tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/church-9684/articlesChurch – The Conversation2023-05-08T11:35:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2051352023-05-08T11:35:18Z2023-05-08T11:35:18ZKenya’s starvation cult left hundreds dead – a psychologist’s view on how to support people as they process tragedy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524877/original/file-20230508-174052-pceh3j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Kenyan investigator at a mass gravesite in Shakahola in April 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/sports/coast/article/2001470894/four-people-starve-to-death-while-fasting-to-meet-jesus">early April 2023</a>, Kenyan police discovered a mass grave linked to a Pentecostal church in the coastal town of Malindi. By the end of the month, at least <a href="https://apnews.com/article/cult-church-shakahola-kenya-africa-ruto-odinga-autopsies-9cfcbbc026f5d441b039460b74980620">110 bodies</a> had been dug up from shallow graves in the area’s Shakahola forest. By 13 May, <a href="https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/kenya-starvation-cult-death-toll-exceeds-200-4234448">201 bodies</a> had been found. </p>
<p>A loss of this magnitude is <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/-the-horror-and-trauma-of-reporting-on-shakahola-a-journalist-s-account-4221148">traumatic and painful</a> for the families and friends directly affected, and also for the public exposed to the details. The <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/2023/5/3/did-a-kenyan-cult-leader-convince-his-followers-to-die">level of media attention, public backlash and judgement of the dead</a> makes the experience of the loss even more difficult for those directly concerned. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-cult-165512">What is a cult?</a>
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<p>The Shakahola story is being controlled by parties outside the families affected because of the <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/autopsy-shakahola-cult-strangled-suffocated-members--4219702">government scrutiny</a> and a <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2023/05/02/kenya-deadly-cults-pastor-mackenzie-to-face-terrorism-charges-odero-remains-in-custody/">police investigation</a> related to the criminal case against the church leader. This has the potential to disrupt healthy grieving. </p>
<p>Africa is considered <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trend/archive/summer-2016/how-africa-is-changing-faith-around-the-world">one of the most religious continents</a> in the world. Many people use religion as a coping mechanism during difficult moments, yet in this case, <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/realtime/2023-05-04-dont-judge-pentecostal-churches-because-of-mackenzie-clergy/">religion is centre stage</a> as the possible perpetrator of the grief being experienced. This complicates the grieving process as people experience betrayal from one of their most valued support systems: religion. </p>
<p>Most families will adapt their own style and process – all valid – to handle the pain and trauma. As a counselling psychologist, I have <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33311868/">conducted studies</a> on how <a href="https://www.academia.edu/86359067/An_Investigation_of_Therapeutic_Value_of_the_Batsotso_Mourning_Rituals_in_Kakamega_County_Kenya">communities deal with death</a> and found unique practices that help in processing grief. </p>
<p>However, there are certain common stages of grief that people will experience – and can be helped to process – as the Shakahola tragedy continues to unfold. These stages are: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>shock and numbness</p></li>
<li><p>yearning and searching</p></li>
<li><p>despair and disorganisation </p></li>
<li><p>reorganisation and recovery.</p></li>
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<h2>Shock and numbness</h2>
<p>This is one of the initial responses individuals experience when they receive news of the death of a loved one. It manifests in the form of denial of the fact that the person is dead. Some people hope that what’s happening will be reversed. Others react by minimising the magnitude of the loss. </p>
<p>Shock or denial is one of the immediate healthy reactions to a traumatic event. This gives affected people the time to absorb and accept a difficult reality before they come to terms with it. Families should resist efforts to get them to accept a loss and “move on”. Shock, disappointment, anger, frustration, denial or even acceptance are all valid reactions. </p>
<h2>Yearning and searching</h2>
<p>At this stage, a grieving person has begun to get in touch with the reality of their loss. Staring at a perceived impossible future, a grieving individual tries to search for the comfort they used to enjoy from the deceased. This manifests in a continuous preoccupation with the person who has died, and an attempt to look for reminders of them. Some grieving people will cling to their loved one’s photos or clothes, or spend time in their favourite places. </p>
<p>In a traumatic case like the Shakahola one, one of the most important things that families will be yearning and searching for is justice and information about what caused their loved one’s death. A satisfactory <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2023-05-04-shakahola-bodies-postmortem-complete-for-100-bodies-11-remaining/">autopsy process</a> and prosecution of the perpetrators would help people to grieve in a healthy way. </p>
<p>Families should be allowed to experience this stage without any external regulation. This can be therapeutic as it helps families reflect, experience the pain associated with the loss and vent their emotions. In this stage, individuals will cry and feel sad, confused or frustrated as the reality of their loss sets in. </p>
<h2>Despair and disorganisation</h2>
<p>With the reality that their loss is permanent and irreversible, bereaved people in this stage may feel hopeless and angry, and question their situation. For families affected by the Shakahola saga, many are likely to be furious at government agencies, their deceased loved ones and the church. </p>
<p>This anger may also be directed at themselves, especially if they feel they could have done something to prevent the death of their loved one. It may also be directed at others for causing the death or not doing enough to prevent the death, or at God for not listening to their prayers to prevent the death. </p>
<p>It’s important to allow families to express these mixed reactions at whoever they choose to without trying to convince them otherwise. It’s healthy for them to ask questions and blame whoever they choose to. This stage is not permanent. </p>
<h2>Reorganisation and recovery</h2>
<p>At this stage, the intensity of grief declines and hope is restored. A grieving person begins to see the possibility of living a good life again. They begin to relinquish some of their loved one’s property or start to carry out some of the duties that were performed by the deceased. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-death-on-the-screen-feel-the-same-as-a-real-one-203549">Can death on the screen feel the same as a 'real' one?</a>
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<p>These four stages, however, manifest differently for different people. And they’re not linear. They may appear in any order. Time is also a silent stage and factor that helps people process grief. </p>
<p>The public watching the stories coming out of Shakahola can experience secondary trauma. This is difficult to avoid since access to information is a fundamental right. It’s therefore important for people to be aware of negative emotions that may develop as a result of following the saga. It shouldn’t raise alarm, though, as with time, these emotions will subside. </p>
<p>Journalists, security forces and other workers with direct access to the tragedy and exhumation of bodies are exposed to the danger of high-level traumatisation. They may need to seek psychosocial support to avoid developing severe psychological effects, including insomnia and anxiety. </p>
<p>Understanding grief is an important step towards healing. When you experience a tragedy, it’s important to realise that any accompanying emotions are normal reactions to an abnormal event. The process may take time and the pain may not subside quickly, and it all remains valid.</p>
<p><em>Note: the headline and text were changed to reflect the increasing number of bodies found.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Asatsa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The media attention, public backlash and judgement of the dead in the cult saga have made processing the loss difficult for families.Stephen Asatsa, Counseling Psychologist, Catholic University of Eastern AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1994132023-02-26T19:06:10Z2023-02-26T19:06:10ZWe’re told Pentecostal churches like Hillsong are growing in Australia, but they’re not anymore – is there a gender problem?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509581/original/file-20230212-24-y1i3k2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4343%2C2889&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andres Kudacki/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The conventional narrative about Australian Christianity is that Pentecostal churches – most famously, Hillsong – are bucking the trend of <a href="https://censusnoreligion.org.au/are-australians-losing-their-religion/">declining attendance</a> at the big denominations (such as Catholic and Anglican churches). That in fact, Pentecostal churches continue to grow.</p>
<p>This narrative is based on the steady rise of people indicating affiliation with Pentecostal Christianity from the 1990s, through to 2016. After the 2016 census, sociologists <a href="https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JASR/article/view/2089">Bouma and Halafoff</a> noted a rise in those claiming affiliation with Pentecostal churches, alongside the rise in the religious “nones”. </p>
<p>But the most recent Australian census shows a decrease in Pentecostal affiliation. Gender inequality and leadership abuses of power seem to be implicated. But more research is needed to confirm who is leaving Pentecostal churches, and why.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/holy-womans-fleshy-feminist-spiritual-pilgrimage-is-a-warning-against-religious-coercive-control-185388">Holy Woman's fleshy, feminist spiritual pilgrimage is a warning against religious coercive control</a>
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<h2>A shifting story?</h2>
<p>As recently as July 2022, an opinion piece for <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/david-smith-christianity-and-the-australian-census/13953748">ABC Religion & Ethics</a> retold this story, explaining that while the 2021 data showed a drop in Christian affiliation, “some Christian groups such as Pentecostals are enjoying considerable growth”. </p>
<p>Academic analyses often cite Hillsong as a case study, describing the church as a stand-out success. In their recently published book, sociologists <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Religion-and-Change-in-Australia/Possamai-Tittensor/p/book/9781032186030">Possemai and Tittensor</a> write, “unlike their fellow Christians who are all in decline, the more patriarchal Pentecostals are growing”. Hillsong is depicted as reaching and retaining large numbers of women, through specifically targeted conferences and events. </p>
<p>For many years, “contemporary” churches like Hillsong have provided the poster-model for Christianity across Australia. We’ve heard other churches ought to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-rise-of-hillsong-and-what-other-australian-churches-should-learn-from-them-94487">learn from their leadership success</a>. We were told by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/27/christianity-on-the-wane-in-australia-but-pentecostal-church-bucks-trend">journalists</a> and <a href="https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/religion-and-culture-and-society-by-andrew-singleton-9781446202913">academics</a> alike that when it comes to gaining new members – especially young people – Pentecostal churches are getting it “right”. </p>
<p>Well, it turns out this story may be in need of a rewrite.</p>
<h2>Explaining the shifts</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/religious-affiliation-australia#decline-in-christian-affiliation">2021 census reports</a> that nationally, Australian Pentecostalism declined by 4,700 people – or 2% – since 2016. And a <a href="https://crucis.ac.edu.au/what-the-census-tells-us-about-the-pentecostals-in-australia/">Christian Research Association report</a> shows the strongest drop was among those aged 15-34. </p>
<p>Few are talking about the de-conversion of Pentecostal youth. Unless you follow <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/hillsong-australia-suffers-drop-in-giving-attendance-annual-report.html">Christian</a> <a href="https://religionunplugged.com/news/2022/11/9/hillsong-megachurch-revenue-fell-almost-20-in-last-two-years-report-shows">newspapers</a>, you may not have realised the narrative about the rise of Pentecostalism is dated.</p>
<p>When we look to Hillsong, shifts in attendance and revenue call the growth story into question.</p>
<p>Reported attendance stats are murky, but the 2019 annual report boasted a live attendance of 47,000 across Hillsong churches in Australia and Bali. In 2020, during lockdowns, Hillsong moved online and grew exponentially, with 786,214 people <a href="https://issuu.com/hillsong/docs/hillsong_annual_report_2020_final?fr=sNzkwODM3Mjk2MDI">reported</a> to be watching live by the end of March 2020. </p>
<p>However, the church’s <a href="https://hillsong.com/australia/annualreport2021/">2021 Annual Report</a> shows only 21,219 attendees across Australia. And it states, “we experienced a 12.3% drop in total revenue compared to 2020 resulting in a reduction of our surplus to $514,318 for 2021 (2020: $4,696,547).”</p>
<p>The big question for religious scholars is, following the recent <a href="https://hillsong.com/newsroom/blog/2023/02/hillsong-church-looks-to-the-future-appoints-new-global-senior-pastors/#.Y-Qs33ZBzrc">appointment of new leaders</a>, will these changes continue for 2023 and beyond? </p>
<p>For now, we want to know: who is staying, who is leaving – and why? </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-pentecostalism-and-how-might-it-influence-scott-morrisons-politics-103530">Explainer: what is Pentecostalism, and how might it influence Scott Morrison's politics?</a>
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<h2>Is a gendered analysis needed?</h2>
<p>Aside from young people, we don’t know for certain who is leaving Pentecostal churches. But anecdotally, it appears to be women.</p>
<p>Reverend Dr Philip Hughes, a research fellow at the Christian Research Association, told us, “The decline in Pentecostals has been greater among females than males, with the female proportion dropping from 56% in 2011 to 54% in 2021.”</p>
<p>While this is more a slow drift than a catastrophic exit, it shouldn’t be overlooked. Globally, religious women are the backbone of churches, particularly Pentecostal ones. We know women make up about <a href="https://www.ncls.org.au/articles/gender-mix-in-australian-church-attenders/#:%7E:text=In%20every%20denomination%2C%20in%20every,with%2051%25%20of%20all%20Australians.">two thirds of the church</a> across Australia’s denominations. </p>
<p>While women are often underrepresented in <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Raising-Women-Leaders-Perspectives-Supplementary-ebook/dp/B00BUUKGX0">leadership</a> of these churches, they are – or, at least, have been – overrepresented in the congregation and in the paid and voluntary workforce. It’s often women who do the day-to-day work of administrating a church, keeping its shops, charities and schools going. Churches need women. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Women-and-Religion-in-the-West-Challenging-Secularization/Aune-Sharma/p/book/9781138276048">International research</a> suggests ultimately, without women, there is no church. As sociologist <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Women-and-Religion-in-the-West-Challenging-Secularization/Aune-Sharma/p/book/9781138276048">Penny Marler</a> puts it, “Despite the fact that religious elites continue to be predominantly male, as the women go, so goes the church.”</p>
<p>A gendered analysis of who is staying and who is leaving may help us understand the current shift in Pentecostal affiliation, and future challenges facing church leadership. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-some-churches-teach-that-women-are-separate-but-equal-64305">Explainer: why some churches teach that women are 'separate but equal'</a>
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<h2>Why might women leave?</h2>
<p>Larney Peerenboom, who recently completed a masters degree thesis in Christian studies, explained to us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While Australian Pentecostal churches are often vocal about their support of women in leadership, the lack of an official theological stance regarding gender equality means that while the women themselves largely held egalitarian views, it was more common that their leadership and many others in their community held a stance of soft <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-some-churches-teach-that-women-are-separate-but-equal-64305">complementarianism</a>. </p>
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<p>A woman Peerenboom spoke to was accused of having a feminist agenda when she tried to introduce inclusive language in church documentation. In Peerenboom’s experience, several women found the disparity between what was preached and what was <em>actually</em> valued led them to feeling out of place at church, with some choosing to leave.</p>
<p>Similarly, there are many converging accounts in the “<a href="https://gravityleadership.com/exvangelical/">exvangelical</a>” movement. In her memoir documenting her journey out of Pentecostalism, Australian author <a href="https://www.louiseomer.com/holy-woman">Louise Omer</a> describes feeling physically sick when she realised her church had taught her to submit not just to God, but to men, and she had therefore come to see herself as inferior to men. Omer reflects:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I remembered the question I’d left home with: could a woman belong in Christianity? Only if she agreed she was inferior.</p>
</blockquote>
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<span class="caption">Louise Omer felt ‘physically sick’ when she realised her Pentecostal church had taught her to submit not only to God, but to men.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sia Duff</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Sociologist Katie Gadinni, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Struggle-Stay-Single-Evangelical-Leaving/dp/0231196741">The Struggle to Stay: Why Single Evangelical Women are Leaving the Church</a>, documents the stories of 50 women leaving the church. She states, “single women desire to be valued and treated equally within their religious communities […] In short, they desire more acceptable ways of being.” </p>
<h2>Pentecostal leadership cultures matter</h2>
<p>The “growth as success” story not only seems inaccurate, but could be obscuring what it’s like to be a Pentecostal Christian. Importantly, it could mean we’re not properly seeing or hearing the experiences of Pentecostal women and leaders. </p>
<p>An important distinction of Australian Pentecostal history has been its emphasis on equality and <a href="https://oatd.org/oatd/record?record=handle:10.25949%2F19435460.v1">women’s leadership</a>. While there are notable women leaders within Australian Pentecostalism, almost all known public figures in the movement today are men. Where women are leaders, they are often presented as the wife of the male leader. As a model, this can make Pentecostal women dependent on men for their role. </p>
<p>Why is this important? Christian leadership creates cultures and upholds theologies, which are potential sources of <a href="https://anglican.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/NAFVP-Top-Line-Results-Report-NCLS-Research.pdf">spiritual harm or nourishment</a>. A growing body of <a href="https://csrm.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/faith-based-communities-responses-family-and-domestic-violence">Australian</a> and <a href="https://pure.coventry.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/19148579/In_churches_too_final_report.pdf">international</a> research shows us certain theologies – particularly the teaching that women should submit to their husbands, or to male authority more generally – can (even if inadvertently) scaffold and sanction abuse. </p>
<p>This seems to be particularly true if churches teach that leadership is reserved for men. It means <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-long-way-to-go-catholic-women-call-for-wide-ranging-church-reforms-in-new-international-survey-191253">all denominations</a> of Australian churches have the potential to model unsafe dynamics for women – and that intentionally cultivating safe and trauma-informed practices are necessary. Making sure women leaders are represented and accessible to congregants is one important piece of the picture. </p>
<h2>Abuses of power</h2>
<p>Churches of all denominations continue to grapple with religious leaders’ varied abuses of power. And women’s continuing church participation, as well as their potential disaffiliation, is part of that story, too. </p>
<p>The news on Hillsong over the past year, both factual and sensational, tended to focus on reports of men’s alleged <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-12/hillsong-church-allegedly-mislead-charities-regulators/101324578#:%7E:text=A%20whistleblower%20suing%20Hillsong%20in,by%20the%20Australian%20charities%20regulator">financial</a> and sexual <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2023/february/elle-hardy/hillsong-and-life-brian#mtr">misconduct</a>. </p>
<p>Brian Houston <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-23/hillsong-church-founder-brian-houston-resigns/100932318">resigned</a> in March 2022, after allegations surfaced regarding his own conduct. Similarly, recent media reports have highlighted leadership failings in many other Christian communities: including <a href="https://commissiondetude-jeanvanier.org/commissiondetudeindependante2023-empriseetabus/index.php/en/home-english/">L’Arche</a>, where the movement’s founders have been accused of sexual abuse; and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/08/12/fbi-southern-baptist-sexual-abuse/">Southern Baptist Convention</a>, where the US justice department is investigating leaders for several reports of mishandled complaints.</p>
<p>There have been multiple accounts of male leaders in churches and Christian organisations who either concealed or perpetrated abuse against women and children. The prevalence of such serious failings raises important questions about how churches will respond to recent events, or whether the established rhetoric about women’s roles (and failure to act) will continue. </p>
<p>For Pentecostal churches, it is time to attend to the stories of what makes church participation both meaningful and safe. Hearing from Pentecostal women – both those who have stayed and those who have recently left – is crucial. </p>
<p>We can attribute women’s decreased church participation and disaffiliation to a variety of societal causes, including the pandemic and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1350506808091508">changes to work and family patterns</a>. It is important not to frame this as a “woman problem”. We suspect the testimony of church women may show us that Christianity’s gender problem is with its (male) leadership.</p>
<h2>More research needed</h2>
<p>At the moment, it isn’t entirely clear how the story of Pentecostalism in Australia will need to be rewritten. But we know from looking at other Christian movements that a lack of women’s leadership – not to mention revelations of misconduct – contribute to disaffiliation. </p>
<p>It’s important for Pentecostal leaders to understand their church’s demographic shifts. It will also be important for Pentecostal women, if they are to continue in their tradition, to find new identity markers, separate to the recent scandals and reported leadership misconduct. For Australian Pentecostal churches, “success” may lie not in numeric growth, but in becoming genuinely safe places, particularly for women.</p>
<p>Has Pentecostalism been a success story for women? The only way to know is to ask. For women, at least, talking about why they are (or are not) staying in their churches could quite seriously be a matter of survival. </p>
<p>The time for a detailed, gendered analysis of the shifts in the story of Australian Pentecostalism is now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosie Clare Shorter has attended evangelical Anglican churches for most of her life. She currently attends a Uniting church.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanya Riches is an ordained Pentecostal minister who has attended various churches, most recently Hillsong. She is an unpaid research fellow at Christian Research Association and a former Hillsong College employee.
</span></em></p>The latest Australian census shows a decrease in affiliation with Pentecostal churches, despite the ‘boom’ narrative. Women seem to be leaving: gender inequality and abuses of power are having an impact.Rosie Clare Shorter, PhD candidate, Religion and Society Research Cluster, Western Sydney UniversityTanya Riches, Research, Training and Development Officer, Centre for Disability Studies, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1994242023-02-09T09:05:11Z2023-02-09T09:05:11ZWhat does the Bible say about homosexuality? For starters, Jesus wasn’t a homophobe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508641/original/file-20230207-21-ed2xy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pope Francis was recently asked about his views on homosexuality. He <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/pope-francis-says-laws-criminalising-lgbt-people-are-sin-an-injustice-2023-02-05/">reportedly replied</a>:</p>
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<p>This (laws around the world criminalising LGBTI people) is not right. Persons with homosexual tendencies are children of God. God loves them. God accompanies them … condemning a person like this is a sin. Criminalising people with homosexual tendencies is an injustice.</p>
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<p>This isn’t the first time Pope Francis has shown himself to be a <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html">progressive leader</a> when it comes to, among other things, gay Catholics. </p>
<p>It’s a stance that has <a href="https://theconversation.com/pope-francis-visit-to-africa-comes-at-a-defining-moment-for-the-catholic-church-197633">drawn the ire</a> of some high-ranking bishops and ordinary Catholics, both on the African continent and elsewhere in the world.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/pope-francis-visit-to-africa-comes-at-a-defining-moment-for-the-catholic-church-197633">Pope Francis' visit to Africa comes at a defining moment for the Catholic church</a>
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<p>Some of these Catholics may argue that Pope Francis’s approach to LGBTI matters is a misinterpretation of Scripture (or the Bible). But is it? </p>
<p>Scripture is particularly important for Christians. When church leaders refer to “the Bible” or “the Scriptures”, they usually mean “the Bible as we understand it through our theological doctrines”. The Bible is always interpreted by our churches through their particular theological lenses. </p>
<p>As a biblical scholar, I would suggest that church leaders who use their cultures and theology to exclude homosexuals don’t read Scripture carefully. Instead, they allow their patriarchal fears to distort it, seeking to find in the Bible proof-texts that will support attitudes of exclusion. </p>
<p>There are several instances in the Bible that underscore my point.</p>
<h2>Love of God and neighbour</h2>
<p>Mark’s Gospel, found in the New Testament, records that Jesus entered the Jerusalem temple on three occasions. First, he visited briefly, and “looked around at everything” (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/mrk.11.11">11:11</a>). </p>
<p>On the second visit he acted, driving “out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves” (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/mrk.11.15">11:15</a>). Jesus specifically targeted those who exploited the poorest of the people coming to the temple. </p>
<p>On his third visit, Jesus spent considerable time in the temple itself (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/MRK.11.NIV">11:27-13:2</a>). He met the full array of temple leadership, including chief priests, teachers of the law and elders. Each of these leadership sectors used their interpretation of Scripture to exclude rather than to include. </p>
<p>The “ordinary people” (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/mrk.11.32">11:32</a> and <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/mrk.12.12">12:12</a>) recognised that Jesus proclaimed a gospel of inclusion. They eagerly embraced him as he walked through the temple. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.bible.com/bible/100/MRK.12.24.NASB1995">Mark 12:24</a>, Jesus addresses the Sadducees, who were the traditional high priests of ancient Israel and played an important role in the temple. Among those who confronted Jesus, they represented the group that held to a conservative theological position and used their interpretation of the Scripture to exclude. Jesus said to them:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?</p>
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<p>Jesus recognised that they chose to interpret Scripture in a way that prevented it from being understood in non-traditional ways. Thus they limited God’s power to be different from traditional understandings of him. Jesus was saying God refused to be the exclusive property of the Sadducees. The ordinary people who followed Jesus understood that he represented a different understanding of God.</p>
<p>This message of inclusion becomes even clearer when Jesus is later confronted by a single scribe (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/100/mrk.12.28">12:28</a>). In answer to the scribe’s question on the most important laws, Jesus summarised the theological ethic of his gospel: love of God and love of neighbour (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/MRK.12.NIV">12:29-31</a>).</p>
<h2>Inclusion, not exclusion</h2>
<p>Those who would exclude homosexuals from God’s kingdom choose to ignore Jesus, turning instead to the Old Testament – most particularly to <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/GEN.19.NIV">Genesis 19</a>, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Their interpretation of the story is that it is about homosexuality. It isn’t. It relates to hospitality.</p>
<p>The story begins in <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/GEN.18.NIV">Genesis 18</a> when three visitors (God and two angels, appearing as “men”) came before <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham">Abraham</a>, a Hebrew patriarch. What did Abraham and his wife Sarah do? They offered hospitality. </p>
<p>The two angels then left Abraham and the Lord and travelled into <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019%3A1-29&version=NIV">Sodom (19:1)</a> where they met Lot, Abraham’s nephew. What did Lot do? He offered hospitality. The two incidents of hospitality are explained in exactly the same language. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019%3A1-29&version=NIV">“men of Sodom” (19:4)</a>, as the Bible describes them, didn’t offer the same hospitality to these angels in disguise. Instead they sought to humiliate them (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019%3A1-29&version=NIV">and Lot (19:9)</a>) by threatening to rape them. We know they were heterosexual because Lot, in attempting to protect himself and his guests, offered his virgin daughters to them <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019%3A1-29&version=NIV">(19:8)</a>. </p>
<p>Heterosexual rape of men by men is a common act of humiliation. This is an extreme form of inhospitality. The story contrasts extreme hospitality (Abraham and Lot) with the extreme inhospitality of the men of Sodom. It is a story of inclusion, not exclusion. Abraham and Lot included the strangers; the men of Sodom excluded them.</p>
<h2>Clothed in Christ</h2>
<p>When confronted by the inclusive gospel of Jesus and a careful reading of the story of Sodom as one about hospitality, those who disavow Pope Francis’s approach will likely jump to other Scriptures. Why? Because they have a patriarchal agenda and are looking for any Scripture that might support their position.</p>
<p>But the other Scriptures they use also require careful reading. <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/lev.18.22">Leviticus 18:22</a> and <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/lev.20.13">20:13</a>, for example, are not about “homosexuality” as we now understand it – as the caring, loving and sexual relationship between people of the same sex. These texts are about relationships that cross boundaries of purity (between clean and unclean) and ethnicity (Israelite and Canaanite). </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%203%3A28&version=NRSVUE">Galatians 3:28</a> in the New Testament, Paul the apostle yearns for a Christian community where:</p>
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<p>There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. </p>
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<p>Paul built his theological argument on the Jew-Greek distinction, but then extended it to the slave-free distinction and the male-female distinction. Christians – no matter which church they belong to – should follow Paul and extend it to the heterosexual-homosexual distinction. </p>
<p>We are all “clothed in Christ” (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/gal.3.27">3:27</a>): God only sees Christ, not our different sexualities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199424/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gerald West does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Those who exclude any groups of people from God’s kingdom choose to ignore the teaching of Jesus.Gerald West, Senior Professor of Biblical Studies, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1854442022-06-21T08:52:38Z2022-06-21T08:52:38ZPerforming faith: more young Indonesian Christians play traditional music to express their religious identity<p><em>This article is published to commemorate World Music Day on June 21.</em></p>
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<p>Music forms an important <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo5867463.html">sphere of social and cultural life</a>; it sustains communities and contributes to social integration. It is a creative force in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/443604.Performing_Rites">shaping individual and group identity</a> as a means of cultural expression.</p>
<p>In a country where Christians are a minority, understanding how religious groups use traditional arts and music to convey their faith and identity is important to preserve their cultural legacy. </p>
<p>I study traditional Indonesian music genres, including their usage in Christian contexts – both Protestant and Catholic – particularly in the central part of Java and the island of Flores, in eastern Indonesia. I observed and participated in numerous religious musical events, including religious services, weddings and radio broadcasts. </p>
<p>This study is outlined in my 2020 book, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Performing-Faith-Christian-Music-Identity-and-Inculturation-in-Indonesia/Poplawska/p/book/9781032238487">Performing Faith: Christian Music, Identity and Inculturation in Indonesia</a>.</p>
<p>In the book, I observed a generational divide among Indonesian Christians. This was evident from their differing musical tastes: religious music that uses traditional mediums and language is generally favoured by middle-aged and older generations.</p>
<p>However, thanks to traditional music departments at national art schools throughout Indonesia, a significant number of young people, including Christians, incorporate traditional arts in their religious expressions.</p>
<h2>A marriage of local tradition and global faith</h2>
<p>In my studies, I analysed traditional forms of Christian music – including <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4145461">traditional dances and shadow puppet theatre</a> that were popular among older Christians. This was in sharp contrast to their younger peers, who preferred modern renditions of church songs.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A shadow puppet production with traditional <em>gamelan</em> music, dubbed “<em>Wayang Wahyu</em>”, by the Indonesian Institute of Arts-Surakarta, tells the story of Moses.</span></figcaption>
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<p>This situation is largely the result of globalisation, in addition to Indonesian national politics that has consistently stressed the need for modernisation, progress and development.</p>
<p>The image of traditional arts as “backward”, “old-fashioned” and needing “improvement”, strongly messaged by <a href="https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/global-industry-national-politics-popular-music-in-new-order-indo">the authoritarian New Order government (1966-98)</a>, contributed to the fact that young people, particularly in urban areas, often reject indigenous traditions and seek integration with “modern” national culture.</p>
<p>Some of these differences can be observed <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/inkulturasi-gamelan-jawa-studi-kasus-di-gereja-katolik-yogyakarta/oclc/48641291">between Christian youth living in towns and villages</a>, with the latter showing a greater interest in traditional music. </p>
<p>However, the picture is not as bleak as it seems. As traditional music faculties and schools have sprung up across the nation, more and more young people are studying traditional arts – an option that used to be limited to courts and elites.</p>
<p>In Java, many Catholic and Protestant communities welcome traditional music in worship services, especially within the Javanese Christian Church (<a href="https://www.sinodegkj.or.id/?page_id=221"><em>Gereja Kristen Jawa</em></a>, or GKJ). </p>
<p>Religious songs composed with Javanese <em>gamelan</em> are performed by young choir members with or without the traditional instruments. </p>
<p>As traditional arts compete for their share of the national art market, they also strive to secure a place in the life of the Indonesian Church.</p>
<p>In the 21st century, traditional arts are already present in Indonesian churches. However, Christian communities still need to nurture these art forms to broaden its audience, especially among youth. </p>
<p>Educating children and young people to understand and appreciate traditional culture as a whole, is one of the ways to ensure the sustainability of traditional music heritage.</p>
<p>Outside interest in traditional music – including by both foreign researchers and Indonesians researching local traditions other than their own – frequently generates amazement among local communities. Such interest highlights the value of traditional music, which may eventually increase the appreciation for it. </p>
<p>A foremost Catholic institution in Yogyakarta, the Center for Liturgical Music (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/pml.yk.official/?hl=en"><em>Pusat Musik Liturgi</em></a>, or PML), organises music workshops throughout the country. Their overall purpose is to induce and stimulate the development of regional religious music, especially songs, that draw on rich local traditions.</p>
<p>Karl Edmund Prier, a German priest in Indonesia who became one of PML’s leaders, emphasises that some young people who participated in these workshops became very enthusiastic about their heritage. Young Christians subsequently started learning about their own musical cultures. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Karl Edmund Prier, one of the leaders of <em>Pusat Musik Liturgi Yogyakarta</em>, on the use of traditional music in Indonesian churches.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In my work as a professor and active musician, I also see young students from Indonesia coming to Poland for their studies. Through the Indonesian Embassy, some of them become interested in traditional Indonesian music played on <em>gamelan</em> and at times on other instruments. They often join in learning and subsequently in performing for various cultural occasions in Warsaw and beyond.</p>
<p>Through plurality of music genres (not only traditional), Indonesian Christians – <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1525/9780520947429/html?lang=en">similar to their Muslim counterparts</a> – learn how to be Christian within an Asian and Southeast Asian context, how to relate to Euro-American Christianity, and how to actively shape Indonesian Christianity.</p>
<p>By means of music performance, Indonesian Christians are making diverse statements about history, power, and cultural and social alliances, while continuously exploring their own communal and individual identities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marzanna Poplawska tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>In a country where Christians are a minority, understanding how religious groups use traditional arts and music to convey their faith and identity is important to preserve their cultural legacy.Marzanna Poplawska, Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology, University of WarsawLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1834772022-05-30T16:12:46Z2022-05-30T16:12:46ZRoyal jubilees have always been surprisingly religious affairs<p>Queen Elizabeth II is the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee, marking her 70 years on the throne. Like all jubilees since the first celebrating 50 years of King George III’s reign in 1809, this is a national occasion with celebrations arranged in many communities across the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Modern royal jubilees have become chiefly associated with holidays, processions and parties. But jubilees are also religious events, and their history reveals the monarchy’s widening role in British religion and communal relations.</p>
<p>Religion is very important for the British monarchy. For the royal family, it is a matter of personal belief, expressed in regular Christian worship. Religious commitment – the association with the sacred and with absolute values – reinforces respect for the monarchy and for its <a href="https://dro.dur.ac.uk/4528/">promotion of public service, social cohesion and charitable endeavour</a>. </p>
<p>But this commitment is also <a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8886/CBP-8886.pdf">a constitutional requirement</a>. The monarch is the supreme governor of the Church of England and “defender of the faith”, the faith of the “protestant reformed religion”. The monarchy is historically a Church of England (Anglican) institution, and coronations and national thanksgiving services are held in Anglican churches. </p>
<p>You might expect that identifying with Anglicanism would have caused problems for the modern monarchy, which presents itself as a representative and unifying institution. During the 19th century, other churches resented the Church of England’s privileges. And since the 1960s, Britain has become increasingly religiously diverse, home to many members of different “world faiths”.</p>
<p>Yet just as the Church of England has adapted to new conditions, as we shall see the monarchy has actively extended its religious reach, assisted by its position as the symbolic head of the nation. Other churches and faiths want the association with the monarchy because loyalty to the sovereign and royal recognition validates their own status in national life. A social logic draws them towards the monarchy. </p>
<p>This is strengthened by the evident dutifulness and religious faith of most modern monarchs. Notably, the Queen has expressed this dutifulness in her support for religious and charitable causes. It can also be heard in the increasingly religious character of her annual Christmas broadcasts last few years.</p>
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<img alt="A huge processions of people outside of a cathedral." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466003/original/file-20220530-12-mecx69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466003/original/file-20220530-12-mecx69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466003/original/file-20220530-12-mecx69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466003/original/file-20220530-12-mecx69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466003/original/file-20220530-12-mecx69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466003/original/file-20220530-12-mecx69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466003/original/file-20220530-12-mecx69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Procession In front of St Paul’s Cathedral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?email=naomi.joseph%40theconversation.com&form=cc&mkey=mw216408">National Portrait Gallery, London</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<h2>Jubilees and the churches</h2>
<p>The monarchy is not just Anglican. By the union of England and Scotland in 1707, sovereigns are committed to upholding the presbyterian Church of Scotland. When in Scotland the royal family has since Queen Victoria’s reign worshipped as Presbyterians. More significantly, from the 1870s other churches joined in <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783275052/national-prayers-special-worship-since-the-reformation/">national services for jubilees and other royal events</a>. </p>
<p>Best known are the national thanksgiving services in London. For Queen Victoria’s golden and diamond jubilees in 1887 and 1897, representatives of numerous English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish protestant churches accepted invitations to join the congregation. For George V’s silver jubilee in 1935, representatives of these churches were more prominent, joining Anglican clergy in the ecclesiastical procession and receiving prominent seats. </p>
<p>For each jubilee, all churches also organised special local services throughout the UK, including “united services”, bringing together members of different churches. The Roman Catholic Church held its own, because of a prohibition on worship with protestants. But this ban ended in 1964, enabling the Church of England, Free Churches and the Roman Catholic Church to publish a joint service for Queen Elizabeth’s silver jubilee in 1977 for all their local churches. </p>
<p>This inter-denominational spirit was spoilt when, to the annoyance of church leaders, the national thanksgiving attended by the Queen and royal family in 1977 at St Paul’s Cathedral was an entirely Anglican service. But the archbishop of Canterbury at the time, Donald Coggan, insisted that this must never be repeated. </p>
<p>In subsequent national services for royal occasions – including the golden and diamond jubilees of 2002 and 2012 – clergy of the Free Churches, Catholic Church, and Church of Scotland have had active speaking parts. In this way, royal jubilees have been milestones in the developing cooperation among British churches.</p>
<h2>Inter-faith relations</h2>
<p>More strikingly still, the Queen as head of the Commonwealth has worked to encourage better relations between its diverse faiths. </p>
<p>In the 1970s – long before Charles, the Prince of Wales, declared that as king he would want to be the “<a href="https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/will-prince-wales-be-defender-faith-or-defender-faith">defender of faith</a>” (of both Christians and non-Christians) -– the Queen supported the creation of annual multi-faith Commonwealth services at Westminster Abbey. This was a move that obliged the Church of England to take a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/missionaries-the-monarchy-and-the-emergence-of-anglican-pluralism-in-the-1960s-and-1970s/6C8D020A5A08970473FB8922046385E3">positive attitude towards non-Christian faiths</a>. </p>
<p>For the 2002 and 2012 jubilees and for other royal occasions, <a href="https://www.royal.uk/queen-visit-faith-communities-during-golden-jubilee">representatives of world faiths</a> attended the national religious services. In 2002, members of the royal family visited Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Baha’i, Jain, Zoroastrian and Buddhist sites, and hosted a reception for faith representatives. </p>
<p>In 2012 the Queen attended a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPm0h7v_cU0">multi-faith reception of both church and faith leaders</a> at which the archbishop of Canterbury declared that a leading purpose of the monarchy was to “support the diversity of faith communities” and the Queen that the Church of England had a duty “to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country”.</p>
<p>This transformation in the religious standing of the monarchy contributes to good communal relations. It also has implications for the next coronation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/research/2015/09/01/who-wants-a-christian-coronation">Some believe</a> that in modern multi-cultural Britain the coronation will have to be changed, with removal of its traditional Anglican ritual and perhaps even much of its Christian character.</p>
<p>The next coronation will certainly be different to the last one, but the readiness of other churches and other faith leaders to participate in royal services led by Anglican clergy in Anglican places of worship suggests that the change may not be as radical as some have supposed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183477/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Williamson has received funding from The Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>The monarch is the head of the Church of England but as Britain has become more diverse so has the approach to religion in jubilees.Philip Williamson, Professor of Modern British History, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1717632021-11-15T14:43:42Z2021-11-15T14:43:42ZReligion was once Ethiopia’s saviour. What it can do to pull the nation from the brink<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431888/original/file-20211115-15-vpro7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ethiopian Orthodox pilgrims at Lalibela, Ethiopia. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ethiopia is at war with itself – all over again. Again, it is in the global media spotlight for the wrong reasons: <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/ethiopia-grave-humanitarian-crisis-unfolding-never-saw-hell-before-now-have">war, displacement, rape, and killings</a>. A nation with a long but turbulent history and a rich religious heritage has struggled to shrug off the vices holding it back from moving forward.</p>
<p>This, however, is not for a lack of opportunity. The nation lays claim to <a href="https://addisstandard.com/opinion-does-ethiopia-really-need-democracy-then-it-should-draw-resources-from-indigenous-virtues/">cultural and religious values</a> which could have been nurtured, re-calibrated, and developed to foster peaceful cohabitation. Moreover, history has afforded Ethiopia <a href="https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=ijad">many chances</a> to find a unifying formula and move to a more democratic dispensation. Many times, the country has struggled to root out toxic seeds which have effectively ruined its chances of using ethnic and religious diversity as a strength, not as a threat.</p>
<p>Ethiopia is a <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/08/orthodox-christians-are-highly-religious-in-ethiopia-much-less-so-in-former-soviet-union/">deeply religious</a> nation. Both Christians and Muslims have <a href="https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/fr/oir/interfaith-relations-between-christianity-and-islam-ethiopia">fascinating stories</a> to tell not only of their origins, but also of how they have managed to negotiate their shared space. The question, therefore, should be: what role is religion playing in the conflict in Tigray? </p>
<p>It is worth starting this discussion by way of briefly capturing the role religion played in the past in addressing threats of division and disintegration.</p>
<h2>The unifying myth</h2>
<p>Ethiopia has survived several dark epochs in its long history. Religion was one of the reasons why it survived. Take, for example, the <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199211883.001.0001/acprof-9780199211883-chapter-4">“Zemene Mesafint”</a> – the era of princes. This period, between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, got its name from the Bible because it mimicked the biblical <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43660013?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">“period of judges”</a> in Israel’s history.</p>
<p>Joshua, who had guided Israelites in the last and critical part of their journey of liberation and helped them to settle in the promised land, had just died. Upon this, the central point in Jewish life <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00393388408600023?journalCode=sthe20">started to dissipate</a>. The nation splintered into 12 tribes, followed by a vicious cycle of violence and lawlessness.</p>
<p>In the same way, the Zemene Mesafint was a treacherous time in Ethiopian history, its union <a href="https://books.google.es/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jRMWPSfPBysC&oi=fnd&pg=PA348&dq=zamana+mesafint+%2B+Israel&ots=PYQ3wV_69N&sig=qi4yB6MVHxmhDh3fjATiSOCpXSE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=zamana%20mesafint%20%2B%20Israel&f=false">threatened by power-hungry regional warlords</a>. As the real power deserted central government and lay instead with regional leaders, the nation’s political and institutional architecture was challenged. </p>
<p>Scholars <a href="https://books.google.es/books?id=m5ESDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA39&dq=Regionalism+%2B+zemene+mesafint&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_xIjEm_PjAhUBYsAKHaegA5EQ6AEIMTAB#v=onepage&q=Regionalism%20%2B%20zemene%20mesafint&f=false">believe</a> that heightened regionalism during the Zemene Mesafint brought Ethiopia to the brink of disintegration. But the Orthodox church, a powerful non-state actor, was in favour of unity at the time. Religion, therefore, provided a theologically informed political tool – a national myth of a social covenant – to abate the looming danger. </p>
<p>Ordinary citizens used this notion to invent their own version of <a href="https://books.google.es/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Y0YDve-kiK0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Ullendorff+Ethiopia+and+the+Bible&ots=QcAb3ybQgz&sig=DC8YWs0OcNTVfMmzkrspafRULjY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Ullendorff%20Ethiopia%20and%20the%20Bible&f=false">volksgiest</a>, or a way of life. Their principal concern was negotiating their space with ethnic and religious others. Ultimately, the social tool that religious intellectuals deployed to avoid existential crisis became an opportunity that helped reconfigure the Ethiopian union. For many years, it was an epistemic framework that provided a vision for peaceful cohabitation.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ethiopia-needs-a-new-rallying-point-instead-of-recycling-its-painful-past-121531">this myth</a> – and the social values that enveloped in it – has not been nurtured and re-calibrated to fit current social and political realities. Instead, it has been demystified and politicised. The result is that, instead of becoming a unifying force, it became a source of polarisation. That religious default point is now replaced by a new one: ethnicity.</p>
<p>In the current Ethiopian political reality, ethnicity is not mere allegiance, it is also an interpretive framework by which groups analyse and formulate their existence. Religion and its social values have been weakened. More worrying, religion is now being preyed upon and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1YE-gr1yGU">can be instrumentalised</a>, if necessary, by politicians to score political points.</p>
<h2>War in Tigray</h2>
<p>The problem confronting Ethiopia now has some similarity to the times of the Zemene Mesafint. For instance, powerful regional states were born. Some of them operate with worrying levels of autonomy in relation to the federal state. They have well-resourced armies that stand toe-to-toe with the federal army. </p>
<p>Personal animosities among political leaders often swiftly take a tribal shape. Ethnic allegiance, and resultant territorialism, has become a social and political prism through which human interactions are imagined. Historical injustices are not properly addressed. Instead, they are recirculated and galvanised by hostile groups to achieve their political goals. </p>
<p>So, what is the role of religion here?</p>
<p>Firstly, what is manifesting in the social and political reams is symptomatic of moral decay within the religious institutions. By their very inability to become a source of peaceful cohabitation and reconciliation, religious groups have become responsible for the loss of the moral compass in society.</p>
<p>Secondly, there is no one unified religious entity that commands attention and dictates a unifying narrative as religious institutions face their own internal crises related to ethnicity. A case in point is that Abune Mathias – the head of the Orthodox Church who is of Tigrayan descent – has recently <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ethiopia-africa-religion-99106036de345fc5e8615ca95b022b36">spoken against</a> the government’s stance in the conflict. There are other clergy members within the same church who are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpPC2WlnTUE">outspoken supporters</a> of the government’s action of “maintaining law and order” in Tigray.</p>
<p>Thirdly, even though religion is not the primary factor behind the conflict, it can be used as a mobilising factor by both sides. Supporters of the warring groups use their pulpits to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QshmiE3-XwE">demonise their perceived enemies</a> and paint their leaders in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Avy9Y9_GA">messianic light</a>. This comes with the risk of dogmatising ideological positions and desensitising conscience when atrocities are committed by those who are supported by a particular group.</p>
<p>Finally, religiously laced conversation pushes politics from ideas that can be challenged to dogma that should be defended at any cost. It, simply, is a matter of existence.</p>
<h2>Going forward</h2>
<p>Ethiopia’s future is uncertain. The country needs the efforts of every stakeholder to prevent it from the already unfolding tragedy. Religious groups – Christians and Muslims – have big roles to play. I will suggest three action points:</p>
<p>The first, and very critical, step is genuine soul-searching within each religious group. They need to ask the hard questions of why and how the society is sliding into hate-filled chaos. They need to come up with corrective actions within themselves and find a unified narrative among themselves.</p>
<p>Secondly, there is a great need for an inter-religious peace effort. This requires coming out of their own small echo chambers, empathetic listening to those who are hurting, and providing a transcendent narrative that goes beyond the political divides.</p>
<p>Third, they need to take an emotional distance from politics and find a neutral space so they can get moral clarity. They need to find courage to speak truth to power, if necessary. Ethiopia is crying out for a new social covenant – the “we” of humanity, not for the “us versus them” of politics. While diversity should be respected, and even celebrated, the religious teachings should now be focused on healing and reconciliation.</p>
<p><em>An earlier version of this article was first published by <a href="https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/religion-and-the-social-covenant-in-ethiopia-faith-in-the-tigray-conflict">Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mohammed Girma does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ethiopia’s main religions need to take an emotional distance from politics and find a neutral space so they can get moral clarity.Mohammed Girma, Visiting Lecturer, University of RoehamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1676772021-11-02T12:27:10Z2021-11-02T12:27:10ZMany scientists are atheists, but that doesn’t mean they are anti-religious<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429603/original/file-20211101-25-47o9kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C6732%2C4976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The public often assumes that scientists are atheists. The reality, however, is more complex.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/thoughtful-young-man-making-up-his-mind-science-or-royalty-free-image/662212340?adppopup=true"> SIphotography/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2017/02/15/americans-express-increasingly-warm-feelings-toward-religious-groups/">Distrust of atheists is strong</a> in the United States. The General Social Survey consistently demonstrates that as a group, <a href="https://www.secularismandnonreligion.org/articles/10.5334/snr.136/">Americans dislike atheists more than any other religious group</a>. According to various studies, nearly half of the country would <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240607100203">disapprove of their child marrying an atheist</a>, some 40% of the public <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240607100203">does not believe atheists share their view of American society</a>, and only 60% of Americans <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/285563/socialism-atheism-political-liabilities.aspx">would be willing to vote for an atheist in a presidential election</a>. </p>
<p>There is one field, however, where atheism is often assumed: science.</p>
<p>People often view scientists as “Godless.” Some of these views may be a result of people hearing more from vocal atheist scientists such as evolutionary biologist <a href="https://richarddawkins.net/">Richard Dawkins</a>, neuroscientist <a href="https://samharris.org/">Sam Harris</a> and others who are at the vanguard of a movement known as “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201699">new atheism</a>.” New atheists are not simply scientists who are convinced there is no God or gods. They couple their irreligion with an aggressive critique of religious belief as a threat to societal well-being. </p>
<p>These scientists espouse a frequently derisive rhetoric on religion and the religious public. Dawkins, for example, has argued that religion is a form of “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Selfish_Gene.html?id=ekonDAAAQBAJ">mental illness</a>” and one of the world’s “great evils” comparable to smallpox. </p>
<p>But such strident attitudes may not be representative of scientists in general.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/varieties-of-atheism-in-science-9780197539163?cc=us&lang=en&">research study</a> we conducted reveals that most atheist scientists in the U.S. and U.K. are not anti-religious. </p>
<h2>The real story of atheism in science</h2>
<p>Drawing on quantitative surveys with 1,293 scientists who identified as atheists, 81 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted from 2013 through 2016 and context material collected since then, we found that scientists’ views of religion are much more diverse than the image conveyed by new atheists. </p>
<p>Each of the scientists in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/varieties-of-atheism-in-science-9780197539163?cc=us&lang=en&">our study</a> selected the statement “I do not believe in God” when asked about their views of God – and selected this choice over options including agnosticism, the view that the existence of God or the divine is unknowable. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.elainehowardecklund.com/">sociologists</a>, <a href="https://rplp.rice.edu/people/david-r-johnson">we view religion</a> as multidimensional – consisting of beliefs, practices, traditions and identities – and seek to understand such dimensions in the lives of atheist scientists and their views of religion. </p>
<p>One of our main findings is that most atheist scientists do not want to be aligned with rhetoric that condemns religious people. Although we did not specifically ask about Dawkins in interviews, scientists often brought him up. </p>
<p>As one biologist that we interviewed in the U.K. said of him, “Well, he has gone on a crusade, basically … I think that [religion] is an easy target, and I think that he’s rather insensitive and hectoring.”</p>
<p>Even atheist scientists who harbored occasional negative views of religion expressed concerns that such rhetoric is bad for science. </p>
<p>Not only are many atheist scientists not hostile to religion, but some think religion can also be beneficial to society; in the words of one of our respondents, “you can see the benefits of going to church.” Many, for example, discussed the sense of community one finds in churches. Others emphasized religious attendance as a force of good, encouraging people to act more charitably.</p>
<p>Indeed in the U.S., 29% of atheist scientists also say they are <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/varieties-of-atheism-in-science-9780197539163?facet_narrowbytype_facet=Academic%20Research&view=Standard&type=listing&facet_narrowbypubdate_facet=Last%203%20months&facet_narrowbyproducttype_facet=Digital&lang=en&cc=us">culturally religious</a>. That is, despite their lack of belief in God, they routinely interact with religious individuals or organizations, such as having a religious spouse, sending their children to a religious school, or attending services themselves.</p>
<p>As one atheist biologist told us: “I enjoy going to church for the suspension of disbelief, for the theatrical experience, for reading, for the liturgy, for the magnificent stories and the mythic quality of those stories, which is intensely spiritual. That’s a real experience.” </p>
<h2>Atheist scientists and the religious</h2>
<p>We also found that atheist scientists and persons of faith have more in common than most people may think, such as the experience of awe and wonder. Whereas many religious individuals experience spirituality through their faith, some atheist scientists speak of their work with similar notions of awe and wonder.</p>
<p>These scientists talk about “intangible realities that imbue wonder, motivate their work and are beyond observation” – realities that they call spirituality. </p>
<p>[<em>This Week in Religion, a global roundup each Thursday.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-global-roundup">Sign up.</a>]</p>
<p>As sociologists <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/edgell">Penny Edgell</a>, <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/gerte004">Joseph Gerteis</a> and <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/hartm021">Douglas Hartmann</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240607100203">explain</a>, when asked about atheists on surveys, Americans are most likely imagining a theoretical person who rejects the idea of God, rather than thinking about an actual atheist they may have encountered. </p>
<p>Indeed, in an <a href="https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/ideological-segregation-online-and-offline/">ideologically segregated society such as the U.S</a>, religious and nonreligious individuals may not <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2011.01576.x">interact in ways that would actually inform their perspectives of one another</a>. As a result, religious and nonreligious individuals’ views of one another are heavily reliant on stereotypes of each group. </p>
<p>Consequently, when people think about atheist scientists, it is all too easy to imagine the picture painted based on those presented in the public sphere, such as Dawkins and others, in the absence of one who inhabits their community. </p>
<p>What is more, it is difficult to know an atheist when you see one, especially if they are sitting down the pew from you in church, as our research indicates they might. </p>
<p>In an era where our lives literally depend on trust in the scientific community, telling the truth about who atheist scientists are through research on them, rather than allowing them to be represented by the loudest atheist scientist voices, is consequential.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167677/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two sociologists conducted interviews with atheist scientists and found that their views on religion are not as strident as the public perceives. Some even go to church.Elaine Howard Ecklund, Professor of Sociology and Director of The Religion and Public Life Program, Rice UniversityDavid R. Johnson, Associate Professor of Higher Education, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1698952021-10-19T14:54:29Z2021-10-19T14:54:29ZPublic libraries and faith-based organizations join forces to address homelessness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426572/original/file-20211014-13-clbbep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4992%2C3585&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tents and other structures are seen in an aerial view at a homeless encampment at Strathcona Park in April, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated homelessness. Throughout the pandemic, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003142065">shelters reduced capacity</a> to comply with public health protocols, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2020-049">people lost jobs</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-020-00502-1">affordable housing remained elusive</a>. </p>
<p>With a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-12/the-high-cost-of-clearing-homeless-encampments">rise in tent cities</a> and makeshift accommodations, homelessness has gained visibility.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-cities-across-canada-grapple-with-how-to-respond-to-growing-homeless/">Local municipal authorities across Canada</a> have worked to enforce bylaws. Many have <a href="https://theconversation.com/homeless-encampment-violence-in-toronto-betrays-any-real-hope-for-police-reform-165039">dismantled encampments to the dismay of activists and homeless people</a>. </p>
<p>These events, media coverage, ensuing protests and policy discussions raise important questions about public space: How should it be used? Who is the public? And the question I am concerned with here, what are the implications of pushing people who are homeless out of these “inclusive spaces”?</p>
<h2>Homelessness stigma in public spaces</h2>
<p>Public spaces, such as parks and sidewalks, are typically thought to belong to everyone. However, <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-ad/Geomedia%3A+Networked+Cities+and+the+Future+of+Public+Space-p-9780745660769">many scholars</a> have emphasized that there are rules and unsaid expectations that include and exclude. </p>
<p>Very few spaces exist where people who are homeless can feel like they belong.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz004">Bylaws that criminalize</a> behaviours associated with homelessness — like panhandling — and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019853778">hostile architecture</a> — like a street bench with a central armrest that prevents people from lying down — are ways of pushing people out of a particular space.</p>
<p>Excluding homeless people from public spaces can perpetuate stigmas. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2012.707941">These social stigmas typically take the form of labelling</a>, stereotyping, a separation of “us and them” and a loss of social status. Sociologist Ervin Goffman famously described stigma as “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Stigma/Erving-Goffman/9780671622442">a spoiled identity</a>” based on stereotypes rather than inherent qualities. </p>
<p>Homelessness stigmas discredit individuals from participating in social life and limit access to social resources. These stigmas work against efforts to address homelessness because they can lead people to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12857">avoid essential services</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man sits on a bench in front of a homeless tent camp" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426730/original/file-20211015-28-15g2s9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426730/original/file-20211015-28-15g2s9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426730/original/file-20211015-28-15g2s9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426730/original/file-20211015-28-15g2s9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426730/original/file-20211015-28-15g2s9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426730/original/file-20211015-28-15g2s9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426730/original/file-20211015-28-15g2s9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man sits on a bench as encampment residents wait for Toronto police and city workers to clear the Lamport Stadium Park homeless encampment in July 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Social infrastructure</h2>
<p>A natural approach to addressing stigma is to bring people together by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2017.1325384">forming relationships</a> — in personal relationships, people <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211048615">know each others’ personal stories and aspirations</a>, making them less inclined to rely on prejudice and harmful stereotypes. Brené Brown, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/234254/braving-the-wilderness-by-brene-brown-phd-msw/">who researches courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy</a> captures the essence of this idea with her catchphrase: “People are hard to hate close up. Move in.” And <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.1934631">social infrastructure is the systems and environments that facilitate encounters and relationships</a>, so <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557044/palaces-for-the-people-by-eric-klinenberg/">social scientists</a> have positioned <a href="https://www.oecd-forum.org/posts/palaces-for-the-people-how-social-infrastructure-can-help-fight-inequality-polarization-and-the-decline-of-civic-life-by-eric-klinenberg">social infrastructure as an antidote to social inequality</a> and fragmentation.</p>
<p>Examples of social infrastructure include community centres, schools and <a href="https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v5i4.3430">public ice rinks</a>; any space where people can meet and establish social relationships. Social infrastructure is essential to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-021-03488-2">community wellness</a>, it offers grounds for people to pool resources, receive and offer support and navigate social differences. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12444">Strong social infrastructure</a> is accessible, safe and malleable to the public’s shifting interests, needs and challenges. Excluding those who are homeless from public spaces not only deepens stigmas that lead to the avoidance of essential services. It can also further marginalize them from the benefits of participating in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12505">communal life</a>.</p>
<h2>Spaces for people who are homeless</h2>
<p>Thankfully, some institutions seek to offer public spaces for people who are homeless. Public libraries and faith-based organizations, such as mosques, churches and non-profits grounded in religious belief, are two examples. While public libraries and faith-based organizations are both quintessential examples of social infrastructure, they differ in significant ways. </p>
<p>Both have strengths and limitations when it comes to creating social connections. Faith-based organizations can be spaces where deep friendships form. These organizations <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fer029">bring people together</a> regularly into a social and spiritual environment. However, they also have <a href="https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/2259">several barriers</a>, such as history or reputation of excluding based on identity. </p>
<p>In contrast, a core value of <a href="https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/corevalues">public librarianship</a> is to remove barriers to services. </p>
<p>Public libraries offer free services, regardless of socio-economic, housing and citizenship status, age, gender, ability, religion, sexual orientation, race or culture. Often described as a “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2009.07.008">community hub</a>,” public libraries bring people together from all walks of life. Nevertheless, they must balance their enormous mandate to address the informational, learning and leisure needs of diverse populations with bounded resources. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A big red arrow is shown in the foreground. A woman wears a face mask and plastic gloves while browsing books at the Vancouver Public Library's central branch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426731/original/file-20211015-13-1hqkeq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426731/original/file-20211015-13-1hqkeq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426731/original/file-20211015-13-1hqkeq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426731/original/file-20211015-13-1hqkeq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426731/original/file-20211015-13-1hqkeq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426731/original/file-20211015-13-1hqkeq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426731/original/file-20211015-13-1hqkeq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman wears a face mask and plastic gloves while browsing books at the Vancouver Public Library’s central branch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Partnering for stronger social infrastructure</h2>
<p>While these two institutions alone may not be able to solve the issue of social stigma, looking at how they provide spaces for homeless people is a good place to start. </p>
<p>Hamilton Public Library’s <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6804474/library-branch-east-hamilton-affordable-housing-project">Parkdale branch</a> in Ontario is an example of a partnership between a faith-based organization and a public library. This library branch is in an affordable housing residence, operated by Indwell. </p>
<p><a href="https://indwell.ca/">Indwell describes itself as</a> “a Christian charity that creates affordable housing communities that support people seeking health, wellness and belonging.” As the Parkdale branch only recently opened in <a href="https://www.hpl.ca/branches/parkdale-branch">July 2021</a>, it presents a budding opportunity to examine how these two types of social infrastructure coalesce to provide inclusive social spaces for people who are homeless. </p>
<p>Partnerships between organizations with shared interests and complementary strengths hold promise when it comes to developing novel solutions to complex problems. </p>
<p>There are several examples of both <a href="https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/2020/01/26/islamic-relief-reaches-out-to-hamilton-homeless.html">faith-based organizations</a> and <a href="https://www.homelesshub.ca/blog/strengthening-communities-role-public-library-site-connection">public libraries</a> sharing their spaces with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1044389419850707">social workers</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4278/ajhp.130403-CIT-149">health-care professionals</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0037768620971211">local enterprises</a>. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/phn.12561">a pilot project</a> in Philadelphia showed that having a social worker and a nurse working in a public library from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. helped connect homeless people with appropriate health care. The authors attributed some of this intervention’s success to the public library’s financially accessible community space. Partnerships allow organizations to do more than they could alone for those who are homeless. </p>
<p>Looking for creative ways to strengthen social infrastructure for marginalized groups may be an important step towards building a more equitable society post-COVID-19.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kaitlin Wynia Baluk works at Hamilton Public Library in Ontario as their researcher-in-residence. Kaitlin receives funding from Mitacs Inc. through Mitacs Accelerate. </span></em></p>While public libraries and faith-based organizations may not be able to solve the issue of social stigma, looking at how they provide spaces for homeless people is a good place to start.Kaitlin Wynia Baluk, Postdoctoral fellow in Health and Society, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1650452021-08-02T14:03:20Z2021-08-02T14:03:20ZWhen ‘good intentions’ don’t matter: The Indian Residential School system<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413845/original/file-20210729-27-1k51cd1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5512%2C3476&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Orange flags fly representing children who died while attending Indian residential schools in Canada, at Major's Hill Park in Ottawa, on July 1, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Canadians are once again confronted by the genocidal reality of Indian Residential Schools (IRS), some continue to ward off this painful history and legacy through the magical invocation of “good intentions.” </p>
<p>Last week, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/rheal-forest-residential-schools-1.6121886">Father Rhéal Forest</a> was banned by the Archdiocese of St. Boniface in Winnipeg from speaking publicly in wake of remarks to parishioners where he said that every residential school student he had met had loved it. He went on to minimize the harms of the system by suggesting that many of those who complained of abuse were lying, and that if there was abuse, it was by the night watchmen, not the clergy.</p>
<p>But Forest is not alone in minimizing the harms of the residential school system. From <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/07/the-history-of-canadas-residential-schools">Christian theologians</a>, to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/residential-school-system-well-intentioned-conservative-senator-1.4015115">senators</a>, to <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/two-damaged-queen-statues-at-the-manitoba-legislature-to-be-rebuilt-premier">premiers</a>, to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/alan-lagimodiere-comments-residential-schools-1.6104189">Indigenous Affairs ministers</a> — variations on the myth of “good intentions” are invoked as a tool against the truth that the legacy the residential school system tells.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://nctr.ca/records/reports/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports</a> are clear. The express intent of IRS was to “civilize” Indigenous children and assimilate them into society. As a model for the residential school system, the <a href="https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Davin-Report.pdf">1879 Davin Report</a> recommended the <a href="https://carlisleindianschoolproject.com/">Carlisle Indian Industrial School</a>, who’s architect Richard H. Pratt, described his philosophy as, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.5749/jamerindieduc.57.1.0079">kill the Indian, save the man</a>.” </p>
<h2>Negotiating an “education”</h2>
<p>First Nations had initially negotiated the provision of a school on every reserve in the <a href="http://www.trcm.ca/wp-content/uploads/PDFsTreaties/Treaties%201%20and%202%20text.pdf">numbered treaties</a>. But what they envisioned was a system of local schooling, overseen by the community, something along the lines of a “big teaching wigwam” to <a href="http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Volume_1_History_Part_1_English_Web.pdf">use the term of Chief Shingwauk</a>.</p>
<p>That vision was not to be realized, both the church and the state saw education as a means of assimilation. </p>
<p>Roman Catholic Bishop Vital Grandin, was a champion of the residential school system. His vision for the delivery of this education exploited the willingness of First Nations. <a href="http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Volume_1_History_Part_1_English_Web.pdf">He argued</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“To become civilized they should be taken with the consent of their parents and made to lead a life different from their parents and cause them to forget the customs, habits & language of their ancestors.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While some Indigenous people were indeed interested in receiving English or French education, they were not agreeing to have their own culture and language erased.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413849/original/file-20210729-25-ywojhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413849/original/file-20210729-25-ywojhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413849/original/file-20210729-25-ywojhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413849/original/file-20210729-25-ywojhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413849/original/file-20210729-25-ywojhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413849/original/file-20210729-25-ywojhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413849/original/file-20210729-25-ywojhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anglican Mission boarding in Lytton, British Columbia circa 1926.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Department of Mines and Technical Surveys/Library and Archives Canada, PA-020080)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>“Savagery” was self-extinguishing</h2>
<p>What drove Bishop Grandin to advocate such an assimilationist vision of education? </p>
<p>During the Victorian period there was a widely held belief among British imperialists that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1287f39">Indigenous people were on the verge of extinction</a>. It was believed that they were savages, and that savagery was self-extinguishing. </p>
<p>This belief came about over archaeological findings of impressive ancient structures in the Americas that fuelled various pre-Darwinian theories of human origins that saw Indigenous people as having <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1287f39">degenerated from a more advanced race and society</a>. This thought process masked the way foreign disease and violent colonial policy were actually responsible for declining population numbers.</p>
<p>It also provided plausible deniability to the colonial powers, allowing them to perform what scholars <a href="https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630">Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang</a> have called a “settler move to innocence,” while simultaneously enacting policies of genocide and displacement. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-canada-committed-genocide-against-indigenous-peoples-explained-by-the-lawyer-central-to-the-determination-162582">How Canada committed genocide against Indigenous Peoples, explained by the lawyer central to the determination</a>
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</em>
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<p>It allowed many settlers to believe that the “humane” solution to rapidly disappearing Indigenous populations was to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3662898">educate them into civilized society</a>. One can see this at work in the so-called <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/duncan-campbell-scott"><em>Indian poems</em> of Duncan Campbell Scott</a>, former deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs. </p>
<p>In Scott’s poem, “<a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-forsaken/">Forsaken</a>,” a Chippewa woman is depicted as doomed and unable to feed or provide a future for her son. In desperation, she leaves her child at the settler fort where he will have a future in the new society. </p>
<p>It should come as no surprise that Scott, the man who wrote such hauntingly evocative poetry, also oversaw the largest expansion of the IRS <a href="https://tc2.ca/sourcedocs/uploads/images/HD%20Sources%20(text%20thumbs)/Aboriginal%20History/Residential%20Schools/Residential-Schools%2010.pdf">and notoriously said in its defence</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I want to get rid of the Indian problem… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department…”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Positive rhetoric of “good intentions”</h2>
<p>The history of the residential school system is a history of using the positive rhetoric of “good intentions,” “saving” and “civilizing” to enact a genocidal <a href="https://www.livescience.com/childrens-graves-residential-schools-canada.html">erasure of Indigenous culture, identity and bodies</a>. In this way, the rhetoric of “good intentions” is a form of violent speech that provides cover for material harms. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A memorial is covered in toys, orange, flowers to commemorate those who died at IRS" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413848/original/file-20210729-23-1lclioi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413848/original/file-20210729-23-1lclioi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413848/original/file-20210729-23-1lclioi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413848/original/file-20210729-23-1lclioi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413848/original/file-20210729-23-1lclioi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413848/original/file-20210729-23-1lclioi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413848/original/file-20210729-23-1lclioi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial is seen outside the former Indian Residential School in Kamloops, B.C. The remains of 215 children were discovered buried near the site last month.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to feminist philosopher <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198738831.001.0001">Rae Langton</a>, this kind of speech only succeeds by keeping certain premises unsaid. </p>
<p>The residential school system was constructed with “good intentions” if we believe that education and civilization are unqualified goods. But I have pointed to numerous instances that show that the intent of both church and state was to kill or suppress Indigeneity so that the Crown’s assertions to sovereignty could not be challenged. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJakhHF_1zE">Wab Kinew interrupted Manitoba’s Minister of Indigenous Reconciliation and Northern Relations Alan Lagimodiere’s remarks</a>, claiming that “the residential school system was designed to take Indigenous children and give them the kind of skills and abilities they would need to fit into society as it moves forward,” Kinew exposed the unspoken settler-assumption that the purpose of the schools was benign and progressive instead of genocidal and erasive. By doing so he broke the spell of ignorance and erasure that the “good intentions” rhetoric so often achieves.</p>
<p>Dene scholar <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/red-skin-white-masks">Glen Coulthard</a> has pointed out that settler Canadians are eager to put the evils of the IRS firmly in the past. He points to former prime minister Stephen Harper’s <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1571589171655">2008 apology</a> that historicizes the residential school system as a “sad chapter in our history.” </p>
<p>But reconciliation cannot happen when the truth of IRS’s continues to be denied and its history of erasure continues to be enabled by discourses like the myth of “good intentions.” </p>
<p>If reconciliation is still possible it <a href="https://theconversation.com/amid-more-shocking-residential-schools-discoveries-non-indigenous-people-must-take-action-161965">must involve settler Canadians learning to speak truthfully and consistently</a> about the harms that took place, their lasting impacts and a commitment to follow the example of Kinew and others in countering speech that denies genocide.</p>
<p><em>If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165045/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Turnbull is a postulant for ordination in the Anglican Church of Canada and receives research funding from the Anglican Diocese of Rupert's Land, the Anglican Foundation, and the Stanley Ray Scholarship at the University of Birmingham. </span></em></p>Variations on the myth of “good intentions” are invoked as a tool against the truth that the legacy of the IRS tells. Here’s why that needs to stop.Ryan Turnbull, Phd cand. in Theology and Religion, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1645242021-07-21T14:53:50Z2021-07-21T14:53:50ZAfter findings at Indian Residential Schools, settler Canadians shouldn’t hide behind the ‘gothic narrative’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411305/original/file-20210714-13-1rw6iqp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C4726%2C3101&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Firefighters walk past the remains of a Catholic church that was on fire, in Morinville, Alta. in June 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of <a href="https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AAAA-Hamilton-Report-Illustrations-final.pdf">Canada as an expansive crime scene</a> is <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-rise-of-indigenous-horror-how-a-fiction-genre-is-confronting-a-monstrous-reality-1.5323428">neither unfamiliar nor disorienting to Indigenous people</a>.</p>
<p>The use of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ground-radar-technology-residential-school-remains-1.6049776">ground-penetrating radar to reveal unmarked graves</a> at or near the sites of former residential schools does what personal narratives of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at residential schools and <a href="http://trc.ca/assets/pdf/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf">94 Calls to Action</a> were <a href="https://yellowheadinstitute.org/trc/">seemingly not enough to do</a>. They confront the mainstream discourse of reconciliation with some tougher questions about criminal accountability, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/critics-blast-catholic-church-1.6086030">unpaid debts</a>, <a href="https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/17858045/tdest_id/1618577">settler-state legitimacy</a> and the nature of the ground we stand on.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/amid-more-shocking-residential-schools-discoveries-non-indigenous-people-must-take-action-161965">Amid more shocking residential schools discoveries, non-Indigenous people must take action</a>
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<p>If the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ndp-mps-call-for-investigation-into-crimes-against-indigenous-children/">possibility of prosecution</a> on the horizon is something that, up to this point, Canada has managed to render unthinkable, or at most <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/father-johannes-rivoire-charges-stayed-1.5021869">not in the public interest</a>, then what does it mean for <a href="https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/thames-valley-board-lowers-all-flags-to-mourn-residential-school-genocide">flags to be lowered as a demonstration of shared grief</a>? Or for ministers to promise support for “<a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ndp-mps-call-for-investigation-into-crimes-against-indigenous-children/">affected communities</a>” to “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-63-the-current/clip/15846451-survivor-recalls-kamloops-b.c.-residential-school-remains-children">get on with the healing</a>?”</p>
<p>The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) final report, released six years ago, <a href="https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Volume_1_History_Part_1_English_Web.pdf">established that Canada’s federal government designed and orchestrated the institutionalized genocidal violence of the Indian Residential School (IRS) system</a>.</p>
<p>The location of unmarked graves today highlights some of the limitations of a TRC that did not have the power to subpoena witnesses or documents.</p>
<p>While a TRC working group called the <a href="http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Volume_4_Missing_Children_English_Web.pdf">Missing Children and Unmarked Burials Project</a> was formed to research death, disease and disappearances and to collaborate with communities in the identification and commemoration of gravesites, in <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7907424/trc-mass-graves-residential-school-federal-funding/">2009 they asked the federal government for additional funds to carry out this work</a>, but the request was denied.</p>
<h2>The figure of a perpetrator</h2>
<p>As this country processes the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/08/canada-indigenous-children-deaths-residential-schools">findings of unmarked graves</a>, public discussion has sketched the figure of a perpetrator around the Catholic Church. It is not hard to see why this figure is taking shape.</p>
<p>It was a specific Catholic order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/discovery-of-kamloops-residential-school-gravesite-like-getting-stabbed-in-the-heart/">that ran the Kamloops</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/cowessess-graves-unmarked-residential-school-marieval-1.6077797">Marieval</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/penelakut-kuper-residential-school-1.6100201">Kuper Island</a> residential schools, several associated with recently located unmarked graves. </p>
<p>The Catholic Church ran more schools than any other single church denomination.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A statue of the late Pope John Paul II, standing at the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, has been vandalized with red paint splatter and handprints" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411304/original/file-20210714-13-1xnmnlp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411304/original/file-20210714-13-1xnmnlp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411304/original/file-20210714-13-1xnmnlp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411304/original/file-20210714-13-1xnmnlp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411304/original/file-20210714-13-1xnmnlp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411304/original/file-20210714-13-1xnmnlp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411304/original/file-20210714-13-1xnmnlp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The defacing of a statue of Pope John Paul follows several other actions taken against Catholic churches in the wake of thousands of unmarked graves of Indigenous children, which were found on the grounds of various residential schools run by the church.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Rob Drinkwater</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is the unfulfilled <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/national-indigenous-leaders-papal-visit-1.6084245">call for a papal apology</a>, and the failure of Canadian Catholics to raise more than a fifth of the $25 million that was the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/critics-blast-catholic-church-1.6086030">Catholic Church’s share of the compensation</a> to be paid to IRS survivors. This commitment seems to have been abandoned on the basis of <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-archbishop-wont-commit-to-asking-pope-for-residential-school-apology/">decentralized church structure and poverty</a>, even though Canadian Catholics have been <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/catholic-buildings-fundraising-residential-school-survivors-1.6090650">raising millions for new buildings</a>.</p>
<p>The loophole of “best efforts” was written into the language of the <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100015576/1571581687074">Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement</a> (IRSSA). A <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/church-residential-school-compensation-1.6082935">supplementary part of the IRSSA</a> allowed the Catholic Church to pay some of its compensation to survivors in the form of “in-kind services,” such as counselling.</p>
<p>So, it’s not surprising that <a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/faith/fire-destroys-catholic-church-north-of-edmonton-rcmp-say-blaze-suspicious-574740042.html">burning Catholic churches</a> dot the landscape of Canada, as if we’ve reached the conclusion of <a href="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2018/10/18/brief-history-gothic-horror">some classic gothic novel</a> in which the villain is swept away in a fury of wind and fire.</p>
<p>The inferno seems a <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-monk-by-matthew-lewis">fitting end</a> for the criminally hypocritical.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/honour-those-found-at-residential-schools-by-respecting-the-human-rights-of-first-nations-children-today-163643">Honour those found at residential schools by respecting the human rights of First Nations children today</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In Ottawa (unceded Algonquin territory), an imposing monastery constructed by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1885 is the centrepiece of a 26-acre <a href="https://greystonevillage.ca/community/">redevelopment project called Greystone Village</a>.</p>
<p>The “Oblates Land” was sold to a developer <a href="https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/65674fugitive_oblate_priest_joannis_rivoire_must_be_extradited_activists_sa/">in 2014 for $32 million</a>. In 2000, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/priests-ask-taxpayers-to-cover-cost-of-abuses/article4165651/">the order proposed</a> to transfer assets to the federal government in exchange for the government’s assumption of its liability in lawsuits by residential school survivors. That proposal was later replaced by the IRSSA, the terms of which the Catholic Church has failed to fulfil. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Construction on the former 'Oblates Land'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411539/original/file-20210715-25-h9k97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411539/original/file-20210715-25-h9k97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411539/original/file-20210715-25-h9k97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411539/original/file-20210715-25-h9k97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411539/original/file-20210715-25-h9k97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411539/original/file-20210715-25-h9k97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411539/original/file-20210715-25-h9k97j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Construction is underway on former ‘Oblates Land,’ which was purchased for $32 million instead of being handed over to the federal government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Jennifer Henderson)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Elements of gothic fiction</h2>
<p>But the current focus in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pope-no-apology-residential-school-1.4596439">public culture on the Catholic Church</a> is conveniently narrow and <a href="https://meridian.allenpress.com/aicrj/article-abstract/42/4/43/212111/Residential-School-Gothic-and-Red-Power-Genre">almost intuitively familiar</a> in its reference to <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gothic-motifs">gothic narrative conventions</a> — perverse actors, imprisoning structures, a distant time, a culturally distant and <a href="https://doi.org/10.7202/011133ar">religious otherness</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7228/manchester/9781784992699.001.0001/upso-9781784992699-chapter-002">Secret burials are the stuff of gothic fiction</a>, but these gothic events actually happened, and in great numbers. Indigenous children were moved to sites of abuse, sadistic discipline and neglect. When the conventions of the gothic genre are deployed to tell the story of residential schools, they produce an inappropriate sense of events being both distant and past. Images of robed priests and church ruins are just too comfortable for many settler Canadians.</p>
<p>For those of us (settlers) implicated in Indigenous displacement and containment through our privileges, the gothic is also a reassuring projection. It wasn’t us; it was the Catholic other.</p>
<p>The gothic narrative about <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-monk-by-matthew-lewis">the moral corruption of the Catholic other</a> has a deep-seated familiarity for much of settler Canada. It is generically familiar and intuitively just-seeming — especially for white, Protestant or secular Canadians, like myself — in its channelling toward the Catholic Church of the complex sensations of horror, disgust, shame and anxiety provoked by the unmarked graves of children. </p>
<p>Taking shelter in this narrative does not have to be deliberate; the genre is a habit of mind — and a self-serving one.</p>
<h2>White capital and its expansion</h2>
<p>The IRS system was made real through a <a href="http://rschools.nan.on.ca/article/the-davin-report-1879-1120.asp">contracting-out arrangement</a>. The churches provided efficiencies: cheap labour and what the <a href="https://dev.nctr.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Davin-Report.pdf">Davin Report</a> called the necessary moral and <a href="http://rschools.nan.on.ca/article/the-notion-of-removal-1131.asp">ideological <em>zeal</em></a>.</p>
<p>These capacities were resourced, deliberately, by a settler-state in the service of white capital and its expansion. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/#Tole">The Enlightenment principle </a> of the separation of church and state is a flexible thing, especially in the federal government’s delegation of the day-to-day running of IRS’s to those with <em>zeal</em> for the work.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman sits with her legs crossed surrounded by hundreds of children's shoes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411307/original/file-20210714-13-1xbipe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411307/original/file-20210714-13-1xbipe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411307/original/file-20210714-13-1xbipe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411307/original/file-20210714-13-1xbipe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411307/original/file-20210714-13-1xbipe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411307/original/file-20210714-13-1xbipe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411307/original/file-20210714-13-1xbipe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jane Kigutaq, a kindergarten teacher from Arctic Bay now living in Ottawa, protests on Parliament Hill at a ‘Cancel Canada Day’ in response to the discovery of unmarked Indigenous graves at residential schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For many settlers, the feelings of outrage at the vile crimes of villains — <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-most-canadians-say-church-to-blame-for-residential-school-tragedies/">ready-made by a familiar narrative genre</a> — may shield more complex emotional knots and investments. Investments both emotional and material, in the land and resources of what we now call Canada. </p>
<p>The argument I am making here is about non-Indigenous reckoning with the mundane and normalized, as well as the truly gothic violence of settler-state institutions and <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/to-understand-b-c-s-push-for-the-coastal-gaslink-pipeline-think-fracking-lng-canada-and-the-site-c-dam/">ongoing public-private collaborations</a> in Indigenous displacement.</p>
<p>This is not a defence of the Catholic Church in Canada. The <a href="https://nctr.ca/joint-statement-nctr-to-work-with-the-oblates-to-access-residential-school-records/">shielding of individuals, records</a> and funds must stop. But it is incumbent upon settlers not to take cover under the genre of the gothic, which the current focus on the Catholic Church offers. Some of those still-to-be found residential school records are about contracting-out arrangements; they have the hands of the representative institutions of settler Canadians all over them.</p>
<p>As residential schools were just one tool for clearing the land and <a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-land-defenders-dont-call-me-resilient-ep-6-transcript-156633">building wealth from its commodification</a>, this isn’t just about the historical wrongs of the Catholic Church or Indigenous Affairs or the state; it’s about the foundations of Canadian capital.</p>
<p><em>If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164524/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Henderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Secret burials are the stuff of gothic fiction, but these gothic events actually happened to Indigenous children.Jennifer Henderson, Professor of Canadian Studies, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1642302021-07-15T12:27:12Z2021-07-15T12:27:12ZWhy some younger evangelicals are leaving the faith<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411295/original/file-20210714-23-12f7dj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C28%2C4632%2C3104&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young evangelical Christians are facing a dilemma whether to follow in the footsteps of their parents or pursue other choices.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-bow-their-heads-in-prayer-during-a-sunday-evening-news-photo/506230990?adppopup=true">Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The extent to which the number of white evangelicals have declined in the United States has been laid bare in 2021 by the <a href="https://www.prri.org/">Public Religion Research Institute’s</a> <a href="https://www.prri.org/press-release/prri-releases-groundbreaking-2020-census-of-american-religion/">2020 Census on American Religion</a>.</p>
<p>The institute’s study found that only 14% of Americans identified as white evangelical in 2020. This is a drastic decline since 2006, when America’s religious landscape was composed of 23% white evangelicals, as the report notes.</p>
<p>Along with a decline in white evangelicalism, the data indicates a stabilized increase in the number of those who no longer identify as religious at all. Scholars of religion refer to this group as “<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/08/why-americas-nones-dont-identify-with-a-religion/">nones</a>,” and they make up about a quarter of the American population. These statistics are even more drastic when considering age. In short, older Americans are much more religious than younger Americans, while millennials are likely to not practice or identify with religion. </p>
<p>This data is significant. Even though white evangelicals tend to be politically <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-christian-media-is-shaping-american-politics-95910">vocal and influential</a>, several are known to be leaving the faith. </p>
<p>Increasingly, scholarship is tracking the emergence of those defecting from religion. Religious studies scholar <a href="https://www.scu.edu/cas/religious-studies/faculty--staff/elizabeth-drescher/">Elizabeth Drescher’s</a> 2016 book, “<a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199341221.001.0001/acprof-9780199341221">Choosing Our Religion</a>,” examines numerous cases in which people transition away from their faith. She notes that people leaving evangelicalism “tended to express anger and frustration with both the teachings and practices of their childhood church.” </p>
<p>Although the statistics are sure to capture the attention of various readers, the data can give only limited insights into the more nuanced perspectives specific to critiquing white evangelicalism.</p>
<p>Over the past six years, I have been part of a team of scholars from various disciplines and universities <a href="https://wipfandstock.com/9781532617621/the-emerging-church-millennials-and-religion-volume-1/">examining the hesitancy and rejection</a> of younger individuals either leaving or attempting to reform evangelicalism in America. Some younger evangelicals are disenchanted with their faith traditions’ staunch and divisive political positions and how theology has been used to prop up these positions. </p>
<h2>Younger evangelicals’ experiences</h2>
<p>Between 2010 and 2018, I conducted over 75 interviews with those dissatisfied with their evangelical faith and observed multiple white evangelical megachurches.</p>
<p>My interviewees, all white, were typically in their late 20s to early 40s and highly critical of the Christian faith of their youth. These interviewees respond differently to their dissatisfaction. Some completely leave their faith while others try to reform their faith from within. For the majority, church was a major part of their social life, and they described rigid expectations to defend their theology, politics and spiritual communities to outsiders. </p>
<p>Several of those interviewed during my research mentioned how politics had influenced the theology of white evangelicalism in the United States. Rob, who resides in Florida and spent the majority of his early adult life as a musician in a white evangelical megachurch, told me that his church preached “God, country and the Republican Party.” He was even taught as a teenager that “Jesus was definitely a Republican,” and he characterized God as “quite angry, a cosmic referee” seeking to regulate the lives of the faithful. Today, Rob identifies as a progressive Christian and holds a much more generous view of his god. </p>
<p>My research shows <a href="https://theconversation.com/white-gen-x-and-millennial-evangelicals-are-losing-faith-in-the-conservative-culture-wars-162407">some younger evangelicals are fatigued with white evangelicalism’s allegiance to the Republican Party</a> and to specific stances on racism and sexuality. White evangelicals categorize these issues as <a href="https://iasculture.org/research/publications/culture-wars-struggle-define-america">a “culture war” for the soul of America</a> – an internal struggle for who will define and decide the future of America. </p>
<p>By framing these issues as a cultural battle, white evangelicals maintain an embattled posture targeting a list of such enemies as liberals, secularists and atheists. As sociologists <a href="https://raac.iupui.edu/about/who-we-are/our-staff/andrew-l-whitehead/">Andrew Whitehead</a> and <a href="https://www.ou.edu/cas/soc/people/faculty/samuel-perry">Samuel Perry</a> note in their <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190057886.001.0001/oso-9780190057886">study of Christian nationalism</a>, white evangelicals maintain a “collective desire to protect their cultural-political turf.” </p>
<p>Furthermore, in a racially and ethnically diversifying and increasingly pluralistic country, some evangelicals’ experiences transform their positions on political issues. Take for instance, the issue of immigration policies in the United States. White evangelicals as a group highly <a href="https://www.prri.org/research/a-nation-of-immigrants-diverging-perceptions-of-immigrants-increasingly-marking-partisan-divides/">favor restrictive immigration policies</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411296/original/file-20210714-21-1pdh2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Rev. Jose Rodriguez, of the Waltham Worship Christian Center, speaks at a meeting in Boston in March 2018 to bring attention to immigration issues." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411296/original/file-20210714-21-1pdh2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411296/original/file-20210714-21-1pdh2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411296/original/file-20210714-21-1pdh2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411296/original/file-20210714-21-1pdh2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411296/original/file-20210714-21-1pdh2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411296/original/file-20210714-21-1pdh2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411296/original/file-20210714-21-1pdh2mt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some evangelicals have taken a position against restrictive immigration policies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/USImmigration40DayFast/9714d1dae5e64e568342f8ee94574812/photo?Query=evangelicals%20united%20states&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=223&currentItemNo=79">AP Photo/Sarah Betancourt</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, Jerry, one of my interviewees who lives in North Carolina and grew up Methodist, cited the white evangelical position against restrictive immigration policies as a reason to question his faith. Today, Jerry identifies as spiritual but not religious; while still an evangelical, Jerry explained, “When it came to issues of immigration, we wanted our kids to know what it means to be an outsider. We want our kids to have a global experience.” His theological interpretation of the Bible at that time taught Jerry to welcome outsiders, and he applied this to national borders. </p>
<p>Political changes can shift religious beliefs. Jerry’s growing cultural awareness eventually replaced his evangelical interpretation of Scripture. He notes, “As opposed to looking to the Bible or church for answers, let’s have a multicultural world perspective to answer those questions.” </p>
<p>Likewise, Sarah grew up in Kentucky, spending much of her childhood in church services, Bible studies and Christian camps within a Baptist denomination. “Part of me likes the idea of church,” she says, “but I think I like the idea of just helping people more. That’s my idea of what a Christian is, someone who helps others.” She admits this while maintaining that for her personally, religious identity is unimportant. </p>
<p>Sarah’s involvement in poverty alleviation in Kentucky influenced her attitudes on how she sees white evangelical worship today: “The way that the church operates in Kentucky is so backwards. It’s all about the self. About pleasing yourself. It’s all white, middle- to upper-class people watching a big screen with a full band. I think that’s probably the opposite of what Jesus wanted.” </p>
<h2>Why is this happening now?</h2>
<p>For those trained and disciplined within white evangelicalism, the insular and authoritarian nature of the faith often creates circumstances where questioning or critiquing the faith seems impossible and can lead to shunning. </p>
<p>Brandy, in Tennessee and raised a Baptist, recounted that her family actually held a religious intervention, with a screen, PowerPoint and projector, after she stopped attending her family’s church. She experienced ostracization: “I felt rejected, overlooked, looked down upon,” she says. “I felt apart from the community.” Brandy is still a Christian and attends another more progressive church regularly, but her evangelical family refuses to accept her church as legitimate. </p>
<p>This is only a sample of interviewee comments I heard indicating a growing disaffection with the political stances and alliances of white evangelicalism. They represent a growing movement of <a href="https://www.emptythepews.epiphanypublishing.us/">“exvangelicals”</a> – those who grew up in the faith but have since abandoned it. </p>
<p>The staunch resistance to civil unions, transgender rights and women’s equality, along with the inability of white evangelicalism to grapple with its <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/White-Too-Long/Robert-P-Jones/9781982122867">racialized</a> and <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631495731">patriarchal</a> structures, is misaligned with some of these younger perspectives today.</p>
<p>As the report indicates, many millennials are simply rejecting traditional forms of religion altogether.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Terry Shoemaker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Disaffected young evangelicals and those who left the church describe an out-of-touch institution not in line with their political beliefs, a scholar foundTerry Shoemaker, Lecturer in Religious Studies, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1621452021-06-15T15:06:16Z2021-06-15T15:06:16ZIndian Residential Schools: Acts of genocide, deceit and control by church and state<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 250px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/indian-residential-schools-acts-of-genocide-deceit-and-control-by-church-and-state" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Tragically, the global community has learned that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tk-eml%C3%BAps-te-secw%C3%A9pemc-215-children-former-kamloops-indian-residential-school-1.6043778">215 Indigenous children</a> never got the chance to return home from Kamloops Indian Residential School. And more recently, the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7947060/manitoba-brandon-first-nation-residential-school-graves/">Sioux Valley Dakota Nation identified 104 potential graves</a> at the former Brandon Indian Residential School. </p>
<p>Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, Indigenous scholar and academic director of the <a href="https://irshdc.ubc.ca/">Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre</a> at the University of British Columbia, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/canada-pressured-find-all-unmarked-indigenous-graves-after-children-s-n1269456">told <em>NBC News</em></a>: “Mass graves are a legacy of conflict and human rights violations in other parts of the world….”</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-hypocrisy-recognizing-genocide-except-its-own-against-indigenous-peoples-162128">The denial of genocide and crimes against humanity in Canada</a> by the church and state can no longer be ignored. </p>
<p>These acts of genocide are the greatest affront to humanity. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-hypocrisy-recognizing-genocide-except-its-own-against-indigenous-peoples-162128">Canada's hypocrisy: Recognizing genocide except its own against Indigenous peoples</a>
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<p>Indigenous people have always understood the sacredness and central role of children in our societies — to model <a href="https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationcurriculumdevelopers/chapter/topic-indigenous-epistemologies-and-pedagogies/">Indigenous holism</a> and maintain connections to the land and thus, our future. Colonialism has disrupted these connections. </p>
<p>Since the establishment of <a href="https://fulcrum.bookstore.ipgbook.com/god-is-red-products-9781555914981.php">man-made hegemonic structures began with religion</a>, <a href="https://d-nb.info/1031400591/34">imperialism continues with colonialism,</a> which has led to the dispossession of Indigenous people.</p>
<p>This dispossession was a key feature of control and <a href="https://www.biblio.com/stolen-continents-by-wright-ronald/work/74985">colonialism in North America and other parts of the world</a>. It was the means to assimilating into British citizenship.</p>
<p>For example, the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand was created and signed by Māori Chiefs and the British Crown to enable <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/the-treaty-in-brief">all features of colonialism and assimilation as a British subject</a>. However, 90 years later, assimilation was not successful. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Indigenous students sit at desks in a classroom looking up at a teacher" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405732/original/file-20210610-13-pzlmuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405732/original/file-20210610-13-pzlmuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405732/original/file-20210610-13-pzlmuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405732/original/file-20210610-13-pzlmuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405732/original/file-20210610-13-pzlmuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405732/original/file-20210610-13-pzlmuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405732/original/file-20210610-13-pzlmuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Indigenous children in class with a teacher at an Indian Residential School in Québec.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/14096952968/in/album-72157644821521916/">(Library and Archives Canada, PA-212965)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It becomes clear that assimilation was not successful in Canada either because the government found <a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/">it necessary to mandate attendance at IRS</a>. As Indigenous children struggled through a foreign curriculum and system that attempted to strip away their traditional way of life, they unknowingly were trying to survive acts of genocide.</p>
<p>These acts of genocide were strategically implemented by church and state to remove Indigenous people from their land and, in turn, their culture through dispossession.</p>
<p>Both of us have a personal connection to this. Cynthia Stirbys is a fourth generation descendant of Indian Residential Schools survivors. Her research — <em><a href="https://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/34264">Potentializing wellness to overcome trauma</a></em> — focuses on patterns and causes of intergenerational trauma. Amelia McComber attended theological school to examine the role of the church in the lives of Indigenous people. She concluded that the state used the church as a tool to break down Indigenous societies.</p>
<h2>Religion and control</h2>
<p>Residential schools were <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-catholic-church-ran-most-of-canadas-residential-schools-yet-remains/">primarily run by the Catholic church</a>. Since its adoption by the Roman Empire, Catholicism became entwined with notions of divine-sanctioned conquest and the church concerned itself with <a href="https://fulcrum.bookstore.ipgbook.com/god-is-red-products-9781555914981.php">control, money, capitalism and land acquisition</a>. </p>
<p>The Truth and Reconciliation Commission <a href="http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Honouring_the_Truth_Reconciling_for_the_Future_July_23_2015.pdf">Final Report reiterated as much</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While they often worked in isolation and under difficult conditions, missionaries were representatives of worldwide organizations that
enjoyed the backing of influential individuals in some of the most powerful nations of the world, and which came to amass considerable experience in transforming different cultures. Residential schools figured prominently in missionary work, not only in Canada, but also around the world. Christian missionaries played a complex but central role in the European colonial project. Their presence helped justify the extension of empires, since they were visibly spreading the word of God to the heathen. If their efforts were unsuccessful, the missionaries might conclude that those who refused to accept the Christian message could not expect the protection of the church or the law, thus clearing the way for their destruction.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of nuns with Indigenous children stand outside of a building, black and white photo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405728/original/file-20210610-21-9380ts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405728/original/file-20210610-21-9380ts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405728/original/file-20210610-21-9380ts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405728/original/file-20210610-21-9380ts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405728/original/file-20210610-21-9380ts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405728/original/file-20210610-21-9380ts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405728/original/file-20210610-21-9380ts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A group of nuns with Indigenous children in Port Harrison, Que., circa 1890.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/14260482006/in/album-72157644821521916/">(H. J. Woodside. Library and Archives Canada, PA-123707)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Christ’s teachings, we have understood the significance and central role of children in our global societies to represent the future. Central to his teachings are: “<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2019%3A14&version=NIV">Let the little children come to me …</a>.” </p>
<p>The meaning of Jesus’ teachings have been co-opted throughout history <a href="https://fulcrum.bookstore.ipgbook.com/god-is-red-products-9781555914981.php">to support the agenda of the powerful</a>. The discovery of the 215 children reveal this deceit.</p>
<p>Indigenous legal scholar Tamara Starblanket was recently quoted in an article, <a href="https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/reckoning-with-genocide-and-the-denialism-of-the-canadian-state"><em>Reckoning with genocide and the denialism of the Canadian State</em></a>:</p>
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<p>“The laws and policies that force our children’s removal are about our lands and how to gain domination over the lands, minerals, waters, and airspace. The government attempted forcible denationalization, … by massive and widespread forcible indoctrination. … The effect is that our children do not understand their responsibilities, languages, cultures, spirituality, laws and direct connection to our lands and their duty to protect our lands for future generations.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The heartache of being separated from our land and sacred spaces, while unbelievably painful, does not compare to the heartache of losing our children and having them separated from their families and communities. </p>
<p>It becomes clear that Indigenous Peoples were being targeted with the implementation of Indian Residential Schools. Through the physical removal of Indigenous children from their communities, the church and state were dispossessing Indigenous people by attempting to strip them of culture and trying to assimilate them into broader Canadian society.</p>
<h2>Humanity remains in a state of sickness</h2>
<p>The United Nations Human Rights Office has called on the Canadian government to ensure “<a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/un-human-rights-experts-call-on-canada-to-investigate-residential-school-burial-sites-574562602.html">prompt and exhaustive investigations</a>” into the deaths of Indigenous children are done, and to find their bodies by searching unmarked graves. </p>
<p>The paradox of the situation forces the global community to accept the dark truth of the loss of 215 innocent Indigenous children in Canada. The discovery has shed light on the state of the world and the self-interests of church and state have been so apparent that humanity remains in a state of sickness and ecological imbalance.</p>
<p><em>If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cynthia Stirbys received funding from CIHR: NEAHR Grant, SSHRC Grant, NAAA Grant, and Indspire Grant during my PhD (2009-2015), I also received internal research funding from UWindsor. I am the Secretary for the Board of Directors for The Welcome Center Shelter for Women (Windsor, ON).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amelia McComberreceived an Indspire Grant and a grant from the Vancouver School of Theology.</span></em></p>Acts of genocide were strategically implemented by church and the Canadian government to remove Indigenous people from their land and, in turn, their culture.Cynthia Stirbys, Assistant Professor, Social Work, University of WindsorAmelia McComber, Indigenous TheologianLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1623132021-06-09T08:32:43Z2021-06-09T08:32:43ZHow TB Joshua overcame odds to establish a spiritual empire far beyond Nigeria<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405088/original/file-20210608-28218-12t7rg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">TB Joshua was one of Africa's most revered preachers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pius Utomi/ EkpeiAFP/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>TB Joshua, the popular Nigerian charismatic preacher and televangelist, who has died at the age of <a href="https://emmanuel.tv/about/about-tb-joshua/">57</a>, left a conflicting legacy. The co-founder of The Synagogue, Church of All Nations megachurch was <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/africa/2021-06-06-tributes-for-tb-joshua-a-man-of-god-who-gave-to-the-poor-say-followers/">hailed</a> by his ardent followers as a “true man of God” and a philanthropist who </p>
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<p>fed the poor, gave electricity, educational scholarships, emergency relief, employed young people in his football club.</p>
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<p>TB Joshua founded his ministry in 1987. It became a household name in most African countries due to the live broadcasts of his church services. These were viewed by millions of his followers on <a href="https://emmanuel.tv/">Emmanuel TV</a> and other online platforms. </p>
<p>He had over 5 million followers on <a href="https://web.facebook.com/tbjministries?_rdc=1&_rdr">social media</a>, with over 15,000 people attending his services weekly.</p>
<p>TB Joshua significantly transformed African Pentecostalism into a transnational global movement with branches in Austria, Ghana, the UK, South Africa, Gabon and Greece. </p>
<p>He also attracted a great deal of criticism. His <a href="https://theconversation.com/obituary-tb-joshua-nigerias-controversial-pentecostal-titan-162232">critics</a> dismissed him as a “fake prophet” and a proponent of the “health and wealth” gospel which takes advantage of his followers trapped in poverty.</p>
<p>While he enjoyed huge success at home and abroad, TB Joshua was not formally recognised by two main Christian bodies in Nigeria. The Christian Association of Nigeria and Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria denounced him as an “impostor” and “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57388592">cultist</a>”. In remarks aimed at him, the Pentecostal Fellowship <a href="https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004249073/B9789004249073-s013.xml">warned</a> followers on </p>
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<p>the dangers of infiltrators who have modernised cultism by injecting the name of Jesus Christ into their largely unbiblical practices. It is necessary that we reiterate this position that the Synagogue (of All Nations) falls into this category.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So who was the controversial figure, TB Joshua?</p>
<h2>Humble beginnings</h2>
<p>Born Temitope Balogun Joshua in 1963, in the south western Nigerian state of Ondo, TB Joshua had a humble upbringing. His father worked in the colonial civil service as a translator for the British colonial administration. He got his primary education at St Stephen’s Anglican Primary school at Arigidi. As a student, TB Joshua excelled in Bible knowledge. He was often called to lead prayers at the school assembly. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/obituary-tb-joshua-nigerias-controversial-pentecostal-titan-162232">Obituary: TB Joshua, Nigeria's controversial Pentecostal titan</a>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tb-joshua-the-pentecostalist-televangelist-and-philanthropist-162297">TB Joshua: the Pentecostalist, televangelist and philanthropist</a>
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<hr>
<p>When his father passed away, TB Joshua went under the care of his uncle, who was a devout Muslim. TB Joshua was sent to a Muslim secondary school. Given that he was a devoted Christian he soon left the school and took on menial jobs for survival. These enabled him to complete his secondary education. </p>
<p>In 1987, at 24, TB Joshua and eight other people formed The Synagogue, Church of All Nations. They operated from a dilapidated house in the Agodo-Egbe neighbourhood of Lagos. As the stories of miraculous healing and prophecies spread, more people visited the new ministry. The Synagogue, Church of All Nations later relocated to the city outskirts to accommodate a growing number of congregants. </p>
<p>TB Joshua’s ministry continued to grow. An astute leader and entrepreneur, he leaves behind a vast business empire, spanning media, communication and real estate. </p>
<h2>Influence in African politics</h2>
<p>TB Joshua wielded immense political influence in Africa. He enjoyed close relationships with elites across the continent. He provided spiritual guidance to many African heads of state, <a href="https://gazettengr.com/tb-joshua-large-hearted-sponsored-politicians-in-ondo-ajulo/">politicians</a>, business executives and <a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/celebrities/pulse-list-5-celebrities-who-have-been-to-tb-joshuas-synagogue-church/sh876pg">celebrities</a>. </p>
<p>Politicians regularly flocked to consult him on issues affecting their daily life. </p>
<p>For instance, the former Ghanaian president John Evans Atta-Mills was a regular visitor at TB Joshua’s church. Other prominent people who had close ties with him included the Liberian president George Weah, the Liberian president, the former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan and Tanzania’s late president John Magufuli.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405094/original/file-20210608-28202-1qzywdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man and a woman waving a flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405094/original/file-20210608-28202-1qzywdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405094/original/file-20210608-28202-1qzywdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405094/original/file-20210608-28202-1qzywdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405094/original/file-20210608-28202-1qzywdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405094/original/file-20210608-28202-1qzywdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405094/original/file-20210608-28202-1qzywdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405094/original/file-20210608-28202-1qzywdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Attendees of TB Joshua’s Synagogue, Church of All Nations, during a service.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pius Etomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>TB Joshua topped Africa’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24028702">hierarchy of charismatic</a> Pentecostal clergymen. He had a vast network of preachers who identified as his “spiritual sons” in many countries across the continent. Prophets visited his Synagogue for spiritual mentoring and apprenticeship. </p>
<p>This network is likely to continue with his brand of Pentecostalism. </p>
<h2>Controversies</h2>
<p>TB Joshua also made a number of controversial prophecies and predictions. He once <a href="https://theconversation.com/pentecostals-and-the-spiritual-war-against-coronavirus-in-africa-137424">told</a> his followers that COVID-19 would miraculously go away. </p>
<p>He had a pathologising approach to homosexuality, for which he was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56771246">blocked from YouTube</a>.</p>
<p>He also prophesied a female candidate would win the 2016 US election. </p>
<p>In 2014, a guesthouse at The Synagogue, Church of All Nations <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57374250">collapsed</a>, killing 116 guests. A coroner later ruled that the building was poorly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3qBQ1GHJpA&ab_channel=CGTNAfrica">constructed</a>. TB Joshua tried to “kill” the story by allegedly <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/168525-synagogue-building-collapse-why-i-exposed-t-b-joshua-for-bribing-journalists-nicholas-ibekwe.html">bribing</a> journalists and spiritualising the accident. His proximity to power in Nigeria could have helped him escape without prosecution.</p>
<p>The sudden demise of TB Joshua leaves a huge question in African Christianity. How will the second generation of Pentecostal pastors who have established megachurches and created a transnational network of adherents prepare for succession and ensure their legacy continues after their demise?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162313/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Chimbidzikai receives funding from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Josiah Taru is affiliated with Great Zimbabwe University, and is a ZUKOnnect fellow at University of Konstanz and Odysseus Project Visiting Fellow at Institute for Anthropological Research In Africa (IARA) (KU Leuven)</span></em></p>TB Joshua came from nothing, but he redefined African Pentecostalism in many ways.Tinashe Chimbidzikai, PhD Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic DiversityJosiah Taru, Lecturer, Great Zimbabwe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1622972021-06-07T15:14:12Z2021-06-07T15:14:12ZTB Joshua: the Pentecostalist, televangelist and philanthropist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404867/original/file-20210607-27-mvjv58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Residents and church members gather at the main gate of the Synagogue Church of All Nations headquarters in Lagos to mourn the death of pastor TB Joshua.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In the wake of the death of Nigerian televangelist <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-29234245">Temitope Balogun Joshua</a>, who founded the Synagogue Church of All <a href="https://www.culturalheritageonline.com/location-2867_SCOAN---Synagogue-Church-of-all-Nations.php">Nations</a> in Lagos, there have been a host of tributes and <a href="https://theconversation.com/obituary-tb-joshua-nigerias-controversial-pentecostal-titan-162232">obituaries</a>. Religious scholar George Nche, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Religion Studies, University of Johannesburg, explains Joshua’s huge influence and impact on African Christianity.</em></p>
<h2>Who was TB Joshua?</h2>
<p>The Late Temitope Balogun Joshua (known as Prophet TB Joshua) was a charismatic pastor and founder of the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Ikotun-Egbe, Lagos, Nigeria. He was born on June 12, 1963 in Ondo State, Nigeria. He received his primary education at St. Stephen’s Anglican Primary School, Ikare-Akoko, Ondo State, from 1971 to 1977 but could not complete his secondary education. </p>
<p>In the early part of his life he struggled considerably. For a period he did many menial jobs, including waste picking.</p>
<p>His frequent involvement in church activities as a child earned him the nickname “small pastor”. Little would the church community know then that he would grow to become an internationally acclaimed religious leader with far-reaching <a href="https://guardian.ng/news/tb-joshua-ranked-among-most-famous-prophets-in-history/">influence</a>. </p>
<p>His church attracted a congregation of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/6/popular-but-controversial-nigerian-pastor-tb-joshua-dies-aged-57">over 15,000 people</a>. People travelled to his synagogue in Lagos from several countries in Africa and beyond. His sermons and healing activities were televised on Emmanuel TV – a TV channel he founded that was dedicated to the activities of his church.</p>
<p>TB Joshua was also an outstanding philanthropist, which further endeared him to many who admired <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/africa/2021-06-06-tributes-for-tb-joshua-a-man-of-god-who-gave-to-the-poor-say-followers/">him</a>. He received many awards for these activities. One was the Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic awarded by the Nigerian government in <a href="https://guardian.ng/news/tb-joshua-ranked-among-most-famous-prophets-in-history/">2008</a>.</p>
<h2>What role did he play in advancing Pentecostalism and televangelism?</h2>
<p>Pentecostalism appears to be, among other things, a “problem-solving” (both spiritual and physical problems) movement which has miracle and healing at its heart. Its origin and growth, especially in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14769948.2019.1627095">Africa</a>, is largely driven by people’s expectations and beliefs in the healing and transformative power of the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/026537880702400105">Holy Spirit</a>. </p>
<p>TB Joshua addressed these expectations. Numerous miracles in the forms of economic prosperity and divine healing were reportedly received in his church or remotely through his <a href="https://www.scoan.org/testimonies/">prayers</a>. This served as a major attraction for many people across Africa and beyond. </p>
<p>Numerous personalities and <a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/celebrities/pulse-list-5-celebrities-who-have-been-to-tb-joshuas-synagogue-church/sh876pg">celebrities</a> were visitors to his church. Among them were Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, South African opposition party leader Julius Malema, and international footballer Joseph Yobo. Nigerian actor Jim Iyke reportedly <a href="https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2019/06/14/t-b-joshua-a-cleric-and-his-passion-for-charity/">visited</a> him in search of healing. </p>
<p>This was a major way through which he contributed to the advancement of the Pentecostal movement in Africa. </p>
<p>Also, the nondenominational nature of the Synagogue Church of All Nations shielded the church from interdenominational tussles. This made it open and accessible to people of “all nations” irrespective of their affiliations. Little wonder he had a large congregation and following.</p>
<p>Joshua’s <a href="https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2019/06/14/t-b-joshua-a-cleric-and-his-passion-for-charity/">philanthropic activities</a> further portrayed the Synagogue Church of All Nations in a good light. By giving to the poor, Joshua presented his ministry as a movement concerned not only with the spiritual welfare of the people, but also with their physical prosperity. </p>
<p>Joshua also made a substantial contribution to the advancement of televangelism in Africa. For instance, the <a href="https://emmanuel.tv/">Emmanuel TV</a> channel was founded in 2007 by Joshua and used extensively to showcase the activities of the Synagogue Church of All Nations. These activities include bible readings, teachings, testimonies of miracles, and Christian children’s programmes like cartoons. </p>
<p>Before the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56771246">suspension</a> of his YouTube account for videos claiming to “cure” homosexuality, the Emmanuel TV channel had over 1 million subscribers, making it one of the most subscribed Christian YouTube channels worldwide. </p>
<p>Joshua also had over 5 million followers on Facebook and over 4,000 on <a href="https://twitter.com/SCOANTBJoshua?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a>. Like American historical phenomenal <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1048680">televangelists</a>, Joshua used these media platforms to spread Pentecostal ideas, advance the Synagogue Church of All Nations brand, and promote the idea of televangelism in Africa.</p>
<h2>Why was he so controversial?</h2>
<p>TB Joshua was immersed in a lot of controversies. These arose partly due to his involvement in and “unpopular” positions on sensitive socio-political and health issues, and partly due to his “unorthodox” ways of worship. </p>
<p>For instance, there was the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/23/ghana-pastor-stampede-tbjoshua">stampede</a> that led to the death of four worshippers in a rush for his “holy water”; the “misleading” <a href="https://theconversation.com/obituary-tb-joshua-nigerias-controversial-pentecostal-titan-162232">narrative</a> he gave explaining the cause of the 2014 tragedy in which 116 people died when a guest house attached to the Synagogue Church of All Nations building collapsed; the suspension of his YouTube channel following his claim that he could cure <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56771246">homosexuality</a>; his unfulfilled political and sports <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/nigerias-tb-joshua-explains-unfulfilled-us-election-prophecy-520711">prophecies</a>; and his claim to have powers to cure <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/millionaire-preacher-sends-4-000-bottles-holy-water-ebola-cure-9674136.html">Ebola</a> and <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/controversy-surrounds-nigerian-healer-1753217">HIV</a>, and to have remotely healed COVID-19 patients from an isolation centre in Honduras, <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2020-08-04-watch--theres-no-vaccine-for-covid-19-but-tb-joshua-healed-patients-through-virtual-prayer/">Central America</a>.</p>
<p>He was also criticised by mainstream <a href="https://www.keepthefaith.co.uk/2019/12/11/reinhard-bonnke-tb-joshua-and-overcoming-division-in-the-body-of-christ/">churches</a> for being heretical and deceitful for his routine way of administering healing by selling holy morning water and stickers.</p>
<p>One <a href="http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/tbjoshua.html">critic</a> urged Christians “to stay far away” from Joshua and those who that mix “Christianity and paganism in a very enticing manner”.</p>
<h2>What legacy will he leave?</h2>
<p>Joshua’s death has left a vacuum that will take a while to fill. His unmistakable mannerism and courage, his philanthropic disposition, and his “spiritual gifts” will be missed by his followers. </p>
<p>However, his greatest legacy, the Synagogue Church of All Nations, is likely to live on, possibly under the leadership of his wife and children as well as the numerous pastors who trained under him. </p>
<p>History shows that churches usually outlive their founders and in some cases grow even bigger. One example is the case of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, which has been expanding vigorously under Enoch Adejare Adeboye, who became the general overseer following the death of the founder, <a href="https://dacb.org/stories/nigeria/akindayomi-josiah/">Josiah Olufemi Akindayomi</a>, in 1980.</p>
<p>There are, however, also examples of churches that died with their founders. One example is the Mai Chaza Church, which shrank after the death of its Zimbabwean founder, Theresa Nyamushanya, in 1960.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162297/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Nche does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nigeria’s TB Joshua wasn’t just known for his evangelism and controversies. He was also a beloved philanthropist.George Nche, Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Religion Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1617822021-06-01T23:17:48Z2021-06-01T23:17:48ZNo longer ‘the disappeared’: Mourning the 215 children found in graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School<p><strong><em>Content warning: This piece contains distressing details about Indian Residential Schools</em></strong></p>
<p>A macabre part of Canada’s hidden history made headlines last week after <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tk-eml%C3%BAps-te-secw%C3%A9pemc-215-children-former-kamloops-indian-residential-school-1.6043778">ground-penetrating radar located the remains of 215 First Nations children</a> in unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. </p>
<p>Like <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/what-we-know-about-how-many-children-died-at-canada-s-residential-schools-1.5450277">150,000 Indigenous children that were taken from their families and nations and placed in residential schools</a>, the 215 bodies of children, some as young as three, located in Tk’emlúps were part of a larger colonial program to liquidate Indigenous nations of their histories, culture and foreclose on any future. To do this, Canada put into motion a system to “<a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/">kill the Indian in the child</a>.” </p>
<p>This system often killed the child. </p>
<p>While we currently have no evidence to determine the cause of death for each child, we know that they died a political death — these children were <em>the disappeared</em>.</p>
<h2>Colonial population management projects</h2>
<p><a href="https://tkemlups.ca/wp-content/uploads/05-May-27-2021-TteS-MEDIA-RELEASE.pdf">The chilling discovery in Tk’emlúps</a> reminds us of the larger project of aggressive assimilation. </p>
<p>Indian Residential Schools <a href="https://nctr.ca/">were centres for state-directed violence against Indigenous nations</a>, where the children — the heirs of Indigenous nations — were programmatically stripped of their <em>Indianness</em>. </p>
<p>Indigenous lives were broken down, sterilized of any trace of the gifts inherited from their parents and ancestors and re-packaged into Canadian bodies.</p>
<p>The brute nation-making scheme of the Canadian state looked to the existing <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/chapter-3/role-churches">infrastructure laid down by the prominent Christian churches</a>. The churches were involved in population management almost from the moment of contact between European Crowns and Indigenous nations. The Catholic Church, <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/look-canadas-indian-residential-schools-numbers/">which would go on to operate about 60 per cent of these schools</a>, was a hawkish occupier. </p>
<p>Like branch plants in a vast production scheme, the state made good use of the extensive church network to co-ordinate the extraction of raw material—Indigenous children.</p>
<p>But the revelation of a disposal site for children — unrecorded and hidden — on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School tells us that the regulation of Indigenous life extended into death. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo of dozens of Indigenous boys and girls lined up in front of the school while a row of church and school officials sit in the front of the picture." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403862/original/file-20210601-17-75978.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403862/original/file-20210601-17-75978.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403862/original/file-20210601-17-75978.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403862/original/file-20210601-17-75978.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403862/original/file-20210601-17-75978.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403862/original/file-20210601-17-75978.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403862/original/file-20210601-17-75978.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1937 photograph of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archdiocese of Vancouver Archives</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The politics of death and mourning</h2>
<p>A fact many Indigenous people understand is that life’s benefits and burdens are <a href="https://theconversation.com/not-in-the-past-colonialism-is-rooted-in-the-present-157395">shot through the colonial prism</a>. As we go through life, we quickly learn that the weight of history’s finger is pressing firmly on the scale. </p>
<p>What is often overlooked is how that uneven distribution in life carries on through death.</p>
<p>Just as in life, <a href="https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/june-2019/why-are-the-deaths-of-indigenous-women-and-girls-ungrievable/">how Indigenous death is mourned and remembered has been a matter of political control</a>. The Canadian state, in partnership with the churches, has long unilaterally assumed sovereignty over Indigenous mortality and bereavement. </p>
<p>Nowhere is this more apparent than <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/indigenous-residential-schools-canada-graves">the atrocity at Tk’emlúps which has sharpened this for many Indigenous nations</a>, as we see how the Catholic church not only denied these children the capacity to shape the means of and choose the ends of their life, but also they denied their communities control over their death.</p>
<p>In Tk’emlúps, the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/survivors-faith-leaders-call-on-catholic-church-to-take-responsibility-for-residential-schools-1.6048077">Catholic church decided that neither their lives nor their deaths were worthy of being known</a>, remembered and commemorated.</p>
<p>One of the more appalling acts by the Catholic church in Tk’emlúps was how the children were deliberately forgotten; they were <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/feds-stopped-keeping-track-of-children-who-died-in-residential-schools-probably-because-rates-were-so-high">omitted from the official records that would verify their passing</a>. </p>
<p>Documentation of death may seem clinical and lacking the human touch, but for some it has become <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/understanding-grief/201709/ambiguous-loss">crucial to contemporary remembrance</a>. It is one way, of many culturally divergent methods, of confirming death and allowing the dead to have a social afterlife with the living. The painful void that lingers is what researcher Pauline Boss called <em>ambiguous loss</em>, “<a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/ec2f44692d0bfd26dd01c9f2013b88a2/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41036">a loss that remains unclear because there is no death certificate or official verification of loss; there is no resolution, no closure</a>.”</p>
<p>The memory of the person and their remains may strike us as two separate matters, but they are intimately connected in many cultures. </p>
<p>Not unlike Catholicism, the material <a href="https://www.cpd.utoronto.ca/endoflife/Slides/PPT%20Indigenous%20Perspectives.pdf">body figures centrally amongst many Indigenous rites and ceremonies</a> that cultivate social continuity with the dead.
Matthew Engelke, who studies the anthropology of death, tells us that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“(W)hat commemoration often involves is much more than remembering the dead. It requires a serious engagement with the things that ghosts and ancestors want: a proper burial, a pot of beer, a feast, money, a fitting grave-stone, the blood of a reindeer, the blood of kin.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The truth about <em>the disappeared</em></h2>
<p>The truth about the atrocity at Tk’emlúps escaped examination during the <a href="http://www.trc.ca/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)</a>. In the weeks before the TRC launched in 2008, the Catholic church was confronted with the allegations of a mass grave. Back then, <a href="https://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/claims-of-mass-grave-at-tk-emlups-go-back-years-1.24324160">the church denied any knowledge</a>. </p>
<p>Until their remains were recently located, the Catholic church was content to leave 215 children as ‘disappeared.’ </p>
<p><em>The disappeared</em> — those that have been secretly disposed — produce a unique grieving. They leave families and communities in a state of suspended mourning, never sure whether their loved one is alive or dead, or where their remains have been left. </p>
<p>It is life abandoned to death with no chance of the living to intervene.</p>
<p>Now that they have been located, the surviving families, communities and Nations can begin to think about custodianship of the remains, mourning and memorialization. That much is up to them and every support and resource ought to be provided.</p>
<p><em>If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation used the term “mass graves” in this story published in the days following the announcement by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation. This article has since been updated to use the term “unmarked graves.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161782/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Veldon Coburn receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>Ground-penetrating radar located the remains of 215 First Nations children in a mass unmarked grave, revealing a macabre part of Canada’s hidden history.Veldon Coburn, Associate professor, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1611592021-05-26T18:11:41Z2021-05-26T18:11:41ZCash, COVID-19 and church: How pandemic skepticism is affecting religious communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401753/original/file-20210519-12241-1p0zt8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=251%2C150%2C6313%2C2885&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pandemic skepticism has given struggling churches a much needed financial boost. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The GraceLife Church in Alberta has been at the centre of a recent controversy about pandemic restrictions. The rural church located outside Edmonton has resisted restrictions on public gatherings issued to prevent the spread of COVID-19. </p>
<p>The pastor James Coates was <a href="https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/gracelife-tick-tock">charged with violating the Public Health Act in December</a> after the church failed an inspection. He was jailed shortly thereafter when he would not agree to his bail conditions. After being released, Coates continued to conduct services that flouted the province’s COVID-19 protocols, leading Alberta Health Services (AHS) to order the church closed on April 7.</p>
<p>There have been at least 12 reported outbreaks in Alberta churches to date. The most tragic occurred at <a href="https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/i-would-do-anything-for-a-do-over-calgary-church-hopes-others-learn-from-their-tragic-covid-19-experience-1.4933461">Living Spirit United Church</a> early in the pandemic, when 41 people attended a birthday celebration of an elderly congregant. Twenty-four people contracted the virus as a result and two died.</p>
<p>Research out of Australia has demonstrated <a href="https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/6/21-0465_article">the elevated risk of COVID-19 transmission in places of worship</a>. This is not surprising, given the activities commonly undertaken in church: singing, shaking hands, hugging — which all come with a high transmission risk. What is surprising, however, is that churches have emerged at the centre of pandemic skepticism movements that resist public health measures.</p>
<h2>Pandemic skepticism meets pandemic reality</h2>
<p>While recent research has found a connection <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10943-020-01058-9">between religiosity and elevated pandemic skepticism</a>, the vast majority of <a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/faith/caring-for-others-mosque-synagogue-advise-alberta-church-to-follow-covid-19-rules-574128172.html">Albertan faith communities</a> have followed public health guidelines without protest. GraceLife Community Church is an outlier in their resistance to these measures. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401758/original/file-20210519-13-6fy4ov.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A security officer walks beside the sign at the entrance to GraceLife Church. The grey church building is behind him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401758/original/file-20210519-13-6fy4ov.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401758/original/file-20210519-13-6fy4ov.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401758/original/file-20210519-13-6fy4ov.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401758/original/file-20210519-13-6fy4ov.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401758/original/file-20210519-13-6fy4ov.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401758/original/file-20210519-13-6fy4ov.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401758/original/file-20210519-13-6fy4ov.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some churches like GraceLife Church have flouted public health restrictions and become sites of protest for far-right groups.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While GraceLife has not reported an outbreak, <a href="https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/southwest-calgary-church-handed-ahs-order-over-lack-of-masks-and-no-limit-on-gathering-1.5229687">Southside Victory Church in Calgary</a> has been less fortunate. AHS has not reported any official numbers in relation to the church, but we can assume there have been at least 10 cases due to its inclusion on the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210504213610/https://www.alberta.ca/covid-19-alberta-data.aspx">provincial outbreak list</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://fb.watch/5tfVuqDOBu/">In an April sermon</a>, Senior Pastor Craig Buroker struggled to acknowledge the suffering of his sick congregants, while still questioning the severity of the pandemic. He referred to COVID-19 as “the flu” and emphasised the “99 per cent” survival rate for the infected. </p>
<p>This is a classic example of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/10030-000">cognitive dissonance</a> — a state of internal contradiction usually reserved for apocalyptic religious groups who are forced to reckon with their continued existence when the world fails to end as planned.</p>
<h2>Sources of Christian pandemic denial</h2>
<p>Three primary factors contribute to pandemic denial and resistance to public health orders in churches: finances, political culture and theology. </p>
<p>Some research suggests that the pandemic has <a href="https://baptistnews.com/article/despite-covid-worst-case-scenario-did-not-emerge-for-church-finances/">not significantly impacted church finances</a>. However, many churches are indeed struggling and have flouted public health regulations as a means of increasing funds. It worked for <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-08/la-pastor-mocks-covid-19-rules-church-members-ill">Grace Community Church</a> in Los Angeles, whose weekly donations increased six-fold after the church’s pastor openly mocked health restrictions. The church has <a href="https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/gracelife-tick-tock">close ties with GraceLife</a>.</p>
<p>Second, what drives a church to resist public health orders isn’t its Christianity, but the political culture in which the church is situated. These churches are <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/21/969539514/disinformation-fuels-a-white-evangelical-movement-it-led-1-virginia-pastor-to-qu">already filled with people inclined to question</a> restrictions and the severity of the virus. </p>
<p>GraceLife’s <a href="https://gracelife.ca/feb-7-statement/">public statement</a> on the pandemic repeats numerous themes circulated by pandemic skeptics, including Alberta Premier <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-jason-kenney-faces-criticism-for-incorrectly-referring-to-covid-19-as/">Jason Kenney’s comparison of COVID-19 to influenza</a>. GraceLife’s statement mirrors those of U.S. churches who repeated <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-08/la-pastor-mocks-covid-19-rules-church-members-ill">Donald Trump’s pandemic skepticism</a> to justify their own resistance to public health measures.</p>
<p>This rhetoric also aligns the churches with fringe anti-government elements like far-right groups and QAnon conspiracy theorists.</p>
<p>Shortly after GraceLife was ordered shut, groups that <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7750653/covid-19-calgary-convoy-gracelife-church-edmonton/">describe themselves as “patriots”</a> — a label commonly used in QAnon conspiracy circles — arrived to protest a barrier placed around GraceLife to prevent people entering the church. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401755/original/file-20210519-13-139kslu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man pulls a metal barrier while police hold onto it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401755/original/file-20210519-13-139kslu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401755/original/file-20210519-13-139kslu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401755/original/file-20210519-13-139kslu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401755/original/file-20210519-13-139kslu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401755/original/file-20210519-13-139kslu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401755/original/file-20210519-13-139kslu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401755/original/file-20210519-13-139kslu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supporters try to tear down the barrier outside GraceLife Church near Edmonton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Theology as an afterthought</h2>
<p>Theology only appears in GraceLife’s argument to support their financial and political positions. They argue that public health regulations <a href="https://gracelife.ca/mediaPlayer.php?id=5967&x=1621283285125">prevent members</a> from taking part in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-great-commission-and-why-is-it-so-controversial-111138">Great Commission</a>. In other words, it inhibits their ability to evangelize.</p>
<p>Restriction resistant churches read public health guidelines through the “<a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/trumps-age-old-christian-persecution-complex">Christian persecution complex</a>.” This perspective assumes an <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-myth-of-persecution-candida-moss?variant=32206054129698">attack on a single Christian is an attack on all Christians</a>, and <a href="https://video.foxnews.com/v/6241808338001#sp=show-clips">has played out</a> in right-wing U.S. media <a href="https://crosspolitic.com/podcast/canadian-tyranny-mp-arnold-viersen-and-james-coates-tim-stephens-aaron-rock-nate-wright/">coverage of Gracelife</a>.</p>
<p>Researchers suggest <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12677">Americans subscribing to Christian nationalism</a> are more likely to eat in restaurants, visit people indoors, gather in larger groups and are less likely wear a mask or wash their hands. Christian nationalists think of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/111191/the-armageddon-factor-by-marci-mcdonald/">Canada</a> and the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/taking-america-back-for-god-9780190057886">United States</a> as distinctly Christian nations. As such, they look to fuse Canadian and American politics and civic life with a narrow conservative version of Christian culture and morality.</p>
<p>GraceLife’s leaders have accused churches following health restrictions of being <a href="https://gracelife.ca/mediaPlayer.php?id=5967&x=1621283285125">allied with “Caesar”</a>. A reference to the Roman Empire, which many Christians understand as being complicit in Jesus’ execution and a <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-myth-of-persecution-candida-moss?variant=32206054129698">persecutor of the early church</a>.</p>
<p>Coates has claimed the government does not have the right to protect us from death. His words <a href="https://gracelife.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Coates-2021-02-14-Directing-Govt-to-its-Duty.pdf">to this effect are quite chilling</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>We live in a fallen world. Viruses and death are inevitable. A virus has unleashed on the world, God is sovereign over that virus. The effects of that virus are not the government’s responsibility. They do not have the responsibility to protect us from the virus. There is no culpability when someone dies from COVID‐19.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Coates is trying to justify his dismissal of the pandemic and the death that inevitably comes with it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402201/original/file-20210521-23-12ou2uu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man walks down a road carrying a large wooden cross." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402201/original/file-20210521-23-12ou2uu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402201/original/file-20210521-23-12ou2uu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402201/original/file-20210521-23-12ou2uu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402201/original/file-20210521-23-12ou2uu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402201/original/file-20210521-23-12ou2uu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402201/original/file-20210521-23-12ou2uu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402201/original/file-20210521-23-12ou2uu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">GraceLife Church supporters rallied in mid-April to protest the closure of the church.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Challenging government authority has also led Coates and others who have joined this <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7851355/calgary-council-voters-list-candidate-doxxing-threats/">pandemic skeptic bandwagon</a> to target Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw and other healthcare workers. Coates says he has <a href="https://youtu.be/eY7CMPh78MA?t=4120">“demonstrated clearly that the threat to Alberta is not COVID-19. It is AHS”</a>. This language is dangerous and it places a target directly on AHS employees, who have <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/disturbing-graffiti-painted-outside-edmonton-ahs-office-1.5982686">already received threats</a>.</p>
<p>It will be a year or two before we can fully look into the financial benefits of pandemic denial through both Canadian Revenue Agency data and benefits gained though speaking fees and book deals. In the meantime, we do have examples of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-08/la-pastor-mocks-covid-19-rules-church-members-ill">American churches</a> benefiting financially from pandemic denial and a GoFundMe setup to assist James Coates sits at over <a href="https://ca.gofundme.com/f/support-pastor-james">$45,000</a>.</p>
<p>Persecution stories are like currency in some Christian circles. In this case they are being used to produce actual currency. The public health charges, the arrest of church leaders, and the ongoing criticism of the church play into these narratives. </p>
<p>In sociology, we often note that privilege is more difficult to acknowledge than poverty. The fact that the Alberta government has allowed communities of faith to meet in person for most of the pandemic, albeit in a reduced capacity, while non-religious cultural communities have not, does not seem to cross the minds of Christian leaders like Coates. With GraceLife and other churches resisting health orders, their argument is not actually about persecution; it’s about keeping their privilege.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robin Willey receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>Despite outbreaks, some church leaders in Alberta have continued to downplay the severity of COVID-19. Choosing to double down on pandemic skepticism.Robin Willey, Assistant professor, Sociology, Concordia University of EdmontonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1600022021-05-20T15:07:53Z2021-05-20T15:07:53ZWhy young Nigerians are returning to masquerade rituals, even in a Christian community<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401649/original/file-20210519-15-1ra3dgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A masquerade during the celebration of an Igbo ritual. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jorge Fernández/LightRocket/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For generations, the tradition of Omabe masquerades has been part of the cultural landscape of the Nsukka area of Enugu State in Nigeria. Masquerades are cultural or religious events that often feature masked dancers embodying various spirits. Omabe masquerades are believed to be representatives of the ancestors of Nsukka. </p>
<p>The region honours these ancestors with annual traditional festivals. Some of these festivals include Onwa Asa (seventh moon), Onwa Eto (third moon) and Onunu. Celebrations occur all through the year, with some timing variations among Nsukka communities.</p>
<p>During these festivals, the venerated ancestors are believed to join in the celebrations, by re-emerging from ant holes as different forms of Omabe masquerades. For varying durations, these masquerades, particularly Oriokpa (the traditional police of Omabe), tarry among the living in Nsukka. They are believed to keep watch over the affairs of the people.</p>
<p>But the Nsukka cultural zone is also the home of <a href="https://www.igboguide.org">Igbo</a> Christians. Christianity is a dominant religion in the area, and has always condemned masquerade practices as fetish and pagan in nature.</p>
<p>Over the past 15 years or so, though, there has been a strong revival of young people – mostly Christians – participating in masquerades. I became interested in conducting a study to understand why many young people in Nsukka are engaging in masquerade practices, despite their conflicting Christian affiliations.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00020184.2021.1886049?casa_token=0O24NSp1syIAAAAA:aFhKUI4VjoG6wLQ97PH2tkoyJFBvSvSfbKVrmmjsYXQ7g4C7-Exa1BSTs-eIVqqtQLOpEyH7aV3lUXs">research</a> found that regardless of their faith, these young people fully identified with the masquerade celebration. They believed the festivals to be cultural revival exercises, whether Christianity approved or not.</p>
<p>However, this has certain implications for Christians and the community. Church members publicly indulging in masquerade rituals casts Christianity in a negative light. Also, some aspects of masquerade celebrations are still rooted in barbarism. A great example is the indiscriminate flogging of passersby during masquerade processions. This casual violence has no place in today’s modern world. </p>
<h2>Masquerade celebration as cultural revivalism</h2>
<p>Over the past four years, I have conducted field work on youth participation in masquerades in Enugu state. My focus research areas include Nsukka main town, Umundu and Obollo communities, all in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Nsukka">Nsukka</a> zone. I conducted interviews with young people from these villages about the resurgence of masquerade practices, and the revival of interest in these cultural traditions.</p>
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<p>I also observed many masquerade celebrations in these towns, noting a strong youth participation. These young people say they are purely driven by cultural revival, as masquerades represent an important element of their local culture.</p>
<p>They aren’t wrong. In the 19th century, Christian Western <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009182961204000403">missionaries</a> arriving in Nigeria held very little regard for aspects of Igbo culture. Especially the parts involving spiritualism and ancestor worship. The missionaries were averse to it, condemning the people’s cultural practices and replacing some of them with imported dogma. This was the case in Nsukka.</p>
<p>In the 1980s, local masquerade practices suffered another setback with the emergence of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487445">Pentecostalism</a> in Nigeria and the Nsukka area in particular. Pentecostal teaching emphasises the work of the Holy Spirit and the direct experience of the presence of God by believers. It was in direct conflict with masquerade practices. Traditional culture was therefore branded as ‘paganism’ and strongly discouraged.</p>
<p>In the 1960s, African theologians began to question the Western forms of Christianity in Africa. These leading theologians and scholars began to adapt local Christian practices to fit into existing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1581285?seq=1">culture</a>. Worship began to take on some of the features of its local context. A good example is the manner in which worship was conducted in church services and mass celebrations. Igbo vernacular, local drums and homegrown melodies gave Christianity an “African touch”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-sacred-sites-act-as-living-archives-in-a-ugandan-community-140571">How sacred sites act as living archives in a Ugandan community</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This process is called <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ijah/article/view/103082">inculturation</a> and it has also helped the masquerade revival. During my fieldwork, I found this to be part of the reason for young Nigerians’ reversion to masquerade practices, particularly within the Roman Catholic context. Some of the youth see a relationship between inculturation and their quest to revive masquerades in Nsukka since both are forms of cultural revival. </p>
<h2>Cultural resilience</h2>
<p>This shows Nsukka’s cultural resilience. Young people are taking on the responsibility of preserving their traditions, despite lacking governmental or organised institutional support. </p>
<p>Christianity, for all its dominance, hasn’t completely succeeded in deterring members interested in local masquerade celebrations. Despite the long history of churches and religious opposition in the area, the religion still can’t topple culture.</p>
<p>From my findings, Nsukka’s young people believe Christianity has denigrated their cultural practices for a long time. That’s why as a cultural space, they are working to revive and uphold these practices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kingsley Ikechukwu Uwaegbute does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>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.Kingsley Ikechukwu Uwaegbute, Lecturer, University of NigeriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1586852021-04-28T12:13:18Z2021-04-28T12:13:18ZCancel culture looks a lot like old-fashioned church discipline<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398212/original/file-20210501-17-127qah8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C4937%2C2888&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A form of 'canceling' was common among Baptists in America.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/baptism-1870s-artist-william-p-chappel-news-photo/1218537150?adppopup=true">Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Blink and you may have missed one of the more recent controversies over cancel culture.</p>
<p>On March 23, 2021, columnist Hemal Jhaveri published <a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2021/03/oral-roberts-ncaa-anti-lgbtq-code-of-conduct">an opinion piece</a> at For The Win, a sports commentary website operated by USA Today. In it, she remarked on the “Cinderella story” then forming around the surprising success of Oral Roberts University, an evangelical Christian school, in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Rather than cheer, Jhaveri suggested, fans should protest the team over the “university’s deeply bigoted anti-LGBTQ+ policies.”</p>
<p>Two days later, USA Today published <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/03/25/oral-roberts-university-basketball-deserve-cancel-culture-golden-knights-column/6994502002/">a response</a> by Ed Stetzer, a <a href="https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/faculty/ed-stetzer/">professor at the evangelical Wheaton College</a>, who criticized a supposed “mob” for rushing to cancel ORU from March Madness. Ironically, it was Jhaveri who was canceled – that is to say, fired – by USA Today the next day in the wake of a tweet about mass shootings, one that <a href="https://hemjhaveri.medium.com/i-am-no-longer-working-at-usa-today-heres-what-happened-7ebd540a510e">she would acknowledge was ill-considered</a>. ORU’s basketball team, meanwhile, was removed from the tournament not by howling protesters but by Arkansas in a Sweet 16 matchup.</p>
<h2>Church discipline</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/30/20879720/what-is-cancel-culture-explained-history-debate">Extensive debate</a> has swirled around the purpose, effectiveness and even the very existence of what has been called “cancel culture.” The phrase itself may have <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancel-culture-internet-joke-anything-but/">originated as a joke</a>. But the phenomenon is rooted in what has been characterized as efforts by political progressives to “call out” individuals and organizations engaged in offensive or damaging behavior. It entails public efforts, usually on social media, <a href="https://blog.thefactual.com/media-and-cancel-culture">to shame the perpetrator and instill consequences</a> and has <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-attacking-cancel-culture-and-woke-people-is-becoming-the-gops-new-political-strategy/">been seized on by many on the political right as a wedge issue</a> in the so-called culture wars.</p>
<p>But “canceling” is <a href="https://freespeech.org/stories/is-there-a-progressive-case-against-cancel-culture/">not wholly embraced on the left</a>, nor is it unknown among <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/928464/cancel-culture-conservative-glass-houses">political</a> or <a href="https://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/a-way-out-of-cancel-culture-in-the-church/">religious</a> conservatives.</p>
<p>In fact, cancel culture should have a ring of familiarity for Stetzer, a Southern Baptist. As a <a href="https://www.sksm.edu/people/christopher-l-schelin/">scholar of practical and political theology</a>, I see echoes of the phenomenon in the history of the church.</p>
<p>From their origins in the 17th century through the late 19th century, Baptists in America – most especially in the South – <a href="https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/baptist-history-evidences-church-discipline/">vigorously engaged in the practice of church discipline</a>. Believers who had allegedly sinned would be accused, tried and then convicted by their peers – the verdict was decided by democratic vote. While the repentant were restored to fellowship, the obstinate were excommunicated, or to borrow from today’s parlance, “canceled.” </p>
<h2>Cleansing the body politic</h2>
<p>Baptists prosecuted their own for a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195160994.001.0001">panoply of offenses</a>, including alcoholism, social dancing and erroneous beliefs. They disciplined white males for mistreating their wives and slaves, but they also disciplined wives for disobedience to their husbands. </p>
<p>At its height, the church discipline generated a massive turnover in membership. The historian Gregory Wills, in his book “<a href="http://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195160994.001.0001">Democratic Religion</a>,” claims that Baptists in Georgia excommunicated more than 40,000 members in the years preceding the Civil War.</p>
<p>Church discipline relaxed over time and essentially disappeared by the end of the 1920s. But some Southern Baptists today aim to restore its place in congregational life <a href="https://equip.sbts.edu/publications/journals/journal-of-theology/sbjt-44-winter-2000/church-discipline-the-missing-mark/">as a bulwark against what they see as “moral relativism</a>” and a way to address what they see as offenses such as homosexuality, sex outside of marriage and false teaching.</p>
<p>At first glance, evangelical disciplinarians and progressive “cancelers” may seem worlds apart. Yet I believe they share certain key features. They both express what can be described as a purity ethic that aims to root out behaviors deemed to be harmful from the body politic.</p>
<p>Both struggle with the question of appropriate response. Do the offender’s actions warrant exclusion? Is there an opportunity for rehabilitation and, if so, how is this achieved?</p>
<p>Both disciplining and canceling are also, in my view, acts of meaning-making that may be called religious. As the sociologist Peter Berger famously argued, religion erects a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Canopy-Elements-Sociological-Religion-ebook/dp/B004X3789G/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">sacred canopy</a>” that provides order to one’s experience of the world. Secularization has, in many cases, transferred the function of religion <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/america-politics-religion/618072/">to other domains, especially politics</a>.</p>
<p>So, just as a Baptist in 1821 maintained his sacred canopy, the Kingdom of God, in part through upholding church discipline, a political activist in 2021 might maintain their “sacred canopy” – whether it is called “social justice” or “freedom” – by calling out opinions they consider too abhorrent to be tolerated in contemporary society.</p>
<p>[<em>Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-explore">Sign up for This Week in Religion.</a>]</p>
<h2>Chance of reconciliation</h2>
<p>We not only discover a form of “cancel culture” in the history of American evangelicalism, but also some examples of how to overcome the polarization that often defines its contemporary expressions.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A depiction of James Mercer from 1881's History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397388/original/file-20210427-17-a483b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397388/original/file-20210427-17-a483b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397388/original/file-20210427-17-a483b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397388/original/file-20210427-17-a483b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397388/original/file-20210427-17-a483b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397388/original/file-20210427-17-a483b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397388/original/file-20210427-17-a483b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pastor Jesse Mercer uncanceled a congregant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jesse_Mercer.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1817, one “Brother Lancaster” was brought before the membership of Powelton Baptist Church for allowing dancing at his daughter’s wedding. Lancaster admitted his guilt but turned accuser, declaring that the church had neglected to address weightier sins, including favoritism of the rich over the poor. The pastor, <a href="https://sbhla.org/biographies/jesse-mercer/">Jesse Mercer</a>, was brought to tears and prayed for reconciliation. The church welcomed Lancaster back in to the fold, then broke into song.</p>
<p>For a fractured nation, Lancaster’s story provides an important reminder from Stetzer’s and my ancestors in faith. The quest for moral accountability finds its greatest successes – and surprises – when rebuke and counterrebuke give way to authentic listening.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.ats.edu/">Starr King School for the Ministry is a member of the Association of Theological Schools.</a></p>
<footer>The ATS is a funding partner of The Conversation US.</footer>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: The main image on this article was changed on May 1, 2021.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158685/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Schelin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Excommunicating a church member, like ‘canceling’ someone on social media, serves to cleanse the body politic of behavior deemed damaging, suggests a scholar of political theology.Christopher Schelin, Assistant Professor of Practical and Political Theologies, Starr King School for the Ministry Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1577992021-04-06T14:37:19Z2021-04-06T14:37:19ZWhy domestic abuse is such a difficult subject for churches<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393089/original/file-20210401-19-11287uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=129%2C155%2C5622%2C3354&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/christian-life-crisis-prayer-god-woman-1429250558">Shutterstock/Doidam10</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Churches can be a refuge for women fleeing domestic abuse. But sometimes they can help perpetuate abuse by failing to offer support when needed. There can be many reasons for this. Sometimes it’s because church leaders simply don’t understand – or are not willing to accept – that domestic abuse occurs within their congregations. </p>
<p>I have spent five years with the Black Church Domestic Abuse Forum (<a href="http://www.bcdaf.org.uk/">BCDAF</a>) and helped create a programme to train church leaders on the most vital issues in the hope it will address domestic abuse in those communities. </p>
<p>Black majority churches are churches of any denomination where most of the congregation are of African or Caribbean heritage and have over 100 years of history within the UK. They provide spaces for belonging, solace, fellowship and support for those suffering from racial discrimination. </p>
<p>These churches can <a href="https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/swc.2013.0040">help new migrants</a> adapt to life by offering them assistance with issues like language, <a href="https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/swc.2013.0040">culture</a>, <a href="https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/26479">mental health</a> and <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781315605012/religion-equalities-inequalities-dawn-llewellyn-sonya-sharma?refId=a548f743-3969-4121-b88d-0404f62e6117">employment</a>. </p>
<p>Black majority churches have played a major role in countering <a href="https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/traa.12073">health inequalities</a> because of the trust local communities invest in them. For example, they have raised awareness about <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3851650/">sexual health</a>, <a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/apc.2011.0163">HIV</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19371918.2019.1580658?journalCode=whsp20">breast cancer</a>, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0145721709333270">diabetes</a>, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1524839905278902">obesity</a> and the importance of <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d04c3de23761700016a1012/t/5de1865de6b0e7013a6b8ab7/1575061161660/FFP+Nutrition%26Wellness-BlackLeaders+ReportPDF.pdf">physical activity</a>. Not to mention the <a href="https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/news/uks-black-majority-churches-unite-in-support-of-covid-19-vaccine-rollout/">work</a> they are doing to encourage <a href="https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/147667-prominent-pastor-scientists-researchers-seek-to-ease-vaccine-fears-in-minority-populations">vaccine uptake</a> in minority communities in the US and UK.</p>
<h2>Male leadership</h2>
<p>But these churches are far less active on the topic of domestic abuse. Part of the problem is the overwhelmingly male leadership. And that’s not just in Black churches. In the UK <a href="https://faithsurvey.co.uk/download/csintro2.pdf">76%</a> of church leaders are men and they are the ones who are the key decision makers when it comes to church priorities.</p>
<p>This might go some way to explaining why domestic abuse seems to be a <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315605012-27/domestic-abuse-black-led-pentecostal-churches-uk-cecilia-cappel">low priority</a> and doesn’t often get referred to in <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2015/6/12/20566569/the-holy-hush-that-s-plaguing-churches-right-now-is-domestic-violence#nancy-nason-clark-a-professor-in-canada-believes-churches-dont-do-enough-to-help-with-domestic-violence-concerns-heres-whats-being-done">sermons</a>. </p>
<p>Studies have shown that churches of all denominations can actually <a href="https://wipfandstock.com/9781498282352/intimate-partner-violence-in-the-black-church/">oppress women</a> experiencing domestic abuse. For example in studies from the US, some churches advise women to “<a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4939-2266-6_8">stay and pray</a>” in relationships or create a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1077801208321982">culture</a> that makes it difficult or <a href="https://www.crisiscenter.org/documents/resources/spirituality-and-dv.pdf">unsafe</a> for women to speak out about experiences of violence and abuse.</p>
<p>There have been cases of pastors <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11089-017-0781-1">counselling</a> couples together – where one is the abuser. This further endangers the victim in question. Other examples include not reporting abusive men to the police and siding with abusers.</p>
<p>Meanwhile abuse by men – including men of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10911359.2014.956962">clergy</a> – has gone unchallenged and is under-reported. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2017.1327023">Studies</a> with clergy and victim/survivors also <a href="https://swc.nacsw.org/index.php/SWC/article/view/110">report</a> a lack of training in how to respond to reports of domestic abuse. <a href="https://swc.nacsw.org/index.php/SWC/article/view/110">Lack of training</a> was also highlighted by the priests and pastors we spoke to.</p>
<p>Even when clergy are trained, they fear they are still ill-prepared to effectively respond. So in my <a href="https://www.bcdaf.org.uk/training/">pilot training</a> and evaluation study with Black majority church leaders they were given further support to navigate the complexities of responding to domestic abuse.</p>
<p>During my time with the forum, I learned that some churches have – for many years – supported women and men who experience domestic abuse by helping them to relocate, provide advice and counselling. But not enough people know that this support is there.</p>
<h2>Fearing judgement</h2>
<p>Women who seek faith spaces to cope with the consequences of past or current abuse may fear judgement from other members of the congregation and blame themselves when interpreting religious text. For example, not being faithful and pious enough to await the answering of their prayers for the abuse to stop. Despite this, they still might wish to be supported and be a part of that faith community.</p>
<p>Belonging to a faith group can also be a barrier to accessing help and support from secular organisations for violence and abuse. Secular services can perceive faith groups as <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315605012-27/domestic-abuse-black-led-pentecostal-churches-uk-cecilia-cappel">complicit</a> in domestic abuse and faith groups can perceive secular services as anti-marriage. So women <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.504741316448842">fear</a> that secular support agencies will not understand their religious practices and avoid them. This means they stay in abusive relationships for longer.</p>
<p>I helped the BCDAF create a <a href="https://www.bcdaf.org.uk/toolkit/">toolkit</a> that includes bible stories, verses and case studies relevant to the cultural contexts of Black majority churches. The trainers, who were also pastors, advised the church teams responsible for managing reports of domestic abuse and encouraged churches to connect with domestic abuse response and support agencies. In questionnaires completed after the training, people said they were now listening more to what women reporting domestic abuse wanted, rather than just acting on their behalf.</p>
<p>All faith groups can do more and be more visible and vocal in their responses to domestic abuse. If people feel safe in church then that is a good first step. It can be a starting point for reaching out, speaking and seeking further support.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ava Kanyeredzi is a director of the Black Church Domestic Abuse Forum CiC. </span></em></p>A pilot project is training Black church leaders in how to better help domestic abuse victims in their congregations.Ava Kanyeredzi, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539832021-02-22T14:48:34Z2021-02-22T14:48:34ZWhy Nigeria’s religious leaders should learn more about climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385277/original/file-20210219-13-1sdgl5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigeria's religious leaders should play greater roles in climate change </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/catholic-archbishop-of-lagos-alfred-adewale-martins-and-news-photo/961438584?adppopup=true">Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Climate change is a global issue, but it disproportionately affects developing countries like <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/14761/675_Climate_Change_in_Nigeria.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">Nigeria</a>. Part of the response needs to be on a large political and institutional scale, based on science. But <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcc.422">studies</a> have shown that the daily behaviour of individuals also makes a difference to the rate of climate change. Some of these include going car-free, taking public transit or using bicycles more regularly, using energy wisely, recycling, consuming climate-friendly diets (like eating less meat) and wasting less. </p>
<p>It has therefore been suggested that religion might play a role in tackling climate change. This is because faith communities can <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2018.1449822">construct moral frameworks</a> that encourage people to protect the environment. The <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/538df4a5e4b041454de5ca84/t/53b9e9d4e4b0a78ebb9c3539/1404692948309/Mastaler%2C+James.+%2522The+Role+of+Christian+Ethics%2C+Religious+Leaders%2C+and+People+of+Faith+at+a+Time+of+Ecological+and+Climate+Crisis.%2522pdf.pdf">leaders</a> of these faith communities can shape the environmental worldviews and behaviour of their congregations. </p>
<p>With a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/01/the-countries-with-the-10-largest-christian-populations-and-the-10-largest-muslim-populations/">population</a> of over 170 million - both Christians and Muslims, congregating under their tutelage on weekly basis, religious leaders wield a lot of influence in Nigeria. Evidence abounds of some sociopolitical and economic interventions by these leaders that proved productive in the country. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279483120_Religion_politics_and_governance_in_Nigeria">For instance</a>, these leaders have intervened or expressed views on issues concerning good governance, gender equality, education, health and terrorism in Nigeria.</p>
<p>In my <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338558055_Beyond_Spiritual_Focus_Climate_Change_Awareness_Role_Perception_and_Action_among_Church_Leaders_in_Nigeria">study</a> among Catholic, Anglican and Pentecostal leaders in Nigeria, however, I found that these Christian leaders don’t know much about climate change. I also found that generally they haven’t taken much action on the issue. This may affect the level of climate change knowledge and concern among their congregations. Providing these leaders with relevant information on climate change would not only boost their knowledge and commitment to climate change mitigation and adaptation in Nigeria, but that of their followers as well.</p>
<h2>Awareness and action</h2>
<p>I interviewed 30 church leaders drawn from the selected denominations and from five geopolitical zones in Nigeria. All said they had heard of climate change. But their perceptions of the causes of the phenomenon varied along religious denominational lines. More Catholic leaders than others said they believed climate change was caused by human activities. The participants said churches could play a role by creating awareness, by providing charity for disaster victims, and through prayer.</p>
<p>Very few reported that they had engaged in some sort of environmental awareness creation among their congregations or groups. Where they had taken action such as planting trees, it wasn’t to address climate change but rather for aesthetic and consumption purposes. </p>
<p>Nigeria faces <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/nigeria-buharis-biggest-challenges/a-36048646">challenges</a> like youth unemployment, poverty, migration, human rights abuses, infrastructural decay, political corruption, insecurity and conflicts. This could partly explain why Christian leaders don’t see climate change as a priority yet. One Catholic leader, for example, has reportedly spoken of <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/earthbeat/nigerian-bishop-ranks-migration-bigger-issue-abortion-climate">migration</a> as a more pressing issue in Nigeria. But climate change <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/Climate/Climate%20and%20Poverty%20Conference/D1S1_Hallegatte_CCandPov_9Fev_v6.pdf">is related</a> to these other issues and can make them worse. </p>
<p>Migration and conflicts, for instance, can be driven by <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119006000398">climate change</a>. Religious beliefs could be one reason for religious leaders’ poor level of climate change knowledge and action, as I found in another <a href="https://ixtheo.de/Record/1692416359">study</a> with the same participants. </p>
<h2>The influence of religious beliefs</h2>
<p>I <a href="https://ixtheo.de/Record/1692416359">found</a> that some religious beliefs and values actually influenced climate change perceptions among Christian leaders in Nigeria. These included beliefs about end-time, dominion, theological fatalism and pessimism. I also found that denominational affiliation and theology mattered with respect to the influence of some of these religious beliefs. Nevertheless, some of these beliefs serve as barriers to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265378820931890">action</a> on the part of the church. </p>
<p>For instance, people who hold end-time beliefs see climate change and its impacts as a sign or fulfilment of end-time prophecies. Instead of trying to slow climate change, they prefer to prepare spiritually for the second coming of Christ. In my study, Anglican and Pentecostal participants expressed the end-time beliefs more than Catholics in their interpretation of climate change. </p>
<h2>The way forward</h2>
<p>Despite their limited knowledge and action on climate change, the leaders I interviewed did feel they had a role through awareness, charity and prayer. They said they could use their credibility to create awareness about the environment.</p>
<p>A recent Afrobarometer <a href="http://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Policy%20papers/ab_r7_dispatchno339_pap12_religion_in_africa.pdf">report</a> shows that in Nigeria, like other African countries, the majority do not only identify with a religious faith, but are also more likely to contact religious leaders than public officials on socio-political issues. This is because religious leaders are <a href="http://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Policy%20papers/ab_r7_dispatchno339_pap12_religion_in_africa.pdf">more trusted</a> and less widely seen as corrupt than any other group of public leaders. </p>
<p>The government, nonprofit organisations and others like the <a href="https://canng.org/">Christian Association of Nigeria</a>, the <a href="https://www.pfn.org.ng/">Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria</a>, and the <a href="https://www.cbcn-ng.org/">Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria</a> should therefore provide religious leaders with relevant climate change information and training. </p>
<p>To overcome the barrier created by some religious beliefs, communication about climate change needs to be framed around common Christian values like love and charity. This is especially apt because of the <a href="https://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2017/wp152_2017.pdf">disproportionate impact</a> climate change has on poor and vulnerable communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153983/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Nche does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nigeria’s religious leaders can shape the environmental worldviews and behaviour of their congregationsGeorge Nche, Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Religion Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1526402021-01-26T13:26:08Z2021-01-26T13:26:08ZThink US evangelicals are dying out? Well, define evangelicalism …<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380524/original/file-20210125-17-6jd5w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3494%2C2326&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not flagging, merely changing stripes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/congregants-at-first-baptist-dallas-church-celebrate-news-photo/1161614870?adppopup=true"> The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The death spiral of evangelicalism has long been <a href="https://religionnews.com/2020/03/15/why-white-evangelicals-are-at-odds-with-america/">written about in both the religious</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/the-decline-of-evangelical-america.html">mainstream press</a>.</p>
<p>The assumption is that evangelicalism has <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/03/14/americans-are-getting-more-secular-all-the-time-which-is-one-reason-why-trump-voters-are-so-angry/">weathered the storms of secularization</a> and <a href="https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-happened-to-evangelicals">politicization</a> poorly. Journalist Eliza Griswold, writing for <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/millennial-evangelicals-diverge-from-their-parents-beliefs">The New Yorker</a>, chalks this up to the theological rigidity of evangelicals: that they have been structurally incapable of changing course quickly enough to stem the tide.</p>
<p>Others have suggested that the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/07/08/former-evangelical-republican-warns-the-religious-rights-support-of-trump-will-harm-christianity_partner/">alliance between white evangelicalism and Republicanism</a> is largely to blame for the decline of evangelicals. They <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2020/11/01/evangelicals-embrace-trump-hurts-credibility-christians/6110934002/">believe that</a> becoming so intertwined with the polarizing figure of former President Donald Trump has marginalized evangelicals in the public arena, making it even less likely for them to win over new converts. </p>
<p>While the share of Americans who identify as evangelical by religious tradition does seem to <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/">be falling</a> – from 19% to 16% for white evangelicals, according to a recent Pew survey – that does, I believe, obscure a bigger and possibly more important story.</p>
<p>Looking at the data from a slightly different angle suggests that the share of Americans who self-identify as evangelicals has not changed in any meaningful way over the past decade. In fact, larger shares of Americans have said that they have had a born-again experience in 2018 than at any point since 1972, according to the General Social Survey. Moreover, as <a href="https://www.eiu.edu/polisci/faculty.php/hendrickson.php?id=rpburge&subcat=">someone who analyzes religious data</a>, I believe the link with politics may in fact be a central reason evangelicals are not declining significantly as a share of the U.S. population.</p>
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<h2>Evangelicalism is not toxic</h2>
<p>In both the <a href="https://gss.norc.org/">General Social Survey</a>, which has been asking questions about religion since 1972, and the <a href="https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/">Cooperative Congressional Election Study</a>, which interviews tens of thousands of Americans every year, respondents are asked if they consider themselves “born-again” or “evangelical.” In 2008, 1 in 3 people who responded to the CCES said that they do see themselves as evangelical. In 2019, that number was 34.6%. In the GSS, the share who said that they had experienced a “<a href="https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/1077/vshow">born-again experience</a>” has risen four percentage points during the same period.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>These self-identification measures are so important because they allow researchers a window into the mind of the average person. If the term “evangelical” has become as radioactive as <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/evangelical-christianitys-brand-used/">many people suggest</a>, then it would seem reasonable that smaller percentages of the public would willingly take on the label – but they are not. Just the opposite, in fact.</p>
<p>But just because the share of Americans who identify as an evangelical has not changed in a statistically meaningful way doesn’t mean that the composition of that group has not. A crucial part of this story is that the term “evangelical” has, I believe, become somewhat detached from its theological roots and morphed into a term that seems to capture political sensibilities as well.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/12/19/458058251/are-you-an-evangelical-are-you-sure">political scientist John Green notes</a>, “[evangelicals have] become very strongly associated with Republican and conservative politics, because since the days of Ronald Reagan up until today, that group of believers have moved in that direction politically.”</p>
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<p>There’s evidence of this move from the theological to the political. <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:1902.1/14003">In 2008</a>, 59% of evangelicals said that they attended church at least once a week. Just 16% said that they attended services “seldom” or “never.” </p>
<p>By 2019, those percentages had shifted significantly. The share who were weekly attenders declined a full seven percentage points, to 52%. On the bottom end of the spectrum, nearly a quarter of self-identified evangelicals said that they attended church “seldom” or “never” (24.2%). The share who never attended nearly tripled from 2.7% in 2008 to 7.3% <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/WOT7O8">in 2019</a>.</p>
<p>The implication is that for many of those who self-identified as “evangelical,” it is not just about devotion to a local church, but to a general orientation to the world. As Republicanism and the religious right have <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429494901">become more enmeshed</a>, it seems logical to assume that these less religiously devout people may consider their evangelicalism to be a question of political identity, rather than religious beliefs and customs. </p>
<p>And this is apparent from another angle, as well. Respondents were asked to describe how important religion is in their daily lives. <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:1902.1/14003">In 2008</a>, over 80% of evangelicals said that religion was “very important” to them. But, as each year passed, that share began to decline. <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/WOT7O8">By 2019</a>, 73.7% of evangelicals said that religion is “very important” – a decline of over seven percentage points in just 11 years.</p>
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<p>Religious evangelicals may look at these numbers and think, “This is not what the term evangelical means.” The assumption is that the term describes those who place high value on the teachings of the Bible and strive to evangelize other people into their faith. However, that understanding of the term seems to be fading, replaced with a more amorphous concept that <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691161303/the-politics-of-evangelical-identity">melds together religious doctrine and an affinity for conservative politics</a> that experts are only beginning to understand now. For instance, in her book “From Politics to Pews,” scholar <a href="https://www.polisci.upenn.edu/people/standing-faculty/michele-margolis">Michele Margolis</a> <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo28246146.html">argues</a> that people are choosing their religious affiliation based on their political partisanship with greater frequency now than in prior decades.</p>
<p>No one gets to claim ownership over a word – especially one that is so fraught as the term “evangelical.” The data offer some insight into how the definition might be evolving, not how it is defined in theological texts and social science manuscripts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152640/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Burge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The number of self-described evangelicals as a share of US population has held steady for the past decade. What is different is that they appear to identify less with church and more with politics.Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1536852021-01-20T22:22:36Z2021-01-20T22:22:36ZSt. Matthew’s Cathedral, where Biden attended pre-inauguration Mass, has long been a place where politics and faith meet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379800/original/file-20210120-23-vs9z6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5571%2C3700&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joe and Jill Biden attend Mass at St. Matthew the Apostle before the inauguration.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BidenInauguration/65c4c4e4a1a34b07bd3373acec9b3b13/photo?Query=Matthew%20AND%20Biden&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=101&currentItemNo=11">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Prior to being sworn in as the 46th president of the United States – and only the second Catholic to hold the post – Joe Biden attended Mass.</p>
<p>Accompanied by his wife, Jill Biden, and now-Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, he occupied the front pew of <a href="https://www.caravaggio.org/the-calling-of-saint-mathew.jsp">the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle</a>, known as St. Matthew’s Cathedral. It isn’t Washington’s largest Catholic church, but it has long been a place where politics and faith meet – making it a fitting venue to start the day’s proceedings.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.stmatthewscathedral.org/about/history">Established in 1840</a>, St. Matthew’s is named for <a href="https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=84">the tax collector</a> called by Jesus to be one of the Twelve Apostles. The Cathedral is a short walk from the White House and government buildings. Fittingly for the District of Columbia cathedral that carries his name, Matthew is recognized as the <a href="https://www.stmatthewscathedral.org/about/saint-matthew">patron saint of civil servants</a>. </p>
<p>But if tourists to Washington visit a Catholic church at all, they probably go to the much larger <a href="https://www.nationalshrine.org/">Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception</a>. A shrine is a site for visitors and pilgrims.</p>
<p>A cathedral, meanwhile, serves as a home church for <a href="https://adw.org/">a Catholic diocese</a> or archdiocese. </p>
<p>But St. Matthew’s – first in its original building and now in its newer 1913 structure – has been a downtown parish far longer than it has been a cathedral. Washington <a href="https://adw.org/about-us/who-we-are/historic-moments/75th-anniversary/">became an archdiocese only in 1939</a>. </p>
<p>In fact, Roman Catholics were a negligible presence in the city until the mid-20th century and the election of John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic U.S. president. </p>
<p>And it was Kennedy’s 1963 funeral that cast history’s spotlight on St. Matthew’s for the first time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="John F. Kennedy Jr. salutes as the casket of his father, the late President John F. Kennedy, is carried from St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, DC." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379803/original/file-20210120-17-14xxlx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379803/original/file-20210120-17-14xxlx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379803/original/file-20210120-17-14xxlx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379803/original/file-20210120-17-14xxlx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379803/original/file-20210120-17-14xxlx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379803/original/file-20210120-17-14xxlx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379803/original/file-20210120-17-14xxlx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">John F. Kennedy Jr. salutes as his father’s casket is carried from St. Matthew’s Cathedral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/john-f-kennedy-jr-who-turns-three-today-salutes-as-the-news-photo/517330220?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty images</a></span>
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<p>As Kennedy’s remains were carried from the cathedral to later be <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/life-of-john-f-kennedy/fast-facts-john-f-kennedy/president-kennedys-grave-in-arlington-national-cemetery">interred at Arlington National Cemetery</a>, 3-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr. offered a salute captured in an <a href="https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-now/2013/11/story-behind-the-salute-178248">iconic photograph</a>.</p>
<p>The spot near the altar in St. Matthew’s where Kennedy’s body lay as Boston’s Cardinal Richard Cushing offered his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPXSwoTcL0g">funeral Mass</a> on Nov. 25, 1963, is marked by <a href="https://www.stmatthewscathedral.org/about/history">an inlay</a> that designates it as the spot where “President Kennedy” rested. Using Kennedy’s civic title rather than his baptismal name is an unusual touch for a Catholic church. But it is a reminder that St. Matthew’s sits where church and state meet.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>St. Matthew’s was the funeral site for <a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7RssAAAAIBAJ&pg=3481%2C4039763">Sen. Joseph McCarthy</a>, too, as well as President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/episode/zbigniew-brzezinskis-funeral-service-friday-washington-3754136">Zbigniew Brzezinski</a>. Each year, St. Matthew’s is the site of the <a href="https://www.johncarrollsociety.org/membership/the-red-mass">Red Mass</a> that marks the opening of a Supreme Court term. A nonpartisan crossroads of Catholic faith and American politics, St. Matthew’s today also is notable as the seat of the <a href="https://adw.org/about-us/who-we-are/cardinal-gregory/">first African American cardinal, Wilton Gregory</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps St. Matthew’s is best <a href="https://ctu.edu/faculty/steven-millies/">appreciated the way I knew it</a>. Like many Catholics who have worked in downtown Washington, D.C., I looked upon St. Matthew’s as a quiet refuge for prayer and reflection in the middle of a workday. Joe Biden is among those Catholics working and living in the neighborhood. His prayers for the nation at St. Matthew’s add to the cathedral’s deep history, and the nation’s second Catholic president will feel that history all around him.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven P. Millies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>St. Matthew is the patron saint of civil servants – making the Washington, D.C., church bearing his name a fitting venue for presidents, both past and present.Steven P. Millies, Professor of Public Theology and Director of The Bernardin Center, Catholic Theological UnionLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1397112020-06-12T13:02:00Z2020-06-12T13:02:00ZChurchgoers aren’t able to lift every voice and sing during the pandemic – here’s why that matters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341295/original/file-20200611-80784-1ds5fqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5991%2C3988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even when singing does take place, voices are muffled.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-sings-and-claps-during-easter-sunday-morning-services-news-photo/1209750098?adppopup=true">Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Because of COVID-19, churches no longer reverberate with song; hymnals are neatly stacked and projection screens blank. Even as church leaders plan for reopening, scientists warn that it <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-06-01/coronavirus-choir-singing-cdc-warning">might be too early to resume singing in groups</a>. </p>
<p>Though such restrictions are understandable, they rob congregations of an important aspect of their Christian faith. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 5, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+5%3A18-19&version=NIV">Believers should be</a> “filled with the spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” </p>
<p>As a choral conductor, <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/music/cox_donna.php">scholar in African American sacred music</a> and teacher of sacred music and worship, I have studied the relationship between singing and worship for over three decades. Singing is critical to identity and faith. In some traditions, it is as important as the sermon. In African American churches, for instance, there is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Black-Worship-Trilogy-Preaching-Praying/dp/0937644013">an equal emphasis on preaching, praying and singing</a>.</p>
<h2>First, verse</h2>
<p>The importance of song in Christian worship can be traced to its Judaic beginnings. Throughout the biblical canon, <a href="https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-is-the-apocrypha-are-apocryphal-books-really-scripture.html">the Apocrypha</a>, the collection of books omitted from the Protestant Bible and noncanonical biblical texts, there are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/737240.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aaf50d49ab1bafe6a7b14b83553af95cc">hundreds of references to Christians singing</a>.</p>
<p>In the Old Testament, singing was used to praise God, provide lessons for the community, confess sins, provide solace in times of lamentation and joy in times of celebration. For instance, Moses and sister Miriam memorialized the miraculous exodus from Egypt through the Red Sea in song. </p>
<p>Early Christians even sang their prayers. The Book of Psalms – a collection of 150 songs and proclamations – served as the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Enter-His-Courts-Praise-IV/dp/1565632753">songbook of the early church</a>.</p>
<p>The New Testament is similarly filled with song. In the Book of James, the Apostle Paul and his companion, Silas, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2016:16-40&version=NIV">sang their way to freedom</a> in a jail. After the Last Supper, Jesus <a href="https://biblehub.com/matthew/26-30.htm">led the disciples in song</a>. </p>
<h2>Main chorus</h2>
<p>Singing has tremendous power, both spiritually and physically.</p>
<p>When people sing, sound runs through the body, giving rise to emotion and facilitating transformation. It acts as a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/music-making-found-to-be-powerful-antidepressant/">natural antidepressant</a> by releasing endorphins, the feel-good chemical. Studies have also linked singing with <a href="https://www.room217.ca/article/dementia-and-music-therapy-memory-stimulation">improved mental alertness, memory and concentration</a> through increased oxygenated blood to the brain. Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg found that <a href="https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1063&context=jbffl">changes in the brain during worship</a> make people “nicer, more forgiving, and trustful.”</p>
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<p>Choral singing creates the kind of community togetherness that is necessary in churches. It brings disparate parts into a cohesive oneness, just as corporate worship – the <a href="https://biblehub.com/matthew/18-20.html">gathering of the faithful to worship together</a> – brings individuals into oneness in Christ. </p>
<p>Bringing people together for song has proven to be dangerous in the coronavirus pandemic. On March 10, a group of 61 singers met at the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church in Washington state for rehearsal. One of the members <a href="https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-superspreader-singing.html">unknowingly infected 52 people with COVID-19</a>; two people died.</p>
<p>Stay-at-home orders designed to stem the spread of diseases hit church music programs hard – some more than others. </p>
<p>Conversations I have had with church music directors around the country reveal the creativity employed to keep the music going: utilizing solo performers, prerecorded music, reducing the amount of music to the essential in liturgical services and creating virtual choirs.</p>
<p>Those with praise teams and bands that lead the congregation in song found it easier to provide music in online services – with fewer people, social distancing was easier to maintain. As a result, they continued to rehearse and perform in livestreamed or prerecorded services.</p>
<p>For churches that rely on choirs to carry the music, things have been tougher.</p>
<p>National guidelines limiting gatherings to <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/large-events/mass-gatherings-ready-for-covid-19.html">10 or fewer people</a> meant no in-person choir rehearsals. Virtual choir rehearsals and performances are very problematic. Differences in bandwidth create lags that challenge the essence of choral singing: cohesion and community. Virtual performances demand technological expertise most choral directors are not trained to execute.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341298/original/file-20200611-80746-oqt6ou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341298/original/file-20200611-80746-oqt6ou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341298/original/file-20200611-80746-oqt6ou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341298/original/file-20200611-80746-oqt6ou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341298/original/file-20200611-80746-oqt6ou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341298/original/file-20200611-80746-oqt6ou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341298/original/file-20200611-80746-oqt6ou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A drive-in singalong during an Easter service at the First Baptist Church in Plaistow, New Hampshire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cindy-simard-sings-a-song-during-a-drive-in-easter-service-news-photo/1209753319?adppopup=true">Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The resulting experience often falls short of a true choral experience. My own gospel choir, the Ebony Heritage Singers, <a href="https://youtu.be/p6ZLQCOWMoo">recorded a song</a> for the University of Dayton’s virtual commencement using this technique. The result was pleasing, but it lacked the true feel of a gospel music performance. </p>
<p>In my experience, virtual choral experiences are pale imitations of the real thing. Being connected in a physical way, feeling each others’ inhalations, coordinating exhalations and blending voices gives life to singers and to congregations. </p>
<h2>A codetta?</h2>
<p>Although research on the spread of COVID-19 is rapidly changing, singing in groups might be deemed too risky to enable churches to return to anything approaching “normal” for a long time.</p>
<p>So, until further notice, congregations are being advised to consider alternatives to singing. Worship may still be joyful, but it will likely be more quiet. </p>
<p>[<em>Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-facts">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donna M. Cox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A choral conductor and scholar of sacred music explains what’s missing from church worship with singing banned due to the pandemic – and why live choir rehearsals are still a ways offDonna M. Cox, Professor of Music, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1387722020-06-05T12:08:54Z2020-06-05T12:08:54ZHow to be as safe as possible in your house of worship<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337148/original/file-20200522-124832-xtmj40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C0%2C2968%2C2034&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the Sunshine Cathedral holds a drive-in Easter service in its parking lot. Each car received a Ziploc bag with a prayer card, palm leaf and pre-packaged communion.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rev-dr-robert-griffin-greets-parishioners-as-they-arrive-news-photo/1218419168?adppopup=true">Getty Images / Joe Raedle</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released what it calls <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/organizations/index.html">“general considerations”</a> on safe actions for reopening houses of worship, but worship communities can accept or reject those considerations. </p>
<p>Religious worship allows tens of millions of Americans to demonstrate devotion to a higher power. It gives people an opportunity to commit – and recommit – to a set of values. In-person services foster a sense of community and belonging. Unfortunately for millions whose lives are enriched by communal worship, traditional services are ideal places for virus transmission: lots of people, close together. </p>
<p><a href="https://chmfamilymedicine.msu.edu/people/claudia-finkelstein/">As a physician</a> specializing in internal medicine, I suggest, for now at least, that we reexamine how we worship. After all, what better way to embody the values of your faith than to take steps to protect one another?</p>
<p>Even with the uncertainty and variability of reopening plans, scientifically and medically sound information is available. For starters, you’ll want to <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-at-higher-risk.html">assess your individual risk</a>, the <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">prevalence of the virus in your area</a> and the <a href="https://www.cnet.com/health/coronavirus-testing-near-me-how-to-find-covid-19-test-sites-and-wait-times/">availability of testing</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337149/original/file-20200522-124818-1dadykp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337149/original/file-20200522-124818-1dadykp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337149/original/file-20200522-124818-1dadykp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337149/original/file-20200522-124818-1dadykp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337149/original/file-20200522-124818-1dadykp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337149/original/file-20200522-124818-1dadykp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337149/original/file-20200522-124818-1dadykp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A worshiper raises her hand to the skies at a drive-in service in Louisville, Kentucky.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/worshiper-listens-to-a-song-during-the-drive-in-service-at-news-photo/1217003851?adppopup=true">Getty Images / Andy Lyons</a></span>
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<h2>The four pillars</h2>
<p>You may consider guidelines suggested by <a href="http://atulgawande.com/about/">Dr. Atul Gawande</a>, noted surgeon and author. He proposes <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/amid-the-coronavirus-crisis-a-regimen-for-reentry">four essential pillars</a> for safe reentry into communal spaces: hygiene, distancing, screening and mask use.</p>
<p>All four must operate together to minimize transmission. Will your place of worship be able to enact these pillars? </p>
<p>For example: Will you have easy access to hand-washing or sanitizing? Will communal surfaces and shared spaces be wiped down? Will attendance be limited to allow distancing, and will attendees be screened with temperature checks and self-screening questionnaires? Will your place of worship enforce mask use and distancing? Anything short of all four pillars increases transmission risk. </p>
<p>And even with all the precautions, people with infections can be asymptomatic – so despite the screening measures, you can’t be sure who has the virus and whether you might become exposed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336562/original/file-20200520-152288-1hx5iln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336562/original/file-20200520-152288-1hx5iln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336562/original/file-20200520-152288-1hx5iln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336562/original/file-20200520-152288-1hx5iln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336562/original/file-20200520-152288-1hx5iln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336562/original/file-20200520-152288-1hx5iln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336562/original/file-20200520-152288-1hx5iln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Palestinian Muslim worshipers, distanced from each other due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, pray outside the closed Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem on May 19, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/palestinian-muslim-worshippers-distanced-from-each-other-news-photo/1214171454?adppopup=true">Ahmad Gharabli AFP via Getty Images)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Today’s services: Short, outside – and cut the choir</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them">Other factors</a> influence viral spread. The dose you receive is higher when you’re close to someone not wearing a face covering. <a href="https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them">Someone sneezing and coughing</a> increases the number of virus particles near you. Singing or speaking forcefully releases more virus than speaking quietly. <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/494348-new-study-finds-few-cases-of-outdoor-transmission-of-coronavirus-in-china">Outdoor rates of transmission</a> are much lower than those indoors. </p>
<p>That’s why it’s best if services are short, outdoors and with no singing or physical contact. Only a limited number of attendees, spaced widely and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html">wearing masks properly</a>, would participate.</p>
<p>Early in the pandemic, faith leaders adapted their services: removing holy water, forbidding handshakes, limiting group size and livestreaming. Buddhist monks seeking alms wore face shields. But <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/10/in-photos-religion-around-the-world-in-the-age-of-coronavirus.html">others protested</a> any restrictions.</p>
<p>In dealing with the virus, we still have much to learn. But values common to all religions exist – compassion, kindness, respect for fellow humans and some variation of the Golden Rule. Until more is known about COVID-19, let’s choose a path following one of the major tenets of my profession: First, do no harm.</p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138772/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudia Finkelstein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To keep congregations safe, religious services must take a different approach.Claudia Finkelstein, Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1352872020-06-03T12:13:44Z2020-06-03T12:13:44ZWhen it comes to reopening churches in the pandemic, Supreme Court says grace ain’t groceries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339274/original/file-20200602-133851-1vufynm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4630%2C3082&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Churches have to weigh the risk to congregants in opening too soon.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Virus-Outbreak-Illinois/f8ea236ecefe41d982cc6161b8548cba/27/0">AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The highest court in the land has given states some leeway in determining when and how to safely reopen places of worship during the COVID-19 pandemic. The move lends support to state officials making science-informed decisions that may inhibit church congregants from fully engaging in their faith. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19a1044_pok0.pdf">5-4 ruling</a> issued close to midnight on Friday, May 29, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to disturb the <a href="https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/may/25/california-governor-issues-guidelines-churches-ope/">California governor’s order restricting religious service</a> gatherings as part of its emergency pandemic response effort.</p>
<p>The decision is the latest turn in the debate over what places of worship may do during the lockdown and as the U.S. comes out of it. During the pandemic there have been <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/churches-reopen-coronavirus/612304/">frequent clashes</a> as federal, state and local officials try to balance protecting the public’s health with the rights of individuals and groups to gather and practice their faith. </p>
<p>This is nothing new. I study public health law, ethics and policy, and I have seen how issues from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/03/19/god-country-chickenpox-how-an-outbreak-entangled-one-school-vaccine-showdown/">vaccination exemptions</a> to <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2470438">responding to the opioid crisis</a> are steeped in such concerns.</p>
<h2>Clashing over churches</h2>
<p>The debate over church attendance began as soon the current crisis took hold and communities began to lockdown.</p>
<p>One of the earliest high-profile clashes involved the <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/03/30/tampa-church-holds-packed-service-draws-warning-from-sheriffs-office/">arrest and jailing of a Tampa Bay, Florida-area pastor</a>. Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, a controversial figure who has <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bible-belt-us-coronavirus-pandemic-pastors-church-a9481226.html">dismissed coroanvirus as a “phantom plague</a>” held two large services in defiance of the county’s stay-at-home order and at a time when local COVID-19 cases were soaring. He was detained on May 30. But just two days after the arrest, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis <a href="https://www.flgov.com/wp-content/uploads/orders/2020/EO_20-91-compressed.pdf">issued an executive order</a> declaring that “attending religious services conducted in churches, synagogues and houses of worship” were to be protected as “essential activities.” He added that the state order would override any contradictory local restrictions. </p>
<p>By that time, President Trump had already declared that Easter would be a “beautiful time” for the U.S. economy <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-easter.html">to be reopened</a> – a goal that put him <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/25/trump-needs-governors-reopen-economy-even-republican-ones-arent-onboard/">at odds with the science and some state governors</a>. That plan was <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+abandons+easter&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS855US855&oq=trump+abandons+easter&aqs=chrome..69i57.2986j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">later abandoned</a>.</p>
<p>More recently, Trump described houses of worship as “<a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/may/trump-church-reopening-essential-religious-freedom.html">essential places that provide essential services</a>.”</p>
<p>But this characterization of live, in-person church services as “essential” blurs the distinct way that term was originally applied to businesses, services and employees in the crisis. “Essential” in this context referred to <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Version_3.1_CISA_Guidance_on_Essential_Critical_Infrastructure_Workers.pdf">critical contributors to our nation’s infrastructure and workforce</a>. They are the people involved with keeping our hospitals, food supplies, transport and utilities running, as well as law enforcement and our national defense.</p>
<p>But the president and many states are applying the term “essential” more broadly, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/usa/are-person-religious-services-essential-during-pandemic">as a way to signal certain values</a>. </p>
<p>This is especially true when examining the mix of states’ approaches to in-person church gatherings.</p>
<h2>States and SCOTUS</h2>
<p>By late May, <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/ny-nj-loosen-restrictions-on-gatherings-in-time-for-memorial-day-weekend/2430000/">even the states hit hardest by the virus</a> had begun to loosen their restrictions on gatherings. But when the first “stay-at-home” orders were issued, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/27/most-states-have-religious-exemptions-to-covid-19-social-distancing-rules/">California was just one of nine states</a> to ban live religious gatherings altogether. Meanwhile, around 20 other states initially limited live gatherings to 10 people or less. Doing so placed restrictions on church services akin to those on concerts, movie theaters or sporting events.</p>
<p>But other states followed a similar approach to Florida, labeling religious gatherings as “essential,” or at least declaring that they <a href="https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/wcm/connect/gov/dd504af3-ae2c-4d2e-b2bd-02c1a3beed89/Director%27s+Order-+Amended+Mass+Gathering+3.17.20+%281%29.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CONVERT_TO=url&CACHEID=ROOTWORKSPACE.Z18_M1HGGIK0N0JO00QO9DDDDM3000-dd504af3-ae2c-4d2e-b2bd-02c1a3beed89-n3FI0mY">should be exempt</a> from restrictions in place for other types of gatherings.</p>
<p>Indiana and Kansas both initially tried a political and scientific middle ground: characterizing church gatherings as “essential,” but still requiring that religious organizations follow the rules set out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/faith-based.html">for in-person social gatherings</a>, minimizing and discouraging live meetings until the public health threat was reduced.</p>
<p>From a public health perspective, restricting in-person religious gatherings makes sense. COVID-19 is most <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-drifts-through-the-air-in-microscopic-droplets-heres-the-science-of-infectious-aerosols-136663">easily spread as an aerosol</a>, such as when people are talking or singing. The risk of spread is also higher in closed spaces when in close proximity to someone infected and increases the longer you are near them. </p>
<p>Church-related gatherings often have all these features, and have been the <a href="https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article241715346.html">nexus</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/virginia-pastor-who-held-packed-church-service-dies-of-coronavirus/">for</a> <a href="https://www.times-news.com/coronavirus/covid-19-outbreak-reported-in-hampshire-county-church/article_07e1d928-a119-11ea-8d6f-87aca62d04e4.html">many</a> <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6920e2.htm">cases</a> where COVID-19 has spread <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e6.htm">across a community</a>.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/white-house-and-cdc-remove-coronavirus-warnings-about-choirs-in-faith-guidance/2020/05/28/5d9c526e-a117-11ea-9590-1858a893bd59_story.html">eliminated warnings about church choir activities from the CDC’s latest guidance</a> on safely reopening places of worship.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339190/original/file-20200602-133851-1ga8sm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339190/original/file-20200602-133851-1ga8sm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339190/original/file-20200602-133851-1ga8sm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339190/original/file-20200602-133851-1ga8sm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339190/original/file-20200602-133851-1ga8sm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339190/original/file-20200602-133851-1ga8sm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339190/original/file-20200602-133851-1ga8sm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e6.htm">cdc.gov</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Defiant churches tried different tactics to remain open. Some simply ignored the restrictions and continued to hold services. And California isn’t the only state to see state rules challenged in court. Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas and Virginia have all seen similar legal action. </p>
<p>In many cases, the organizations fighting restrictions have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/13/churches-have-been-astonishingly-hypocritical-during-pandemic/">cited the First Amendment</a> and argued that it is unconstitutional to restrict church gatherings, especially when other secular so-called “essential” or “life-sustaining” entities – such as grocery stores, liquor stores and laundromats – are allowed to stay open. This line of argument was echoed in the Supreme Court decision’s dissenting opinion written by Justice Brent Kavanaugh in the Supreme Court case.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court, looking at the latest version of California’s restrictions – which limits churches to 25% capacity, or a maximum of 100 attendees – declined to second guess the state’s elected officials in their assessment of the best way to protect the public’s health. In his concurring opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts, the <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/roberts-embraces-role-as-supreme-court-swing-justice-with-latest-church-ruling">pivotal vote in the church case</a>, seemed swayed by how officials endeavored to follow the science during a time “fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties.” He noted that religious services were more like social gatherings than “grocery stores, banks, and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.”</p>
<h2>Good-faith efforts</h2>
<p>The loosening of formal in-person gathering restrictions is beginning to take place across the country. This will likely make monitoring the rules more difficult and could result in greater reliance upon the vigilance of religious leaders, their congregants and perhaps <a href="https://religionnews.com/2020/05/07/as-pandemic-persists-churches-and-insurance-companies-grapple-with-risk/">guidance from the churches’ risk-averse liability insurance companies</a>. For now, most churches and other religious entities appear to <a href="https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2020/05/faith-leaders-protecting-human-life-is-priority-in-reopening-churches/">be remaining careful</a> amid <a href="https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/2020/05/08/coronavirus-indiana-places-worship-plan-stay-closed/3096391001/">concern over the still present risks</a>. <a href="https://www.wishtv.com/news/local-news/2-avon-churches-a-mile-apart-from-each-other-reopen-under-different-guidelines/">Some are not</a>.</p>
<p>But should infection numbers spike in the near future, state officials have the knowledge that a majority on the Supreme Court – for now at least – appear willing to follow the science and support their good-faith efforts to manage public health emergencies.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s newsletter explains what’s going on with the coronavirus pandemic. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-daily">Subscribe now</a>.</em>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135287/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ross D. Silverman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Justices have lent weight to state officials who want churches to remain closed until the public health crisis is over. But not every place of worship is following the rules.Ross D. Silverman, Professor of Public Health and Law, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.