The Oujia board’s origins were anything but evil. It emerged, in part, out of a longing to communicate with loved ones who had died during the Civil War.
A new book on Buddhism in South Africa is more than a beautiful coffee table book. If Zen ever finds a foothold in Africa, the truths the book reveals could be seen as monumental.
In the US and Ireland there have been headline court cases of bakers refusing to make cakes for same-sex weddings.
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Many people believe they have a soul. But for psychologists, who study behaviour, it is not so much that souls do not exist, it is that there is no need for them.
in Australia, marriage is regulated by the state, not the church.
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Mother Teresa will become a saint on Sunday, on the basis of two miracles of healing. But let’s not remove our thinking caps and go all medieval: we should be wary of uncritical endorsement of claims to the miraculous.
A minister of religion is not obliged to solemnise any marriage.
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Ministers of religion who support marriage equality would be able to challenge the Marriage Act in the High Court. They would stand a good chance of winning.
A women is more than what she wears.
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Many South African teachers don’t accept the theory of evolution. They feel deeply conflicted when they have to teach it to their pupils as part of the life sciences curriculum.
Coining a phrase. Muslim philosopher al-Fabri depicted on Kazakh currency.
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Unexpected calls to prayer from mosques in Turkey caught many off guard on the night of the attempted coup. An ethnomusicologist explains the political and social power of sound.
There is a large Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
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The Trump campaign is adding groups of untapped, swing state voters to its Trump playbook. A political scientist examines whether the Amish vote in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio can be swung.
Bob Marley’s album ‘Legend’ is still an international bestseller.
Bob Marley is one of those rare artists who continues to touch the hearts of millions of people across the world, even though he died more than three decades ago.
Family murder was understood as a sign of larger ills.
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During the 1980s, press coverage of South African family murders suggested that something was ‘wrong’ with white society – and with the white Afrikaans men who were usually seen as perpetrators.
Nice attacker Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel exemplifies how quickly ideology can be adopted.
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Legislating against racial and religious vilification is highly fraught, as the ongoing debate around Section 18C has demonstrated, and unlikely to become less so any time soon.
Whether it’s Hillary Clinton’s courting the UFO vote or Donald Trump’s lending credibility to various conspiracy theories, the “triumph of reason” seems to have gone by the wayside.
A Hindu devotee prepares to participate in a fire-walking ceremony to honour the goddess Draupadi in Durban, 2011.
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Religious conversion sometimes has the added bonus of upward social mobility. But for many in South Africa’s Indian community it had the opposite effect.