called on the church to explain the event.

“I want to invite the Serbian Orthodox Church to tell us what it was. The witnesses heard the announcement of the program, it was terrible. The announcement that they are celebrating the liberation day of Srebrenica tonight and that they want to liberate what little is left,” Pestalic said. “Let them answer what that means. All authorities should get involved. This is not a harmless situation. This is not only about humiliating the victims, but also about threats of new crimes.”


A woman kneels to touch one of the coffins during the Srebrenica Genocide Commemoration. The remains of many individuals were returned to the memorial center and included in part of the commemoration event in early July. Shahar Azran / WJC

Munira Subašić, the president of the Mothers of Srebrenica organization, which has fought for acknowledgment of the massacre as a genocide, spoke to those gathered at Monday’s conference about the ongoing difficulty to make the massacre part of the local school curriculum.

Subašić, who has lived in Srebrenica since the early 1960s, lost 22 close family members in the genocide, including her husband and son.

Currently, in state schools in Republika Srpska, even in areas around Srebrenica where a Bosniak Muslim majority has returned, said Subašić, the genocide is not taught about.

“When you go to a school in Srebrenica, it is as if you entered a church. It is important for them to have St. Sava there and Ratko Mladić, their national hero,” she said.

St. Sava, a 12th-century Serbian prince, monk and intellectual, is considered the patron saint of Serbs and education in the Serbian Orthodox Church, while Mladić was commander of the Army of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian war and is currently serving a life sentence in The Hague, Netherlands, after being convicted of genocide, four counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity by the ICTY.

During the war, Srebrenica was a Bosniak majority enclave within the Serb majority Republika Srpska. For the Serb militias who rejected the idea of being part of an independent Bosnian state, and instead desired to pursue independence or join with Serbia, Srebrenica was a complication. The Muslim majority region would have cut Republika Srpska in half.

In 1993, the United Nations declared the area, which had swelled to nearly 50,000 Bosniak Muslim refugees, a “safe zone” and called for both Bosniak and Serb forces in town to be demilitarized. But in June 1995, Serb forces under the command of Mladić assaulted the region and conquered the town. Within 10 days, the Serb forces had murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslims, tossing them into mass graves along the river Drina.

Three days before the anniversary, more than 3,000 Bosniaks from around the country began a 100-kilometer march to the site, known as the Marš Mira or March of Peace, to pay their respects to the dead.

The march, which has been held each year since 2005, traces the reverse of the path a column of Bosniak men attempted to make to escape to safety during the slaughter. Most did not survive.

 


A gravesite waits empty and marked with a number during the Srebrenica Genocide Commemoration in early July. A number of remains were returned to the site as part of the commemoration ceremony. Photo by David Ian Klein

“Thousands were killed here They are gone. Their houses are gone. But today thousands of people are coming back to feel as one with them,” Asra, a Muslim woman who grew up in the nearby city of Tuzla but today lives in the Netherlands, told RNS about why she continues to visit for the anniversary events. She, like others interviewed at the gathering, offered only her first name.

For Adis, a Bosnian man from a town between Tuzla and Sarajevo, it was important for him as a Bosnian to understand the place where his country’s greatest tragedy occurred.

“I came to remember and get a feeling of what it must have been like then,”Adis told RNS. “When you are here, you can understand a little of what it was like when thousands were packed into this small place.”

Cihan, a Turkish man who came from the city of Batman in Eastern Turkey, told RNS he was inspired to come by the words of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s first president, Alija Izetbegovic, who said, “If we forget the genocide done to us, we are compelled to live it again.”

“If we forget that genocide, that genocide can be again,” Cihan said. “We have seen too many genocides, unfortunately. That is why I am here.”

Rebecca Todd Peters is on a mission to get churches to talk about abortion

A Presbyterian minister and scholar is working to shift the cultural paradigm that abortion is sin.
A group of women from a Presbyterian church in Chapel Hill, N.C., came to hear Rebecca Todd Peters’ sermon at a Unitarian-Universalist church on July 9, 2023. One also asked her to sign her book, “Trust Women,” which Peters published in 2018. RNS photo by Yonat Shimron

July 13, 2023
By Yonat Shimron

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (RNS) — The Rev. Rebecca Todd Peters’ neon pink stole bearing the Planned Parenthood logo announced her subject even before she ascended to the lectern.

When she started preaching, she got right to the point. “Abortion makes many people profoundly uncomfortable,” she told a crowd of 200 at the Community Church of Chapel Hill, a Unitarian Universalist congregation “ — at dinner parties, in polite conversation, with friends and family and, too often, in church.”

Her sermon, like countless others she has given recently, aimed to challenge the perception that people of faith are against abortion and to tell the stories of women who have had them.

An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a professor of religious studies at Elon University, where she heads the Abortion and Religion project, Peters is best known as one of the country’s leading ethicists on abortion rights.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court announced in May 2021 that it would hear Dobbs v. Jackson, the case that would eventually overturn Roe v. Wade, Peters has given more than 55 sermons and lectures on abortion across the country. Lately, she’s been especially in demand in North Carolina, after a new law banning most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy and restricting abortion-related medications went into effect earlier this month.

Until last year, abortions were legal in North Carolina until fetal viability, generally between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy. Last August, a judge ruled that abortion was no longer legal after 20 weeks.

The new 12-week ban, which passed with lightning speed by North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature, stunned many state residents, and especially members of the religious left.

While most liberal Protestant denominations — including Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist and Unitarian Universalist — have official positions in support of reproductive rights, Peters said these groups too often duck conversations about abortion, leaving Catholics and evangelical Christians to win the day with messages that abortion is a sin.


Rebecca Todd Peters is a professor of religious studies at Elon University, author and community leader. Photo courtesy of Peters

Her mission is to step into that void. As a first step she talks about her own reproductive history, gladly volunteering that at 55, she is married, has two children and has undergone two abortions.

“I felt God’s presence with me as I made the decision to end two pregnancies and I felt no guilt, no shame, no sin,” she told the congregation in Chapel Hill. “A forced pregnancy or birth is not holy.”

Peters, whose father was a pastor, has been working in the church and on reproductive issues since her first job after college. Working in the women’s advocacy office of the Presbyterian Church’s Louisville, Kentucky, headquarters, she began volunteering to escort women to an abortion clinic amid crowds of hostile protesters shouting, yelling and intimidating the women.

“These people said they were Christian, and it was just this huge disconnect for me — this, cognitive dissonance,” she said. “How can these people say that they are loving Christians and be so horrible?”

It set her on a path to study the role of Christianity in shaping cultural attitudes on abortion. She earned a master’s of divinity and later a Ph.D. in Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Her mentor there, Beverly Wildung Harrison, wrote the 1983 classic “Our Right to Choose.”

Peters wants to push back against a moral framework around abortion that requires women to justify their reasons for ending a pregnancy. In this, she’s referring not only to the typical justifications — rape, incest or the life of the mother — but any justification. The underlying assumption is that abortion is wrong and that women have an obligation to bear a child, an idea Peters believes is rooted in Christianity’s patriarchal vision of womanhood.

RELATED: Poll: Support for abortion rights is strong, even among most religious groups

This framework leads women to feel ashamed about abortion, effectively silencing them. The pregnant woman is erased, replaced with ultrasound photos of the fetus.

Peters instead advocates for reproductive justice, a term that originated among Black community leaders who felt the focus on abortion rights was too narrow and needed to be expanded to include concerns about reproductive health care more generally.

Not all listeners at the Community Church of Chapel Hill accepted Peters’ arguments. One church member who declined to give her name said Peters neglected to mention one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill.

But far more people gave Peters an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

Outside the Community Church sanctuary a long line of people stood to greet Peters, among them four women who are reading her 2018 book “Trust Women” as part of their Presbyterian church’s reading group. The group invited Peters to speak at their church. One of the women asked her to sign her copy.

The members of SACReD join together for a group photo during a training. 

Photo courtesy of Rebeca Todd Peters

“I just think she hit it head-on; she nailed it,” said Rosanne Tiller, a 37-year-old physician and a mother of two who is now expecting her third.

Tiller said her favorite message from Peters is the three-pronged statement of the reproductive justice movement: Women have the right not to have a child; the right to have a child; and the right to raise a child in a safe and healthy environment.

Polls, such as a recent PRRI survey, show majorities of American religious groups support legal abortion. White evangelicals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Latter-day Saints and Hispanic Protestants are the only exceptions. Even among those groups, support for legal access has been growing.

Religious congregations in North Carolina have begun stepping up their support for legal abortion. In the state’s Triangle region, an interfaith coalition on reproductive justice formed this past spring, with members of Presbyterian, Baptist, Quaker, Unitarian Universalist and Jewish congregations.

Next month, the group will screen a new documentary called “Plan C,” about activists and providers who are building a network to mail abortion pills, such as mifepristone and misoprostol, to women who need it. One of the churches in the coalition is also planning a two-day symposium this November on reproductive issues.


Beth Welton of Chapel Hill’s Church of Reconciliation holds a sign that reads “Women of Faith of Oppose SB 20,” the new North Carolina law banning abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Welton demonstrated against the law in Raleigh, the state capital, in June. Photo courtesy of Beth Welton

Beth Welton, one of the coalition’s organizers, called the day in June 2022 when the Dobbs decision was handed down “one of the most horrifying days I’d experienced as an adult.”

“We were just complacent,” said Welton. “We got out-talked. That’s why it’s so terribly important as a coalition that we continue to grow and have a narrative to counter that other narrative that people of faith are opposed to abortion.”

Other North Carolina churches have joined SACReD, the Spiritual Alliance of Communities for Reproductive Dignity, which Peters co-founded with partners in Texas, with the aim of shifting the cultural paradigm around abortion.

RELATED: Catholic Democrats issue new ‘statement of principles’ defending abortion rights

The group’s first in-person training took place in Chapel Hill in April. Peters helped write SACReD’s seven-week curriculum that provides religious congregations with guides for small-group discussions about sex, reproduction and abortion.

Peters is not waiting for churches to subscribe to the curriculum. She is delivering sermons as far from home as Wisconsin and Minnesota, filled with pithy statements designed to startle her mainline audiences into action: As she told the Community Church of Chapel Hill: “Abortion is a moral good. Abortion is an act of love. Abortion is an act of grace,” and finally: “Abortion is a blessing.”

The Bhagavad Gita, the bomb and the dharma of Robert Oppenheimer

How did the atomic physicist’s fascination with the Gita influence his feelings about the making of the bomb? 

From left, Donald Cooksey, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Robert Thornton, J. Robert Oppenheimer and William Brobeck examine the 184-cyclotron during a press visit in the spring of 1946. Photo by Donald Cooksey, courtesy of the National Archives catalog

Opinion
July 12, 2023
By Syama Allard

(RNS) — On July 16, 1945, in the desert 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, a nuclear weapon was tested for the first time.

Recalling the scene 20 years later, J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” uttered words he would henceforth be known for. Pale and emaciated for his 61 years, eyes gaunt, the physicist persistently avoided the camera as he spoke with emotionally subdued precision:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

At the time, only a small number of Americans knew much about the Scripture Oppenheimer quoted, though his hauntingly poignant delivery gave his recitation a special weight. The true impact its spiritual source had on Oppenheimer, however, and on the development of atomic weaponry remained largely unknown.

According to James A. Hijiya, author of “The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Oppenheimer’s interest in ancient Indian philosophy grew out of a rebellion against his own upbringing. Of Jewish descent, his family was affiliated with Felix Adler’s Society for Ethical Culture and sent young Oppenheimer to the society’s school in New York, where his father was on the board of directors.

Abandoning religion’s spiritual and supernatural aspects, the school taught the importance of human welfare based on a foundation of secular moral principles. It also provided excellent training in the sciences and classics, but Isidor Isaac Rabi, a physicist who met the young Oppenheimer in 1929, before working with him later on the Manhattan Project, said Oppenheimer was already seeking “a more profound approach to human relations and man’s place in the universe.” He appeared to have found this approach in the Hindu classics, which seemed to interest him even more than physics.
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In 1933, while he was teaching at Berkeley, his interest apparently reached new depths when he met Arthur W. Ryder, a professor of Sanskrit who taught Oppenheimer the language. Especially captivated by the Gita, Oppenheimer called it “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.”


J. Robert Oppenheimer, atomic physicist and head of the Manhattan Project, circa 1944. Photo courtesy of the National Archives catalog

Always keeping a well-worn copy of it near his desk, he gave the book to friends and regularly quoted passages, once at a memorial service for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When asked by Christian Century magazine in 1963 to name the top 10 books that shaped his “vocational attitude” and “philosophy of life,” Oppenheimer listed the Gita, along with Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”

A 700-verse dialogue between an ancient warrior named Arjuna and his cousin Krishna (a form of Vishnu), the Bhagavad Gita is set on a battlefield at the edge of war.

Hoping to install his eldest brother, Yudhishthira, as ruler of a kingdom that has been usurped by their cousin Duryodhana, Arjuna is torn. Faced with the prospect of fighting an army filled with his friends and relatives, he despondently turns to Lord Krishna and asks if the throne is worth the price of slaying so many of his loved ones. Motivated by envy, Duryodhana might be in the wrong, but surely his crime doesn’t justify fratricidal bloodshed. Casting his weapons aside, Arjuna falls to the ground, overwhelmed with grief.

From a spiritual perspective, the peaceful solution feels like the obvious one, especially considering the stakes. Yet Krishna, who eventually reveals himself to be a manifestation of the divine, actually chastises Arjuna, albeit lovingly.

As a warrior, Krishna argues, Arjuna’s dharma, or sacred duty, is to fight, no matter what the outcome. While in life we can’t control the result of our actions, we can control our actions, and our best-performed actions are the ones most aligned with our nature. Just as the heart best serves itself and the body by performing its function of pumping blood, Arjuna best serves himself and society by performing his function as a warrior in the face of battle.

For him, the pacifist’s route — a route that isn’t his but that of a renunciate — isn’t selfless but the opposite, an action based on his own desire. If everyone discharged the duties of others instead of their own, the world would fall into disarray. Faith in the higher cosmic order dictates that all beings execute their responsibilities, even when doing so causes unhappiness or distress.

Inspired by these words, Arjuna asks Krishna to exhibit his cosmic identity, as a way of strengthening faith in the order he’s referring to. Pleased by his cousin’s change of heart, Krishna assents to the request and manifests a bewildering display of wondrous, brilliant and unlimited visions.

It’s at this moment, as an unfathomable radiance blazes from an incomprehensible form containing all that has ever existed, Krishna says the famous line, describing himself as the “destroyer of worlds” — not to instill fear, but to emphasize that ultimate destiny was out of Arjuna’s hands.

Arjuna, left, and Lord Krishna. Image by MahaMuni/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

Gathering his senses, Arjuna prepares for battle, fulfilling his role to provide a providential end that has already been set in motion.

Understanding Oppenheimer’s quote in broader context, you can see how he, who had his own considerations of pacifism, might have quelled his doubts through the model of Arjuna. As Hijiya thoroughly conveys, the scientist very much determined his duties by his profession as a nuclear physicist, and made various statements in the course of making the bomb, as well as in the years after, touting the importance of following these duties.

In 1945, he told his peers at Los Alamos, “If you are a scientist, you cannot stop such a thing. … If you are a scientist you believe … that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values.” Going further, in a magazine article published during the same period, remarking on whether it was good to give the world increased power, he said, “Because we are scientists, we must say an unalterable yes.”

If it was his duty as a scientist to help create the bomb, he believed it was the duty of the country’s political leaders to decide what to do with it. When fellow Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard wanted to circulate a petition cautioning President Harry Truman against dropping the weapon on a Japanese city, Oppenheimer forbade it, saying the country’s statesmen had information the scientists did not possess and were therefore the most qualified to determine its proper use.

Fate, Oppenheimer clearly surmised, was out of their hands. All they could do was play their parts to the best of their abilities, and allow others to play theirs.

Despite his distaste for the violence and suffering the bombs caused, and despite his criticism toward furthering the nuclear arms program after the war ended, it should come as no surprise that in his final years, Oppenheimer said that if he could go back in time, he would do things the same way.

RELATED: After 75 years, a question about race haunts Truman’s calculation on Hiroshima

His lack of regret shouldn’t be mistaken for a willful hardening of his heart. The footage of him reciting the line from the Gita makes it painfully clear that the bomb’s success brought him no joy. Like Arjuna, he carried out the obligations of someone in his position, surrendering to a destiny beyond his own comprehension.

(Syama Allard is a content writer for the Hindu American Foundation, based in Florida. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)