Consigned to jobs in sanitation and other hazardous fields, Christians, the largest religious minority group in Pakistan, face a difficult time in the country.
Where to?
georgemuresan/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Today’s short-term missionaries continue a long legacy, but in a very different way.
An illustration of an antique photograph of the British Empire’s mission work among the Zulu people of then-Natal province.
ilbusca/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images
Before colonialism black South Africans viewed sex and morality very differently than today.
Comedians Seth Meyers (far right) and Amber Ruffin (right) spoofed the ‘White Saviour’ complex in a fake movie segment on the ‘Late Night With Seth Meyers.’
Lloyd Bishop/NBC
White saviourism is simultaneously a state of mind and a concrete unequal power structure between the Global North and the Global South.
The exterior view of the Bethel African American Methodist Episcopal Church at 125 S. 6th St. in Philadelphia.
Breton, William L., circa 1773-1855 Artist via the Library of Congress, World Digital Library
Millions of enslaved Africans were forcefully converted to the Christian faith. The Black church came about when African Americans began to establish their own congregations.
Pope Francis’s visit to Canada will offer him an opportunity to apologize for the harms of the Catholic-run Indian Residential Schools.
(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Francis’ visit concerns all Canadians. It’s about our relationship to history and the construction of a state that marginalized Indigenous people and tried to assimilate them.
Detail from the cover of the book Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual.
UKZN Press
Lisa Bitel, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The Irish government recently declared a national holiday for St. Brigid. A medieval historian explains her fascinating life and history.
Missionary Annie Lock with Enbarda (Betsy) left, and Dolly Cumming, both children from the Alice Springs area in Central Australia. Photo taken in Darwin.
National Archives of Australia
I thought I had uncovered a feminist heroine, but for all her intrepid and gutsy behaviour, Lock held intensely socially conservative views in line with her religious conviction.
Young Kikuyu women lined up outdoors at a Church of Scotland mission school in Kenya.
Bristol Archives/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
As missionaries expanded into Africa, they held a special grudge against polygamy. Here’s how that affected education.
J.D. Greear, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has called on the denomination to focus on its theological mission.
AP Photo/Jay Reeves, File
The SBC is meeting amid divisions, controversy and dwindling numbers. But in pushing rhetoric over its theological mission, the denomination is tapping into a history of white supremacy.
A masquerade during the celebration of an Igbo ritual.
Jorge Fernández/LightRocket/Getty Images
Over the past 15 years there’s been a revival of young people - mostly Christians - participating in traditional masquerades, despite these being branded as pagan.
An evangelical outreach in Uganda led by the prominent and wealthy pastor Robert Kayanja.
WALTER ASTRADA/AFP via Getty Images
African evangelism is born from – and often funded by – American evangelism, and with it comes a damaging cocktail of rightwing ideologies, especially during the Donald Trump years.
Counting Americans is a complicated process.
Tada Images/Shutterstock.com
Rebecca Tippett, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The 2020 census will now count some groups differently than it has in the past. That could make a difference in the final count – affecting which states receive funding and congressional seats.
A Zulu household, from an 1895 book called The Colony of Natal: An Official Illustrated Handbook and Railway Guide.
J Causton and Sons /University of California Libraries/ Flickr
A new history book shows how entanglements of race, gender, class and sexuality in South Africa flow from the moral contradictions of the settler colonial state.
Purity Malinga, the new Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.
Supplied
Not everyone’s a fan of this fundraising approach. But it does bring the needs of children in developing communities to the attention of many Americans.
Pope Francis at the Monument Mary Queen of Peace, in Port Louis, Mauritius on Sept. 9, 2019.
AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino
Pope Francis recently completed a tour of three African nations. His visit needs to be understood in the context of the church’s long history in Africa and its modern-day difficulties.
Professor of Public Theology in the Department of Beliefs and Practices, Faculty of Theology, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Free University of Amsterdam), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam