It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, September 16, 2024
Iraq's parliament advances family law amendments despite outcry over women's rights
Activists demonstrate against female child marriages in Tahrir Square in central Baghdad on July 28, 2024, amid parliamentary discussion over a proposed amendment to the Iraqi Personal Status Law. AFP
Proposals include lowering the legal age of marriage for girls to nine
Iraq’s parliament moved a step closer on Monday to passing amendments to the country’s Personal Status Law by completing a second reading, the legislature said, despite widespread public fears they will significantly erode the rights of women and girls.
If passed, the amendments would lower the legal age of marriage for girls to nine, a proposal that has led to public outrage. They would also hand religious authorities control over key aspects of life such as marriage, divorce and inheritance.
In the face of widespread rejection by Iraqis, the second reading of the amendments was a key step towards a formal debate in parliament and their adoption as law. Under parliamentary procedure, the second reading presents a draft for formal debate. When the final version is agreed upon it is put to a vote at a third reading.
Critics say the amendments would further cement sectarianism in Iraq as they would allow couples to choose between the provisions of the Personal Status Law or the provisions of specific Islamic schools of jurisprudence. If a married couple are from two different sects, the school followed by the husband’s sect would apply.
The proposed amendments to the legislation, which has long been considered one of the more progressive family laws in the region, have led to widespread demonstrations and heated debate between pro-civil rights Iraqis and religious institutions, which have gained more power over the past two decades.
In an opinion poll conducted by the Iraq Polling Team NGO last month, more than 73 per cent of those surveyed expressed “strong opposition” to the changes to the law, which has been in place since 1959. Only about 24 per cent voiced strong support, while about 3 per cent were indifferent.
Women are still underrepresented in local government, despite a woman running for president
by Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, The ConversationSEPTEMBER 16, 2024
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Kamala Harris is at the top of a major party ticket running for president. Some people have celebrated her candidacy, hoping that it will excite voters enough to elect the first woman president.
My research with Diana Da In Lee, Yamil Velez and Chris Warshaw shows that in cities and counties, women remain underrepresented among local officeholders in nearly every political office.
Like many other characteristics of officeholders, such as occupation or race, the gender of elected officials influences the way they make policy. Research has shown that women, and especially working-class women, elected to state and federal government offices in countries around the world make different spending decisions. Having more women in elected offices might matter especially at the local level, where the details of many of these federal or state spending decisions actually play out.
Congress is infamous for having few women in office. But until now, researchers and the public knew very little about how women and different racial groups were represented outside the federal government.
We gathered data from city, county and school district elections covering the past three decades in any city with a population of at least 50,000 people and any county with a population of at least 75,000 in 2020. Using this data, we calculated the share of winning candidates who were women or men.
Our published research shows that women make up a smaller share of elected officials in county governments and city governments than they represent in the population.
The gap between women's share of the population in counties and women's share of officeholders in counties is especially large. While women make up just over half of the population in counties, they make up only a little over a quarter of legislators who serve on county councils or county commissions. Women serving as county executives, sheriffs and prosecutors are even rarer. The office of sheriff is especially dominated by men, with women serving in less than 5% of these positions.
City government offices look a little better for women's representation. Women are not well represented in the mayor's office—only 24% of mayors are women—and just over a third of elected city councilors are women. The relatively smaller gender gap of elected officials in city government is an improvement over counties, but it is far from gender parity.
People learn early in life, through a process researchers call "gendered political socialization," to question women's place in politics. For this reason, women are less likely to express an interest in politics or run for office, and they first show this lack of political ambition early in their childhood. Other research shows that in adulthood, gendered expectations of women to have successful careers alongside motherhood can further limit their interest in running for office. Our research shows the consequences of these ambition gaps between men and women in politics: Women remain underrepresented in nearly every local political office, except for school boards.
As Kamala Harris takes on Donald Trump in the presidential election this fall, many pundits and voters are celebrating the representation of women—and in particular, women of color—in politics. But no matter the outcome in November, the gender gap between city and county residents and their local elected officials will be large. As a result, the important policies that local governments make might not fully represent the wishes of the people.
Kamala Harris’ heritage draws attention to Hinduism’s complex history in Caribbean
For many who claim Indo-Caribbean heritage, Vice President Kamala Harris’ spotlight is the perfect chance to dive into the community’s lesser-known past: where indigenous faiths and cultural traditions found more in common than not.
Indo-Caribbeans in the 19th century celebrating the Indian culture in West Indies through dance and music on an estate in Trinidad and Tobago.
(RNS) — A standard feature in any biography of Kamala Harris is the fact her parents — one a Hindu from India, the other a Baptist from Jamaica — met at the University of California, Berkeley, where they were both students in the 1960s.
In this sense the vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee embodies a heritage shared by millions across the Caribbean basin and the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, many of whom are now talking about the sudden possibility that the next U.S. president could be of Indian and Jamaican heritage, and a person who claims to “know the lyrics to nearly every Bob Marley song” to this day.
Indians first came in numbers to the Caribbean in the early 19th century, when the British Empire brought them west as indentured servants, mostly to the islands of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, as well as Guyana and Suriname on the northeast shoulder of South America.
Indian Hindus, who at the time would not have defined themselves as Hindus, brought their spiritual practices with them, according to Alexander Rocklin, assistant professor of religious studies at Kenyon College and author of “The Regulation of Religion and the Making of Hinduism in Colonial Trinidad.” Those practices went on to influence the existing Catholic and Protestant Christians, Muslims and devotees of African spiritualities.
Alexander Rocklin. (Photo courtesy Otterbein University)
“The various groups that were living in a lot of these colonies, which were very cosmopolitan, were interacting with one another,” said Rocklin. “They were exchanging ideas, exchanging culinary traditions, exchanging cultural forms. And so they were also then participating in one another’s religious lives as well.”
In his research on 19th- and 20th-century Trinidad, Rocklin found clear evidence of Hindus worshipping the Virgin Mary as a Hindu goddess, visiting with African Obeah practitioners for their remedies against evil spirits, and celebrating Muharram, a Muslim holiday that for many was seen as simply “Indian.”
Though indentured servants lived in the same barracks that once held slaves, the British occupiers awarded them freedom of religion, as long, said Rocklin, as it resembled something colonizers would recognize. Indo-Caribbean Hindus thus began to fashion worship services with pundits who gave sermons and congregations, dressed in their “Sunday best,” that sang bhajans or Hindu worship songs in place of hymns.
“It was not seen as hypocritical for people to cross over lines, and for communities to come together and celebrate, but also engage in healing and devotion to to deities that were exclusively identified as being Hindu,” said Rocklin. “People were interested in living together in a way that the British colonizers couldn’t really even contextualize.” RELATED: Why Hinduism’s Holi is more than an explosion of color for the Indo-Caribbean diaspora
Shawn Binda, a Canadian Hindu of Trinidadian origin, launched Hindu Lifestyle, his YouTube channel, in 2017, sensing the need to explain Hinduism’s history in Western society, especially to second-wave immigrants who want to maintain their ties in a “non-Hindu world,” he said. Binda’s research shows that Hinduism even had a part in the foundations of Rastafari, the religion that began in Jamaica and may be considered one of its most indelible cultural exports.
Binda, who lives in Toronto, points to the two faiths’ traditions of vegetarianism, spiritual use of ganja, or marijuana, and a shared philosophy referred to in Rastafarai as “I n I,” and in Hinduism as “oneness with the Divine.” Leonard Howell, known as the first Rasta, was called Gangunguru Maragh, or Gyan Gan Guru Maharaj, by his followers, using the Hindi words for “knowledge,” “teacher” and “king.”
While Binda said it would be “incomplete” to say Hinduism gave birth to Rastafarianism or other existing traditions, these overlaps signify deep interaction, if not direct influence.
Shawn Binda in a video about Hindu and Rastafari beliefs. (Video screen grab)
“Rastafari took that concept of the divinity within everyone, and just kind of made it more tangible,” he told Religion News Service. “It’s one thing to say you recognize the Divine within all. But now you take that, and the language that you use meaning like ‘One Love,’ it actually makes it more simple, more real, and something that that we can all learn from.”
In one video, Binda declares that Marley, the great global champion of Rastafarai, was analogous to a sadhu, a type of Hindu holy man who dons dreadlocks and forgoes material possessions for spiritual enlightenment.
In today’s global community, some people of Caribbean origin are finding their way back to India, where Hinduism began. Beauty influencer Lana Patel said her Trinidadian-Gujurati and Jamaican-Punjabi family is made up of Rastafarians, Hindus, Catholics, Christian converts and Spiritual Baptists, the latter a West Indian religion that draws from African beliefs and American Baptist practices.
When Patel’s parents came to the United States in the 1970s, she said, they found it difficult to find their place within America’s racial lines, which did not exist back home.
“I think being Caribbean is being this beautiful, rich melting pot of culture,” she said. “And I think we aren’t so much caught up in labels and more caught up in just existing and being happy in our existence. Everyone is just Caribbean. It’s not like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re the white man, you’re the Black man, you’re the brown man.’ Everyone is one, and they love each other.”
A variety of Instagram posts by beauty influencer Lana Patel. (Screen grab)
Patel, a trans woman, found herself drawn to her late grandfather’s Hindu traditions as she got older, rejecting the Christian homeschooling, conversion therapy and “fire and brimstone” approach to hell and heaven that so explicitly excluded her. Patel, who now lives in Los Angeles, credits her family with welcoming her Hindu identity, however, with curiosity and open arms.
She feels the same warmth when she visits her parents’ homelands. “Going to a Gujurati mandir (temple) just felt so peaceful and serene,” she said. “I just had this ‘aha’ moment, because I felt like I spent so much time running from myself. My grandfather passing was the wake-up call I needed to return back to myself and get in touch with my roots.”
Binda hopes that more conversations about Hinduism’s global reach will dispel the myth that the faith is limited to one ethnicity or geographical location.
Comparing Hinduism to “an open source architecture,” he said, “Hinduism can be embraced by by any and everyone, whether that means they identify as being Hindu or not.”
Hundreds march in Brazil to support religious freedom as cases of intolerance rise
Practitioners of various religions have marched down Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach
By DIARLEI RODRIGUES
Associated Press September 15, 2024,
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Practitioners of different religious traditions marched down Rio de Janeiro's iconic Copacabana Beach on Sunday to support religious freedom in Brazil, where cases of intolerance have doubled over the past six years.
“The great challenge today in our country is to reduce inequality," Evaristo told the state-run Agencia Brasil news agency. "So for me it is very important to be present in this march, because the people here are also struggling for many things like decent work and a life free from hunger."
In Rio de Janeiro state, which is home to a quarter of the practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions, there’s been a proliferation of evangelical Christianity, particularly neo-Pentecostal churches founded since 1970 that focus on spreading their faith among non-believers.
Experts say that while most neo-Pentecostal proselytizing is peaceful, the spread of the faith has been accompanied by a surge of intolerance for traditional African-influenced religions, ranging from verbal abuse and discrimination to destruction of temples and forced expulsion from neighborhoods.
While the Brazilian constitution protects the free exercise of religion, cases of disrespect and attacks, especially against groups of African origin, have become increasingly frequent.
Between 2018 and 2023, the Brazilian government’s complaint service recorded an increase of 140% in the number of complaints of religious intolerance in the country. In Brazil, those who commit crimes of religious intolerance can face up to five years in prison, as well as a fine.
This year alone, complaints of religious intolerance in Brazil surged by 80% according to a government complaint service cited by local media.
Religious freedom is enshrined in Chapter I Article 5 of the Brazilian Constitution and there are criminal penalties in place for religious intolerance. The law currently provides for prison sentences of up to five years for perpetrators of crimes related to religious intolerance.
While believers of more than a dozen religions participated, there was a focus on practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions which particularly have faced a rise in attacks from members of certain evangelical Christian organizations. According to a paper by Professor Vagner Gonçalves da Silva, Neo-Pentecostal churches in particular pursue a practice of spreading their faith among non-believers which can be accompanied by intolerant acts and crimes towards other religious groups. This can include verbal abuse, discrimination and even the destruction of religious sites and expulsion from neighbourhoods.
Under international law, freedom of religion and belief is enshrined under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and article 18 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Brazil has ratified all of these agreements, so the state is bound by international law to protect the religious freedom of its citizens.
Brazilians march for Eshu, an Afro-Brazilian deity, to protest Christian intolerance
A march in honor of the orisha Eshu drew some 150,000 people in São Paulo recently, considered a rebuke to the rise of evangelical Christians’ political power.
People attend the March for Eshu, Aug. 18, 2024, in São Paulo, Brazil. (Video screen grab)
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A march in honor of an Afro-Brazilian deity drew some 150,000 people in São Paulo on Aug. 18, shocking many in this historically Catholic country that has witnessed the growing numbers and political power of evangelical Christians.
The March for Eshu, honoring a West African Yoruba orisha, was widely interpreted as a rebuke to the evangelicals who are credited by political analysts with securing the presidency for conservative politician Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, much in the way American evangelicals championed Donald Trump. Bolsonaro has cited Trump as a model in the governing style as well.
In the Bolsonaro era and since — Bolsonaro lost his bid for a second term to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 — signs of evangelical Christians’ ascendancy have been everywhere, from the omnipresence of televangelists on the airwaves to the crucifixes and the Bible displayed in government offices to the 30-year-old March for Jesus, at which millions fill city streets around Brazil.
In marching for Eshu, adherents of Afro-Brazilian religions showed themselves ready to make their voices heard. “My idea was to combat intolerance against my faith. But not through confrontation. I just wanted to show the size of our creed and of our people,” said 32-year-old social media influencer and businessman Jonathan Pires, who organized the march.
Pires said he was disturbed by the way evangelicals have demonized his spirituality. Illegal in colonial times, the faiths brought by enslaved Africans to Brazil before slavery was outlawed in the late 1800s were practiced secretly, and orishas were often venerated after being renamed for Catholic saints. During Bolsonaro’s tenure (2019-2022), verbal and physical aggressions against those people grew exponentially.
In all this, Rivas pointed out, Eshu is problematic for monotheistic faiths and is often portrayed as a devil by Christians. “Those traditions have rigid rules, but for Eshu everything is flexible,” said Rivas. “There’s no idea of right and wrong, but a conception of building endless possibilities.”
Taking Eshu to the street, like the March for Eshu did, also challenged the racial and economic divisions in Brazilian society. A march made sense, said Rivas, “because the street doesn’t belong to anybody in particular, it belongs to all races and classes, and that’s the essence of Eshu.”
Jonathan Pires, center holding child, participates in the March for Eshu, Aug. 18, 2024, in São Paulo, Brazil. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Pires)
“Many people see our religion as one of poverty. I want to show to everybody that we’re also prosperous, given that Eshu opens the way for us,” Pires said.
His work on social media has earned him more than 600,000 followers on Instagram, which he uses not only to talk about religion, but to advertise his charitable work. When floods devastated the state of Rio Grande do Sul earlier this year, Pires managed to collect 120 tons of food and other basic items for those impacted, and he and his family spent more than two weeks in the region helping to distribute aid kits to flooded areas.
“That was also a way of demonstrating that Eshu is not about bad energies, like many people think. He feeds us and elevates us,” Pires said.
He said he paid for the costs of the march and refused when politicians offered their support. “Eshu is not a supporter of (Lula da Silva’s) Workers’ Party nor a supporter of Bolsonaro. My party is Eshu,” Pires said.
On social media, however, many people associated the march with the left wing, in part because Pires asked participants to wear red, one of Eshu’s ceremonial colors, but also the color of the Workers’ Party.
But Caio Fábio, a prominent evangelical pastor who has become a critic of the religious right, pointed out that, given the Brazilian right wing’s close ties to evangelicals and conservative Catholics, the March for Jesus has become regarded as a political rally for rightist politicians such as Bolsonaro. “The March for Jesus has always been ideological and political,” Fábio said.
“It became a perverted event, full of politics. And that phenomenon was accompanied, of course, by the deterioration of the Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches, which also became aggressively politicized.”
“Many people left their original African Brazilian creeds and began to frequent evangelical churches, which scandalously appropriated some of their ritual forms,” Fabio said.
“The March for Jesus has a conservative, moralistic, homophobic and intolerant agenda. That segment reacted in order to elevate its own self-esteem,” he told RNS.
Dos Santos has argued for opposing intolerance not through marches of Afro-Brazilian believers alone, but a variety faiths. “That’s why I defend the idea of promoting walks that join people from other creeds and social segments that promote freedom and democracy, instead of marches,” he said.
Pires said that he met a number of Catholic priests and evangelical pastors at his march, but some experts said the opposition had to begin with Eshu.
“The African Brazilian religions have a marvelous ability of resisting,” said Rivas. “And Eshu is a great reference in that process, because he is the one who rebuilds reality for all the people, no matter who they are.
As the pioneers of modern paganism die, fears grow that their wisdom will be lost
THANK THE GODS THEY ALL WROTE BOOKS
Today’s young Wiccans and witches tune in to social media for community.
(RNS) — The contemporary pagan community, unlike many traditional religions, has had direct access to its living founders for decades. Now many of those pioneers, born in the 1940s, are “crossing the veil,” a common pagan phrase. And their stories may be going with them as interest in their legacy wanes among younger generations in a changing world.
“Each death of old friends and contemporaries feels like another bit of my soul is being ripped away,” said Oberon Zell in an email interview with Religion News Service.
Zell, who now resides in North Carolina, co-founded the pagan Church of All Worlds in 1962. He is a well-known author and a long-respected figure in the pagan movement since its inception.
“We felt like pioneers, venturing into unknown territory of our imaginations,” Zell said. “We’d grown up as bright kids, often bullied.”
He believes that this “peer disdain” bred their creativity and courage to be “fearless.”
Zell’s group eventually mingled with the emerging Wiccan community, occultists and other magical practitioners. Their mission, he said, was “to make the world safe for people like us, and I believe we succeeded.”
Oberon Zell. (Courtesy photo)
Today, those young pioneers are now elders in their 70s and 80s, and every year sees the loss of a few more.
Wiccan priestess Mary Elizabeth Witt, known as Lady Pythia, died in June near the summer solstice, a widely celebrated pagan seasonal holiday honoring the longest day. “Trust her to wait for the brightest light to see her off on her journey,” her sister said.
While not as nationally known as Zell, Pythia was a key player in a largely decentralized, growing religious movement. She was co-founder of the Ohio-based Coven of the Floating Spring and became a trusted voice and leader within the Covenant of the Goddess, a national organization for Wiccans and witches.
This year also saw the loss of author and Wiccan high priest Ed Fitch, who became a national figure in those early years. Among his many achievements, Fitch spoke publicly in support of witchcraft and was editor of one of the first U.S. witchcraft magazines.
Derrick Land had the “rare opportunity” to meet Fitch near the end of the author’s life. “It is different to have a (live) conversation with such a person” than just reading their books or seeing them on television.
Derrick Land. (Courtesy photo)
Land is the high priest of Shadow Wolf Coven, a Wiccan group in Austin, Texas. He is also the co-founder of Austin Witchfest, a popular pagan event held every April.
Being able to “tap the shoulder of an elder is priceless,” Land said.
Those trailblazers, as he calls them, were not only birthing a new religion, but were also activists, and Land urges his own students to never “lose sight” of that legacy.
“We are able to practice safely because of them,” he said. “It wasn’t that long ago.”
Land, who considers himself a xennial — a person born at the cusp between Generation X and millennials — acknowledged that today’s young pagans are far less impressed with those trailblazers than he, and he is not alone in that observation.
Paganism has evolved since Land began his pagan journey in the 1990s. There is a greater diversity of practice and less dependency on in-person training. More pagans are solitary, or practicing entirely by themselves. A decentralized movement has become even more so.
One main factor, according to our interviewees: social media.
Beckie-Ann Galentine, a millennial in Virginia who first found a witchcraft community through Tumblr, grew up in a rural community in Pennsylvania with no access to in-person groups. She read “anything she could find,” with no guidance on what was authentic.
When she discovered Tumblr’s magical community, she was hooked, describing its members as “breathing their authentic self.”
But there were pitfalls, Galentine said.
Beckie-Ann Galentine. (Courtesy photo)
“I had no conception of misinformation,” she explained, and the digital community eventually proved to be largely “driven by vanity.” The witch aesthetic was more important than spiritual practice. That was 2006.
“It was a crash course,” Galentine said, “on getting exposed to people, rather than having a deliberate goal.”
She believes that her early learning experience, from books to Tumblr, is a “perfect example” of what happens when you don’t have guidance from elders.
“Social media influencers are not a substitute for an elder or mentor,” Galentine said, recognizing the irony. Galentine has since become a popular social media influencer, known as My Bloody Galentine.
In the 2000s, she didn’t know the early pioneers existed. Very few elders were active online and, if they were, their voices were often drowned out by the “loudest social media voices.”
When you “only look at the beacons” on social media, Galentine warned, you miss the deeply personal connections that form from in-person connections.
“I don’t want to say it’s not possible,” she added, but without having guidance or a personal community connection, “it makes (learning) way messier than it needs to be.” She points to her own experience.
Galentine, however, stressed the need for discernment in choosing whom to follow. Some teachings are “deeply problematic,” she said, while others are simply no longer current in a changing pagan world.
Galentine, now a leader herself, typically directs young pagans to relatively new authors who connect well to the younger generation, but she still recommends the classic “Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft” — first published in 1986 and often referred to as “Buckland’s Big Blue” — as “a point of perspective,” she said.
“It may not make sense. But start there,” Galentine advises.
The author, Raymond Buckland, originally from London, is one of the most well-known pagan trailblazers and was instrumental in bringing Wicca to American shores. He died in 2017.
Discernment, as Galentine described, has since become central to the social media engagement of paganism’s youngest representatives, according to Luma Notti, a digital media professional and Gen Z witch in Minnesota.
She believes that this critical skill is fueling, in part, the waning interest in the pioneers. “Many Gen Z folks look critically into witchcraft, New Age beliefs, politics and consumerism,” Notti said.
They are having “real conversations about spiritual psychosis and toxic spirituality,” she explained. “More than half of them are cautious about brand authenticity.” Just being a famous pagan doesn’t impress them much.
For Gen Z, she added, “consumerism, colonization and appropriation are intertwined.” And many of these concerns, along with others, are absent from early pagan teachings.
The digital media experience of Gen Z pagans, overall, is vastly different from that of millennials like Galentine. Gen Z members understand the concept of misinformation and other pitfalls because they grew up with it, Notti said.
“There is a lot of research on the loss of identity and subcultures of Gen Z because of being raised in the digital era and experiencing coming of age during lockdown,” she added. “Many Gen Zers are just trying to survive.”
Pushing back against stereotypes, Notti said: “Millennial and Gen X witches have asserted their presence (online) and already have a particular perception of Gen Z witches and spiritual practitioners.”
It isn’t all aesthetics, she insisted. Notti used the phrase “low key” to describe the trend in Gen Z pagan practices.
“We don’t want to make our practice our entire personality,” she explained. They are unconcerned with labeling how they practice, Notti added. But they still do seek community and often online.
But not always. Land said he has never had a problem finding new students for his Wiccan group and always sees young people enjoying Austin Witchfest.
Buckland’s “Big Blue” decades later still remains an educational staple.
So what does Zell think of all of this, decades after the movement began?
He sees no problem with any of it. “The diffusion at the periphery (of the pagan community) is the main indication” of the pioneers’ success, he said, proudly.
“It’s exactly as I envisioned and hoped it would be,” he said. “We have gone from a scary, paranoid, isolated and persecuted minority to an interesting mainstream phenomenon.”
All these decades later, Zell is still invited to speak at festivals, conferences and other events.
“It’s like having Grandpa at Thanksgiving dinner,” he said. “I’m delighted to see new generations of pagans coming in to take the place of those who are passing away.”
U.S. Latinas embrace spiritual practices outside traditional religion
Many U.S. Latinas have turned to sound healing while seeking spiritual practices outside of traditional religion.
(RNS) — Alicia Contreras has held sound healing sessions in the Arizona desert, in green and grassy parks, amid the stained glass of a church sanctuary and in a coffee shop. Everywhere she holds them, her crystal singing bowls produce ringing tones that reverberate over people as they lie relaxed on mats on the ground, each bowl’s note aimed at connecting with a particular chakra, or physical and spiritual energy center in her listeners.
And each time, before her guests arrive, Contreras prays the rosary.
A parishioner at St. Francis Xavier and community organizer in Phoenix, Contreras became interested in sound healing early in the COVID-19 pandemic while she was unable to attend Mass. She searched for a spiritual routine she could practice in isolation instead.
Contreras is one of many U.S. Latinas who have turned to sound healing and other forms of spiritual self-care, despite their roots outside of traditional religion.
Sound healers say that sound’s various frequencies can rebalance certain chakras, which are connected to both physical and spiritual health, to cure a range of ailments. Vladi Peña, a curandera, Reiki master and sound healer, said chakras are like waves or currents that sometimes need to be unclogged.
Contreras mostly focuses on bowls that she strikes or rubs with mallets, but other sound healers use gongs, chimes, tuning forks, handpans, maracas, drums or their voice. And while some Latina sound healers retain their cradle faith, some leave organized religion altogether to combine sound healing with practices such as Reiki, astrology, crystal work, shamanism and tarot. RELATED: Reiki goes mainstream: Spiritual touch practice now commonplace in hospitals
Emma Olmedo. (Video screen grab)
Emma Olmedo, a Reiki master and sound healer in Northern Virginia, said she doesn’t identify as a religious “none,” a catchall term that demographers use to group together atheists, agnostics and people who are “nothing in particular.” Instead, Olmedo sees herself as “all of the above.”
“It’s really beautiful that there’s that example in the Bible, in the Quran, in the Bhagavad Gita, like there’s all of these different prophets, but for me, I believe in all of them,” said Olmedo, who was raised in the “Catholic tradition,” she said, in keeping with her father’s Mexican identity. But Olmedo’s mother, who grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, wanted her daughter to choose her own faith. At different points, Olmedo has attended a nondenominational Christian church and practiced Hinduism.
“I love religion,” Olmedo said. “I don’t love the human aspect of religion, and the control of religion, and control and manipulation of people through religion, but I love religion.”
Peña, who is from Fairfax, Virginia, and recently moved to MedellÃn, Colombia, said the Catholicism of her youth is still salient in her devotion to the Virgin Mary. But while Peña said she enjoyed her Catholic upbringing, she felt a “disconnect.”
Peña, whose parents are from Nicaragua, is among the 22% of U.S.-born Latinos who no longer identify as Catholic. U.S.-born Latinos are slightly more likely to be unaffiliated (39%) than Catholic (36%).
Vladi Peña. (Video screen grab)
“I think it was too structured in certain ways,” said Peña of Catholicism. “And so I kind of branched out and branched away as I grew up and found my own way to spirit and to divinity through a more connected practice that was more individualized with and for myself.”
Peña’s current spiritual practice is a mixture of connecting to nature, music, Reiki, Hindu concepts of reincarnation and karma and more.
Dori Beeler, a medical anthropologist at the University of North Carolina Charlotte who has studied Reiki, said that Reiki and sound healing, as energy healing practices, both fall within animism, a “worldview that everything in the world has spirit, has some sort of energy force, life force.”
Reiki was developed in the 1920s in Japan by Mikao Usui, in a syncretic context where people practiced a variety of traditions together, just as Reiki practitioners do today. It spread to the U.S. through Usui’s students and became a mainstream practice in the 1980s.
While Reiki can take many years to understand, Beeler said, “it’s a practice that’s easily adaptable in other contexts without losing, for the most part, its foundational identity of being a hands-on healing practice and spiritual practice.” Research shows that it has appealed mostly to “educated, white, relatively well-off women,” she noted.
But Reiki was the practice that drew Peña into energy healing, when she was working as a behavioral therapist for autistic children and a client’s mother introduced her to it. Later, Peña found that sound bowls brought the “energy to a neutral state” before a Reiki session.
Peña was unable to bring her bowls with her to MedellÃn, but she has branched out into other instruments, as well as a cappella singing. One song she performs for clients who are struggling with seeing their way forward says, “Dame alas para volar” (“Give me wings to fly”).
Beyond sound healing and Reiki, Peña also offers clients astrology readings and various ceremonies — cord-cutting, said to help a person release something, or a house cleansing. From Colombia, she also continues to work in graphic design and videography for a Latino-focused therapy and wellness practice called De Tu Tierra. RELATED: As Hindu wellness gains in West, chakra healing practitioners root their art in science
Olmedo also combines various spiritual practices for her clients. This summer, she co-founded a sober nightlife experience — advertised as being in a “secret mystical location” in Washington — called Soul Flow, where she guides sound healing. The event includes a social justice discussion, an embodiment exercise to release trauma and grief and a two-hour dance set.
Olmedo emphasized that her healing work is not about her own ego or the ability to say, “I shifted this person’s path.” Instead, she explained, each modality or practice can be one of “different paths to get to the same place.” The important questions are “How can you enjoy every bit of this moment?” and “Can we enjoy this connection?”
“The spiritual path is about being present in this moment and shifting away from suffering,” said Olmedo. “The foundation of all spiritual practices essentially is a true, good, fulfilling, heartfelt practice, is gratitude and intention.”
Contreras also sees herself as a guide, even rejecting the term “sound healer,” because, she says, “I’m not God. I’m not their healer.”
Alicia Contreras. (Photo by Alejandra Ruiz)
She sees God as working through humans, even outside the church, especially because of colonialism and patriarchy that persists in the Catholic Church.
“You don’t need to practice whatever faith that is in a structure, if that structure and the colonialism or patriarchy in that structure is not serving you,” Contreras said.
But as she learned about sound healing in online classes, Contreras was careful to discern whether there was any conflict between her Catholic faith and her new practice. She came to the conclusion that “I wasn’t actually going against my traditions” as long as “I’m using this in my best and highest self,” or her spirit’s connection to God.
Contreras said she has witnessed sound healing mend pain that has gone unaddressed by traditional faith and health care. Contreras, a Chicana born in California and married to a Salvadoran immigrant, largely facilitates sound healing for people in her community, especially migrant women. Migrant women often experience high stress from their pivotal roles in their families and communities, as well as trauma from their migration journeys, which together can contribute to mental health struggles that sometimes have deadly impact.
Contreras said she has seen sound healing help her community with everything from grief to digestion issues, but she still has more to learn. “I’m on a journey. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m open to the wonder,” she said.
New survey points to correlation between Christian nationalism and authoritarian views
A large majority of Christian nationalism supporters scored high on authoritarianism assessments.
(RNS) — Americans who hold Christian nationalist views are also likely to express support for forms of authoritarianism, according to a new report, pointing to a possible link between those who advocate for a Christian nation and people who agree with statements such as the need to “smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs.”
The Public Religion Research Institute unveiled the new survey last week during Religion News Service’s 90th anniversary celebration in New York City, presenting the data to a room of faith leaders, advocates and reporters. A statement sent to RNS on Monday (Sept 16), Melissa Deckman, CEO of PRRI, framed the study as an effort to connect recent research on Christian nationalism with longstanding efforts to assess authoritarianism.
“While most Americans do not espouse authoritarian views, our study demonstrates that such views are disproportionately held by Christian nationalists, who we know in our past research have been more prone to accept political violence and more likely to hold antidemocratic attitudes than other Americans,” Deckman said.
In addition to being presented with questions from PRRI’s ongoing study of Christian nationalism — which tracks support for the ideology by rating people on a scale of Adherents, Sympathizers, Skeptics or Rejecters — survey respondents where asked whether they agree with statements such as “What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path” and whether they think children should exhibit traits such as obedience and curiosity.
Such questions were based on two well-known rubrics to measure authoritarian leanings: the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, which was developed in 1950 by a group of scholars at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Child-Rearing Authoritarianism Scale, which social scientists use to measure similar trends with child-rearing preferences as a framework.
Researchers found striking connections in the responses. A large majority of Christian nationalism supporters (namely, Adherents and Sympathizers) also scored high on both the RWAS (74%) and CRAS (61%) — significantly more than Christian nationalism Skeptics and Rejecters (30% and 31%, respectively). In addition, about half (51%) of those who scored high on the RWAS also qualified as Christian nationalism supporters. The reverse was true among those with low RWAS scores: only 7% could be classified as Christian nationalism supporters.
“Support for Strong Leaders and Authoritarian Presidential Powers, by Authoritarianism Scales and Christian Nationalist Beliefs” (Graphic courtesy PRRI)
And while few Americans overall (34%) agreed the U.S. needs a “strong leader who is willing to break some rules,” the statement was supported by majorities of both Christian nationalism supporters (55%) and those who score high on the RWAS (59%).
PRRI also asked questions about current events, such as whether respondents agreed that those who were convicted of crimes for participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection are “patriots” who are “being held hostage by the government,” or that Trump should do “whatever it takes to be president” if he is not declared the winner outright in November. Few Americans overall agreed with either statement (23% and 14%, respectively), but support was noticeably higher among supporters of Christian nationalism (44% and 28%) and those who scored high on the RWAS (38% and 24%).
“Perceptions of Jan. 6 Convictions and Opinions on Trump and the Election, by Authoritarianism Scales and Christian Nationalist Beliefs” (Graphic courtesy PRRI)
Researchers also asked respondents whether they were supporters of “7 Mountains” theology, a belief system popular in some conservative circles that calls on Christians to seek control over the seven “mountains” of society — including politics. Most Christian nationalist Sympathizers and Adherents (57%) said they backed the sentiment, as did significant percentages of those who scored high or very high on the RWAS (43%) or the CRAS (35%).
The theology found its greatest support among white evangelical Protestants in the survey (48%), followed by around 4 in 10 Black Protestants (42%) and Hispanic Protestants (42%).
“Our new survey shows, too, a close intertwining of apocalyptic and dominionist views among Americans who support authoritarianism. In short, authoritarianism in America is not wholly secular, but has important religious dimensions,” Deckman said.
Supporters of Christian nationalism were also highly likely (84%) to agree that “the final battle between good and evil is upon us, and Christians should stand firm with the full armor of God,” as were those who scored high or very high on the RWAS (70%) and the CRAS (61%).
“Christian Nationalist Theology, by Authoritarianism Scales and Christian Nationalist Beliefs” (Graphic courtesy PRRI)
Perhaps most troubling of all: While no group exhibited majority support for the idea that “American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country” (only 16% of Americans overall agreed), the idea was most popular among Christian nationalism supporters, with 33% of Adherents and Sympathizers saying they agreed, while 28% and 21% of those who scored high on the RWAS and CRAS, respectively, agreed.
Outlandish? Yes. Farcical? Absolutely. But also sinister and revealing.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a presidential debate with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at the National Constitution Center, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia.
(RNS) — The most talked about moment from last Tuesday’s debate has turned out to be not the two candidates’ policy differences on health care or housing or even any real discussion about immigration but, rather, Donald Trump’s claim that in Springfield, Ohio, Haitians hired by local companies are stealing and eating other people’s household pets.
“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” said Trump in answer to a question about immigration, repeating a calumny that he and his ticket mate, JD Vance, had been retailing at their campaign rallies. “They’re eating the pets of the people who live there, and that is what’s happening in this country, and it is a shame.”
The debate’s co-moderator, David Muir, the ABC news anchor whose network had actually fact-checked the claim, responded that the Springfield city manager had told ABC “there had been no credible reports of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by people in the city’s immigrant community.”
Outlandish? Yes. Farcical? Absolutely. But also sinister and revealing. It’s important when faced with a serial liar’s untruths to go beyond a shrug that says “That’s just Trump!” and examine what and who the person lies about most. It’s likely the key to the compulsion that leads to the lies.
Over and over again, when it comes to Trump, the lies are about migrants, refugees, asylum seekers. Trump strategically lies about those who are racially different from white Americans, his base whom he tries to make angrier and angrier. While saying he wouldn’t mind more immigrants from Norway, Trump has consistently demonized immigrants, calling them “rapists” and “criminals.” He accuses them of bringing in drugs and disease. Lately he has portrayed them as inmates of prisons and insane asylums, members of terrorist organizations and gangs, all coming to do us harm.
Migrants seeking asylum line up while waiting to be processed after crossing the border Wednesday, June 5, 2024, near San Diego, Calif. (AP Photo/Eugene Garcia)
In truth the people seeking to come to America are those Jesus told us to welcome. In the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says how we welcome the stranger, demonstrates how we welcome or don’t welcome him. The word “stranger” in the gospel text literally means “immigrant” and “refugee.” Jesus says, “As you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.”
Anyone who has contact with the families and children coming from south of the U.S.-Mexican border know that these constant attacks are based on lies. Demagogues don’t like data, but the data on immigrants shows that migrants commit fewer crimes than native U.S. citizens. Undocumented immigrants can’t vote, and don’t, despite the Republicans’ repetition of a myth that the flood of “illegal aliens” are being welcomed to support Democrats.
Most Americans don’t have any personal contact with immigrants, however, and as demagogues repeat their lies over and over, people start to believe them. What many white Christians who support Trump lack is what I call a theology of proximity: Getting to know real people and their stories and their children always changes hearts and minds — in my experience, it even dissolves white conservative stereotypes and caricatures. Everything is about relationships, and encountering immigrants would easily wipe away all of Trump’s lies.
Trump also spoke admiringly — and tellingly — about Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán and Russian dictator Valdimir Putin, both demagogues who fuel human divisions. Such leaders want people to believe only strong men can restore order in a divided society. To create this picture they narrow the definition of who our neighbors are, turning many of those around us into enemies. Our religious language calls this “othering,” and all faith traditions clearly and consistently condemn it.
That’s what the weird dogs and cats language was all about Tuesday night: fear, hate, violence and power. Expanding the definition of our neighbor — which faith does — defeats demagogues.
Sadly, we are still waiting to hear any of Trump’s white evangelical supporters speak up for the strangers that Jesus told us to welcome. Let’s watch for how many evangelical leaders preach on Matthew 25 in the next few Sundays, or any of the more than 400 verses in the Bible about caring for immigrants. Let’s hope preachers everywhere turn this into a Matthew 25 election.
Last Wednesday (Sept. 11), the day after the debate, I was given a tour of an amazing community center in Tucson, Arizona, where Christians care for those seeking asylum who have just arrived in the United States and are now legally on their way to families and sponsors in America.
It was a Matthew 25 day for me. After long, dangerous and very difficult journeys, after being exploited, robbed, ransomed, raped, tortured, after watching friends die, these people at last found the loving welcome they were so longing for. I saw the smiles on the faces of mothers, fathers and young children.
Later that evening, people of faith from all over southern Arizona packed into Southside Presbyterian Church to hear their now-retired pastor, John Fife, and others talk about being charged as felons for welcoming strangers across the border in a faithful ministry of Christ for many decades. We need more people like my dear friend John, who was willing to become a Matthew 25 felon, who told the diverse gathering the joy of following Jesus.
Opinion Immigrants, pets and the sin of slander in an age of social media No one is going to eat Rover. (Image by Cdd20/Pixabay/Creative Commons) September 12, 2024 By Matthew Soerens
(RNS) — This week, outlandish allegations that, in a small city in Ohio, Haitian immigrants were hunting down and eating people’s cats, dogs and other pets spread across the internet, even making an appearance in the presidential debate. Though there’s no verifiable evidence of any case of a Haitian immigrant eating a pet — to say nothing of a trend that will soon threaten your pet — rumors spread quickly.
It was already an “old proverb” in the 19th century when Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon quipped, “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.” In the internet era, falsehoods move at light speed, and the biblical commandment to “not bear false witness” has become among the more socially acceptable sins.
That’s probably because it’s so easy: We can now disparage someone without personally articulating the charge, in either verbal or written form; we can reshare slanderous accusations with a tap of a finger or click of a mouse. Our human nature is apt to do so, dismissing any reluctance over an unverified charge if it seems credible to us, especially when the subject is an individual or group of people we’re predisposed to view as villainous.
But if we are to be faithful to the New Testament’s repeated instructions to put away slander of any kind, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. We should refrain from propagating any disparaging charge that we cannot confirm to be factual, lest we, as the epistle of James puts it, “curse people who are made in the likeness of God.” That’s always true, but it’s all the more relevant in the midst of a polarized U.S. election season.
With the border a top campaign issue, immigrants are used as a political pawn and have increasingly been the subjects of online maligning. Beyond the allegations of pet-napping, the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are often presumed to be “illegals.” MultipleU.S. senators have used that term to describe individuals from Haiti, Venezuela and other specific countries facing political crises who have been allowed into the U.S. by the Department of Homeland Security after being sponsored by family members, churches or others — despite the fact that they are entering lawfully, at the invitation of our government.
There’s a fair debate over whether this particular “parole” program is an overuse of executive authority, but that’s a question for the courts or legislation (if a senator disagrees with the judicial decision that thus far has left the program in place). To describe the people themselves who have entered the U.S. lawfully through an airport as “illegal” isn’t just inaccurate, it’s also false witness, as it is when more than 800 people retweet these claims. That few of those re-tweeters have a nuanced understanding of U.S. immigration law does not exonerate them from the responsibility to not disparage people falsely.
Migrants seeking asylum line up while waiting to be processed after crossing the border June 5, 2024, near San Diego. (AP Photo/Eugene Garcia)
For me, this is personal. I met a Haitian couple a few months ago who showed up at my church. Both husband and wife are lawfully present, and given the disastrous situation in Haiti at the moment, desperate to bring their daughters lawfully to the U.S. as well. I brought them to my World Relief legal services colleagues to file the appropriate petition, and now they’re hoping and praying it will be quickly approved. They’re availing themselves of U.S. laws, not breaking them. They’re also certainly not eyeing my daughter’s guinea pig. I’m embarrassed that they have probably heard the cruel allegations against them.
Other immigrants, of course, have violated U.S. law by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without inspection — including a record 1.4 million individuals who were apprehended by the Border Patrol (many of them more than once) last year. It’s right for Christians who affirm the God-ordained role of government in maintaining order and security to insist on reforms to address this situation and ensure secure borders, as many evangelical Christians have.
But while it’s fair to describe these migrants’ actions as illegal, that does not make it, as online rhetoric increasingly describes it, an “invasion,” which implies an intention of military conquest.
To the contrary, in recent years, most of those who cross unlawfully are seeking out the U.S. Border Patrol to request asylum under the terms of U.S. law. They may or may not qualify, but even advocates for more restrictive immigration policies, such as the Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA, have said it is wrong to describe these unarmed individuals as invaders. But posting such inflammatory language can generate likes and reshares.
In my work with World Relief, I have personally met Christians who fled religious persecution and sought asylum at the border to save their lives. They are brothers and sisters pleading for mercy from our country, not invaders, and it upsets me when they’re wrongly labeled as such.
But it’s not just critics of immigrants who can fall into the sin of slander. Advocates for immigrants can as well when they presume that anyone who wants tighter border security is racist.
I’m quick to decry the fallacy of implicating all immigrants by the violent crimes of a very small subsample, but I can fall into the same trap if I suggest everyone advocating for reduced levels of immigration must be motivated by the same attitudes as self-avowed white supremacists and eugenicists — or even retweet someone else making that charge. It feels less culpable to share someone else’s hot take than to state it personally — but is it?
Matthew Soerens. Photo courtesy of World Relief
Scripture talks much about the tongue and teaches that “out of the abundance of the heart our mouth speaks.” We must guard our hearts and our tongues. If we’re to take seriously the many biblical injunctions to refrain from slander, the Apostle James offers wise counsel: “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” In our context, we might also add being “slow to retweet.”
