Images of religious buildings being used to treat the sick shouldn’t come as surprise. The practice has a long tradition, dating back to the Middle Ages.
A 14th-century Last Judgment relief from a facade of Orvieto cathedral in Umbria. Italy.
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Some people are comparing current times with the apocalypse. In ancient texts, apocalyptic messages cultivated endurance and encouragement through dire circumstances.
Before social distancing.
Leonardo da Vinci, Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie
Churches will remain closed over Easter, but theologians have argued over the centuries that faith itself, not ritual, is the heart and soul of Christianity.
Enclosing of an anchoress (14th century).
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 079: Pontifical
Joseph Shabalala would grow world famous for his music. But it is shaped by the spiritual aspects of his life as much as it is by the hardships of black life - and by his dreams.
Documents released by Church of England reinforce their teaching that ‘homosexuality is incompatible with scripture’.
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Dopamine fasting has fast become a fad in the Silicon Valley, as a way to reset the brain’s feel-good chemical. Many religions have advocated fasting for some of the same reasons.
US President Donald Trump has tweeted ‘Witch Hunt’ approximately once every three days since his inauguration two years ago.
The Crucible (1996)/IMDB
With President Donald Trump’s frequent use of the term “witch hunt” he paints himself as a victim. The women persecuted in one of history’s darkest chapters should not be forgotten so easily.
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the Freedom March on Washington in 1963.
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The idealisation of Mary as a virgin has created a misguided and deeply damaging relationship between sex and sin within the Christian church.
Madonna with child and angels by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, 1674. The cult of the Virgin is emblematic of the way the church silences women and marginalises their experience.
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Belief in the eternal virginity of Mary has inflicted damage to women, who can never attain her sexless motherhood or unsullied ‘purity’. Yet in the Gospels, Mary is strong-minded and courageous.
In the societies the Bible was written in, masculinity was the ideal. So it’s astonishing there are moments of gender subversion and gender diversity found in the Bible’s pages.
How men saw God shaped how they saw themselves, and in turn, how they saw women.
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What people value in their God, they value in life. Today, this might mean men can conclude that if they are right, they, too, have the right to be dominating.
Evangelical church teachings create fertile ground for domestic violence, its justification and its concealment.
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Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity