The Satanic Temple unveils a statue of Baphomet, a winged-goat creature, at a rally for the First Amendment in Little Rock, Arkansas, in August 2018.
AP Photo/Hannah Grabenstein
A group known as The Satanic Temple was started with the political goal of advocating for the value of church-state separation. This group is now challenging the traditional definition of religion.
For many evangelicals, faith is a central part of their lives, but there is wide variation in how it is practiced.
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Many Americans imagine evangelicals as a monolithic group that supports conservative policies and always talks about their faith. Three experts found in a study that the picture is far more complex.
US President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a cricket stadium, in Ahmedabad, India.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
During a recent visit to India, Trump spoke at the world’s largest cricket stadium. Cricket came to India in the 18th century through British sailors and is a revered cultural institution in India.
President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad, India.
AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi
A shared commitment to democracy was always key to the India-US relationship – until Trump. A foreign policy expert explains what’s on the agenda for Trump’s trip to India and what’s missing.
Women in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh neighborhood are protesting a new Indian citizenship law that they say will discriminate against Muslims, women – and, particularly, Muslim women.
Burhaan Kinu/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
A round-the-clock strike of Muslim women in a working-class neighborhood of Delhi is India’s most enduring pocket of resistance to religious discrimination, inequality and gender violence.
US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar sign an agreement ending the US’s 18-year war in Afghanistan, Doha, Feb. 29, 2020.
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A peace deal with the Taliban has been signed. But rebuilding Afghanistan after three decades of conflict will take much more than an accord, says a scholar of peacebuilding.
Pakistani Islamists march to protest the Supreme Court lenient treatment of Asia Bibi, a Christian Pakistani woman accused of blasphemy, in Karachi, Feb. 1, 2019.
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Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia all punish blasphemy harshly – even with death. Such laws have political as well as religious motives, says a scholar on Islamism: They’re a tool for crushing dissent.
President Trump fired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for testifying in his impeachment trial.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File
Trump’s firing of witnesses who testified during his impeachment trial has been described as ‘retribution.’ But these actions are actually revenge, a political scientist says.
The ‘Christ of the Pacific’ statue in Lima has caused controversy in Peru because of its financing by a graft-tainted Brazilian construction company. Both religion and corruption loomed large in Peru’s 2020 legislative elections.
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After a bribery scandal that took down four presidents and led Congress to dissolve, some Peruvians are putting their faith in an austere religion called the Israelites of the New Universal Pact.
In this 2013 photo, Bangladeshi mourners carry the coffin containing the body of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider for funeral.
AP Photo/Pavel Rahman, File
Anders C. Hardig, American University School of International Service
In recent years Bangladesh has seen an increase in attacks on religious minorities. A scholar explains how certain extreme views on how Islam is to be followed are taking center stage in the country.
A studio group portrait of the Fisk University Jubilee singers.
James Wallace Black/American Missionary Association
Spirituals were created out of the experience of enslaved people in the US. They weren’t songs of anger – but of an abiding belief in the victory of good over evil.
Couples get romantic on Qixi, a lovers’ festival similar to Valentine’s Day.
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China’s Qixi Festival is a celebration of love based on the legend of a mortal who married a goddess, causing his furious mother-in-law to create a Milky Way to divide these two twinkling stars.
In an effort to increase tourism, Saudi Arabia recently eased its strict dress code for foreign women, allowing them to go without the body-shrouding abaya robe still mandatory for Saudi women.
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In countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, it’s now official policy that women should go to college and work outside the home. But cultural pressure to marry and have kids remains strong.
A funeral held in July 1945 for two victims of the Ku Klux Klan, George Dorsey and his sister, Dorothy Dorsey Malcolm, of Walton County, Georgia, held at the Mt. Perry Baptist Church Sunday.
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Religion was no barrier for Southern lynch mobs intent on terror. White pastors joined the KKK, incited racial violence and took part in lynchings. Sometimes, the victim was a preacher.
This might be a church. Or not.
Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com
Early Christians were urged to ‘supervise’ one another. In the present times, that theology is often used by the Vatican for a religious investigation a known as the apostolic visitation.
Knocking on wood may be a holdover from the pagan days of Europe, when tree spirits were believed to bring luck.
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The curious history of a ritual meant to ward off bad luck.
The Myanmar military’s years-long campaign against the Rohingya Muslims left hundreds of villages a smoldering pile of debris. Warpait village, Rakhine State, Oct.14, 2016.
Ye Aung Thu/AFP via Getty Images
The International Court of Justice ordered Myanmar to protect its Rohingya minority and preserve any evidence relevant to the genocide charges against it. But compliance is not guaranteed.
A protest against Islamophobia in TImes Square in March 2019.
Dev Chatterjee/Shutterstock.com
Evelyn Alsultany, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
In retweeting a doctored image of Nancy Pelosi standing in a hijab in front of an Iranian flag, Trump is playing into fears that Iran and Islam are evil and anti-American.
A group of Islamic State fighters surrender in Afghanistan. Many of their comrades are still in the fight.
Noorullah Shirzada/AFP via Getty Images
The Islamic State group, often called ISIS, is not just based in Iraq and Syria. A scholar tracks where the group and its affiliates have spread around the globe.