Societies and cultures that seem ossified and entrenched can be completely upended by pandemics, which create openings for conquest, innovation and social change.
‘I don’t like the candidates,’ ‘I don’t know enough to make a decision,’ ‘I don’t want to give this election legitimacy’ – an ethicist takes on nonvoters.
The Catholic charismatic movement in the United States began during the 1960s. The practices of Catholic charismatics encompass various forms of Pentecostalism.
From the crusades of the medieval period to racial violence today, mankind has sought ways to ‘sanctify’ harmful actions, explains a scholar of religion.
The former justice received a Jewish funeral at the Supreme Court. But in other ways, Ginsburg’s burial is breaking with traditional Jewish death rituals.
Families who lost their loved ones during the pandemic could not even properly grieve. Greek epics show why lamentation and memorial are so important and what we can learn in these times.
The French satirical magazine republished the controversial caricatures of Prophet Muhammad. An expert says satire has often been a subject of condemnation.
Millions of Muslims travel to Karbala in Iraq for one of the largest annual pilgrimages. The pilgrimage has adapted and changed over its centuries-old history.
Few white evangelicals in the U.S. say they believe in human-made climate change. This strand of science denial seems to have as much to do with conservative politics as the Bible’s teachings.
Luc Bovens, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
At the height of Reaganism, close to half of Americans believed a phrase popularized by Karl Marx actually derived from the US Constitution. It doesn’t, but scholars have traced it to the Bible.
Are masks a religious matter, or is religion being used to suit people’s political agendas? A scholar of Christian conservatism and culture argues both can be true.
Peter C. Mancall, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Descendants from the Pilgrims were keen to highlight their ancestors’ role in the country’s founding. But their sanitized version of events is only now starting to be told in full.