[RD] Religious News Thread

[Narz]

Adoption plans are not formed by parents rejecting thier kids

If they could take care of their kids they wouldn't need to form plans for others to take care of them.

You can bristle at the word rejection and substitute something less triggering if you want.

 

[Farm Boy]

Trying to focus on the triggering, you're still only even addressing half, much less teeing straight?

9 months is a lot of parenting. It changes a life. More than one.

 

[Narz]

Trying to focus on the triggering, you're still only even addressing half, much less teeing straight?

9 months is a lot of parenting. It changes a life. More than one.

It's is creditworthy to go thru pregnancy and make an effort to consider your kid will have a good home after.

I'm not saying all parents who give up their kids are bad, they may just know they're not in the best position to be parents. God on the other hand should have the necessary space in heaven to house everyone. Rehabilition seems more humane than lock em up (in hell) and throw away the key

 

[Farm Boy]

They don't give them up. They're still thier kids. Different people are their adoptive parents. Both are true. Once you watch the reality, you realize the typical frame limited to jizz and labor flowing to diapers to catch to driving lessons is just... sorta shorthand lazy and unreliable.

People go where their choices take them. If I'm saying that I doubt even Satan itself can hold out against God forever, I'm also saying I reject the stereotypical eternal hot jail sentence frame. Doctrinally, I'm not wandering off alone on that one. Though even at church, people usually seem to like more actionable points, rather than digging into this. Theology is still only so interesting, even for the religious.

 

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: We seem to have got rather off-track. Back to the religious news, please, and save the theological questions for a separate thread, thanks.

 

[Samson]

Dozens freed from church awaiting 'Second Coming' in Ondo Nigeria

Police in Nigeria have rescued 77 people, including children, from a church where they were confined in the south-western state of Ondo.
Some of them are believed to have been there for months.
A police spokesperson said many of them had been told to expect the Second Coming of Jesus Christ in April and had abandoned school to witness the event.

The pastor of the Pentecostal church, David Anifowoshe, and his deputy have been arrested, while the victims have been taken into the care of the authorities.

"Preliminary investigation revealed that one Pastor Josiah Peter Asumosa, an assistant pastor in the church, was the one who told the members that Rapture will take place in April, but later said it has been changed to September 2022 and told the young members to obey only their parents in the Lord," said police press officer Funmilayo Odunlami.

In all, police rescued 26 children, eight teenagers and 43 adults, she added.

Anxiety has been high among Christians in the state since a deadly attack on another church.
At least 50 people were killed in a mass shooting and bomb attack at St Francis Catholic church in the town of Owo on 6 June.
Federal authorities suspect the Islamic State West Africa Province of carrying out the massacre.​

 

[Samson]

Motion to oppose same-sex marriage forces rethink of Anglican summit

It seemed they tried to make the 2022 Lambeth conference, the first time this major meeting of Anglican bishops has happened in 14 years, the "Kumbaya Lambeth" by avoiding the traditional “resolutions” that are debated and voted on. However there have been a series of “calls” (available here). This includes one labelled "HUMAN DIGNITY", which says 'a reaffirmation of Lambeth I.10 that upholds marriage as between a man and a woman' and 'the “legitimizing or blessing of same sex unions” cannot be advised. It is the mind of the Communion to uphold “faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union”'

More progressive members have expressed opposition:

The bishop of Los Angeles, the Right Rev John H Taylor, was among those aghast at the call, warning the conference was on course to register support for a position that “divides, hurts, scapegoats and denies”.​

​

And in a move that raises questions about behind-the-scenes machinations, the bishop of Toronto, a member of the group that drafted the call, revealed in a Facebook post: “At no point in our meetings did we discuss the reaffirmation [of the position] at the conference, and it never appeared in any of the early drafts of our work together.”​

​

He said he was “shocked and dismayed” about what has been called the “human dignity call”.​

​

“As a gay man married to another man, my understanding and experience of human dignity includes the blessing of two people joined together in holy marriage, regardless of gender,” he said.​

​

Taylor said: “The word is spreading quickly that the Kumbaya Lambeth is actually a bait-and-switch Lambeth, with moderate and progressive Anglicans and Episcopalians about to arrive in Canterbury as credulous props for what is likely to be a majority vote against marriage equity.”​

​

The conference will not legislate or set Anglican policy, “but that won’t matter to a global audience that is likely to read that a majority of Anglican bishops refused to affirm the dignity of every human being”, he added.​

​

[EDIT] Now the archbishop of Canterbury has been forced to allow the bishops to vote on that declaration. They were not going to before, and just accept it I guess.

 

[Samson]

More curse of the Nobel Peace Prize

Vatican affirms sanctioning Nobel-winning bishop over sex scandal

The Vatican has confirmed that Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been under disciplinary sanctions for the past two years following sexual abuse allegations committed during his time in East Timor in the 1990s.​

​

The admission came on Thursday, a day after Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer exposed the claims against the revered Catholic bishop, citing two of Belo’s alleged victims and reporting there were others who had not come forward.​

​

Spokesman Matteo Bruni said the Vatican office that handles sex abuse cases received allegations “concerning the bishop’s behaviour” in 2019 and within a year had imposed the restrictions. The restrictions included limitations on Belo’s movements and exercise of ministry, and being prohibited from having voluntary contact with minors or contact with East Timor.​

​

In a statement, Bruni said the sanctions were “modified and reinforced” in November 2021 and that Belo had formally accepted the punishment on both occasions.​

​

The Vatican provided no explanation for why Belo resigned as head of the Roman Catholic Church in East Timor in 2002 and was sent to Mozambique, where he was allowed to work with children.​

​

The news sent shockwaves through East Timor, where he is regarded as a hero for fighting to win East Timor’s independence from Indonesian rule.​

​

 

[Samson]

A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job. NYT (paywalled) Full text in spoiler

Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline University, said she knew many Muslims have deeply held religious beliefs that prohibit depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. So last semester for a global art history class, she took many precautions before showing a 14th-century painting of Islam’s founder.

In the syllabus, she warned that images of holy figures, including the Prophet Muhammad and the Buddha, would be shown in the course. She asked students to contact her with any concerns, and she said no one did.

In class, she prepped students, telling them that in a few minutes, the painting would be displayed, in case anyone wanted to leave.

Then Dr. López Prater showed the image — and lost her teaching gig.

Officials at Hamline, a small, private university in St. Paul, Minn., with about 1,800 undergraduates, had tried to douse what they feared would become a runaway fire. Instead they ended up with what they had tried to avoid: a national controversy, which pitted advocates of academic liberty and free speech against Muslims who believe that showing the image of Prophet Muhammad is always sacrilegious.

After Dr. López Prater showed the image, a senior in the class complained to the administration. Other Muslim students, not in the course, supported the student, saying the class was an attack on their religion. They demanded that officials take action.

Meanwhile, professors everywhere often face pushback for their academic decisions from activist students or conservative lawmakers.

Dr. López Prater’s situation was especially precarious. She is an adjunct, one of higher education’s underclass of teachers, working for little pay and receiving few of the workplace protections enjoyed by tenured faculty members.

In a December interview with the school newspaper, the student who complained to the administration, Aram Wedatalla, described being blindsided by the image.

“I’m like, ‘This can’t be real,’” said Ms. Wedatalla, who in a public forum described herself as Sudanese. “As a Muslim and a Black person, I don’t feel like I belong, and I don’t think I’ll ever belong in a community where they don’t value me as a member, and they don’t show the same respect that I show them.”

The painting shown in Dr. López Prater’s class is in one of the earliest Islamic illustrated histories of the world, “A Compendium of Chronicles,” written during the 14th century by Rashid-al-Din (1247-1318).

Shown regularly in art history classes, the painting shows a winged and crowned Angel Gabriel pointing at the Prophet Muhammad and delivering to him the first Quranic revelation. Muslims believe that the Quran comprises the words of Allah revealed to the Prophet Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel. [see spoiler]

Dr. López Prater said she was ready to move on. She had teaching jobs at other schools. But on Nov. 7, David Everett, the vice president for inclusive excellence, sent an email to all university employees, saying that certain actions taken in an online class were “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.”

Dr. López Prater, who had only begun teaching at Hamline in the fall, said she felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over her head, but the shock soon gave way to “blistering anger at being characterized in those terms by somebody who I have never even met or spoken with.” She reached out to Dr. Gruber, who ended up writing the essay and starting the petition.

The main speaker was Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group.

The instructor’s actions, he said, hurt Muslim students and students of color and had “absolutely no benefit.”

“If this institution wants to value those students,” he added, “it cannot have incidents like this happen. If somebody wants to teach some controversial stuff about Islam, go teach it at the local library.”

Mark Berkson, a religion professor at Hamline, raised his hand.

“When you say ‘trust Muslims on Islamophobia,’” Dr. Berkson asked, “what does one do when the Islamic community itself is divided on an issue? Because there are many Muslim scholars and experts and art historians who do not believe that this was Islamophobic.”

Mr. Hussein responded that there were marginal and extremist voices on any issue. “You can teach a whole class about why Hitler was good,” Mr. Hussein said.

During the exchange, Ms. Baker, the department head, and Dr. Everett, the administrator, separately walked up to the religion professor, put their hands on his shoulders and said this was not the time to raise these concerns, Dr. Berkson said in an interview.

But Dr. Berkson, who said he strongly supported campus diversity, said that he felt compelled to speak up.

“We were being asked to accept, without questioning, that what our colleague did — teaching an Islamic art masterpiece in a class on art history after having given multiple warnings — was somehow equivalent to mosque vandalism and violence against Muslims and hate speech,” Dr. Berkson said. “That is what I could not stand.”

Spoiler Full text :

A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job.

After an outcry over the art history class by Muslim students, Hamline University officials said the incident was Islamophobic. But many scholars say the work is a masterpiece.

Officials at Hamline, in St. Paul, Minn., had tried to douse what they feared would become a runaway fire. Instead they ended embroiled in a national controversy.Credit...Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline University, said she knew many Muslims have deeply held religious beliefs that prohibit depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. So last semester for a global art history class, she took many precautions before showing a 14th-century painting of Islam’s founder.

In the syllabus, she warned that images of holy figures, including the Prophet Muhammad and the Buddha, would be shown in the course. She asked students to contact her with any concerns, and she said no one did.

In class, she prepped students, telling them that in a few minutes, the painting would be displayed, in case anyone wanted to leave.

Then Dr. López Prater showed the image — and lost her teaching gig.

Officials at Hamline, a small, private university in St. Paul, Minn., with about 1,800 undergraduates, had tried to douse what they feared would become a runaway fire. Instead they ended up with what they had tried to avoid: a national controversy, which pitted advocates of academic liberty and free speech against Muslims who believe that showing the image of Prophet Muhammad is always sacrilegious.

After Dr. López Prater showed the image, a senior in the class complained to the administration. Other Muslim students, not in the course, supported the student, saying the class was an attack on their religion. They demanded that officials take action.

Officials told Dr. López Prater that her services next semester were no longer needed. In emails to students and faculty, they said that the incident was clearly Islamophobic. Hamline’s president, Fayneese S. Miller, co-signed an email that said respect for the Muslim students “should have superseded academic freedom.” At a town hall, an invited Muslim speaker compared showing the images to teaching that Hitler was good.

Free speech supporters started their own campaign. An Islamic art historian wrote an essay defending Dr. López Prater and started a petition demanding the university’s board investigate the matter. It had more than 2,800 signatures. Free speech groups and publications issued blistering critiques; PEN America called it “one of the most egregious violations of academic freedom in recent memory.” And Muslims themselves debated whether the action was Islamophobic.

Arguments over academic freedom have been fought on campuses for years, but they can be especially fraught at small private colleges like Hamline, which are facing shrinking enrollment and growing financial pressures. To attract applicants, many of these colleges have diversified their curriculums and tried to be more welcoming to students who have been historically shut out of higher education.

Meanwhile, professors everywhere often face pushback for their academic decisions from activist students or conservative lawmakers.

Dr. López Prater’s situation was especially precarious. She is an adjunct, one of higher education’s underclass of teachers, working for little pay and receiving few of the workplace protections enjoyed by tenured faculty members.

University officials and administrators all declined interviews. But Dr. Miller, the school’s president, defended the decision in a statement.

“To look upon an image of the Prophet Muhammad, for many Muslims, is against their faith,” Dr. Miller’s statement said, adding, “It was important that our Muslim students, as well as all other students, feel safe, supported and respected both in and out of our classrooms.”

In a December interview with the school newspaper, the student who complained to the administration, Aram Wedatalla, described being blindsided by the image.

“I’m like, ‘This can’t be real,’” said Ms. Wedatalla, who in a public forum described herself as Sudanese. “As a Muslim and a Black person, I don’t feel like I belong, and I don’t think I’ll ever belong in a community where they don’t value me as a member, and they don’t show the same respect that I show them.”

Todd H. Green, who has written books about Islamophobia, said the conflict at Hamline was “tragic” because administrators pitted natural allies — those concerned about stereotypes of Muslims and Islam — against one another.

The administration, he said, “closed down conversation when they should have opened it up.”
The Image

The painting shown in Dr. López Prater’s class is in one of the earliest Islamic illustrated histories of the world, “A Compendium of Chronicles,” written during the 14th century by Rashid-al-Din (1247-1318).

Shown regularly in art history classes, the painting shows a winged and crowned Angel Gabriel pointing at the Prophet Muhammad and delivering to him the first Quranic revelation. Muslims believe that the Quran comprises the words of Allah revealed to the Prophet Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel.

The image is “a masterpiece of Persian manuscript painting,” said Christiane Gruber, a professor of Islamic art at the University of Michigan. It is housed at the University of Edinburgh; similar paintings have been on display at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And a sculpture of the prophet is at the Supreme Court.

Dr. Gruber said that showing Islamic art and depictions of the Prophet Muhammad have become more common in academia, because of a push to “decolonize the canon” — that is, expand curriculum beyond a Western model.

Dr. Gruber, who wrote the essay in New Lines Magazine defending Dr. López Prater, said that studying Islamic art without the Compendium of Chronicles image “would be like not teaching Michaelangelo’s David.”

Yet, most Muslims believe that visual representations of Muhammad should not be viewed, even if the Quran does not explicitly prohibit them. The prohibition stems from the belief that an image of Muhammad could lead to worshiping the prophet rather than the god he served.

There are, however, a range of beliefs. Some Muslims distinguish between respectful depictions and mocking caricatures, while others do not subscribe to the restriction at all.

Omid Safi, a professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, said he regularly shows images of the Prophet Muhammad in class and without Dr. López Prater’s opt-out mechanisms. He explains to his students that these images were works of devotion created by pious artists at the behest of devout rulers.

“That’s the part I want my students to grapple with,” Dr. Safi said. “How does something that comes from the very middle of the tradition end up being received later on as something marginal or forbidden?”
A Warning, and Then the Image

Dr. López Prater, a self-described art nerd, said she knew about the potential for conflict on Oct. 6, when she began her online lecture with 30 or so students.

She said she spent a few minutes explaining why she was showing the image, how different religions have depicted the divine and how standards change over time.

“I do not want to present the art of Islam as something that is monolithic,” she said in an interview, adding that she had been shown the image as a graduate student. She also showed a second image, from the 16th century, which depicted Muhammad wearing a veil.

Dr. López Prater said that no one in class raised concerns, and there was no disrespectful commentary.

After the class ended, Ms. Wedatalla, a business major and president of the university’s Muslim Student Association, stuck around to voice her discomfort.

Immediately afterward, Dr. López Prater sent an email to her department head, Allison Baker, about the encounter; she thought that Ms. Wedatalla might complain.

Ms. Baker, the chair of the digital and studio art department, responded to the email four minutes later.

“It sounded like you did everything right,” Ms. Baker said. “I believe in academic freedom so you have my support.”

As Dr. López Prater predicted, Ms. Wedatalla reached out to administrators. Dr. López Prater, with Ms. Baker’s help, wrote an apology, explaining that sometimes “diversity involves bringing contradicting, uncomfortable and coexisting truths into conversation with each other.”

Ms. Wedatalla declined an interview request, and did not explain why she had not raised concerns before the image was shown. But in an email statement, she said images of Prophet Muhammad should never be displayed, and that Dr. López Prater gave a trigger warning precisely because she knew such images were offensive to many Muslims. The lecture was so disturbing, she said, that she could no longer see herself in that course.

Four days after the class, Dr. López Prater was summoned to a video meeting with the dean of the college of liberal arts, Marcela Kostihova.

Dr. Kostihova compared showing the image to using a racial epithet for Black people, according to Dr. López Prater.

“It was very clear to me that she had not talked to any art historians,” Dr. López Prater said.

A couple of weeks later, the university rescinded its offer to teach next semester.

Dr. López Prater said she was ready to move on. She had teaching jobs at other schools. But on Nov. 7, David Everett, the vice president for inclusive excellence, sent an email to all university employees, saying that certain actions taken in an online class were “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.”

The administration, after meeting with the school’s Muslim Student Association, would host an open forum “on the subject of Islamophobia,” he wrote.

Dr. López Prater, who had only begun teaching at Hamline in the fall, said she felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over her head, but the shock soon gave way to “blistering anger at being characterized in those terms by somebody who I have never even met or spoken with.” She reached out to Dr. Gruber, who ended up writing the essay and starting the petition.

An Emotional Forum

At the Dec. 8 forum, which was attended by several dozen students, faculty and administrators, Ms. Wedatalla described, often through tears, how she felt seeing the image.

“Who do I call at 8 a.m.,” she asked, when “you see someone disrespecting and offending your religion?”

Other Muslim students on the panel, all Black women, also spoke tearfully about struggling to fit in at Hamline. Students of color in recent years had protested what they called racist incidents; the university, they said, paid lip service to diversity and did not support students with institutional resources.

The main speaker was Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group.

The instructor’s actions, he said, hurt Muslim students and students of color and had “absolutely no benefit.”

“If this institution wants to value those students,” he added, “it cannot have incidents like this happen. If somebody wants to teach some controversial stuff about Islam, go teach it at the local library.”

Mark Berkson, a religion professor at Hamline, raised his hand.

“When you say ‘trust Muslims on Islamophobia,’” Dr. Berkson asked, “what does one do when the Islamic community itself is divided on an issue? Because there are many Muslim scholars and experts and art historians who do not believe that this was Islamophobic.”

Mr. Hussein responded that there were marginal and extremist voices on any issue. “You can teach a whole class about why Hitler was good,” Mr. Hussein said.

During the exchange, Ms. Baker, the department head, and Dr. Everett, the administrator, separately walked up to the religion professor, put their hands on his shoulders and said this was not the time to raise these concerns, Dr. Berkson said in an interview.

But Dr. Berkson, who said he strongly supported campus diversity, said that he felt compelled to speak up.

“We were being asked to accept, without questioning, that what our colleague did — teaching an Islamic art masterpiece in a class on art history after having given multiple warnings — was somehow equivalent to mosque vandalism and violence against Muslims and hate speech,” Dr. Berkson said. “That is what I could not stand.”

In interviews, several Islamic art scholars took issue with the idea that Dr. López Prater’s intent was to disrespect the prophet, and said that it was nothing like the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine that had reprinted mocking cartoons of Prophet Muhammad. That led to the deadly 2015 attack at the magazine’s offices, which the scholars also denounced.

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, the deputy executive director of the national chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that he did not have enough information to comment on the Hamline dispute. But while his group discourages visual depictions of the prophet, he said that there was a difference between an act that was un-Islamic and one that was Islamophobic.

“If you drink a beer in front of me, you’re doing something that is un-Islamic, but it’s not Islamophobic,” he said. “If you drink a beer in front of me because you’re deliberately trying to offend me, well then, maybe that has an intent factor.”

“Intent and circumstances matter,” he said, “especially in a university setting, where academic freedom is critical and professors often address sensitive and controversial topics.”

Dr. Safi, the Duke professor, said Hamline had effectively taken sides in a debate among Muslims. Students “don’t have to give up their values,” he added. “But some part of the educational process does call for stepping beyond each one of our vantage points enough to know that none of us have the monopoly on truth.”

Dr. Safi has his own personal image of the prophet. When he was 14, his family fled to the United States from Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war. He packed an image of Muhammad holding a Quran into one of the family’s few suitcases.

That image now hangs on his wall at home.

Spoiler The Picture of Prophet Muhammad :

 

[Birdjaguar]

Showing such a picture after ample warnings seems like Freedom of Speech to me.

 

[Samson]

Showing such a picture after ample warnings seems like Freedom of Speech to me.

Freedom of speech is nothing to do with if a private university can rescind an offer of employment. Is it that students have too much power, and non-tenured professors none?

 

[Gori the Grey]

The instructor has filed a lawsuit and Hamline is trying to walk things back, saying that using the term "Islamophobic" was "flawed." Times article on the 17th.

 

[Farm Boy]

<shrugs> Plenty of secular heresies that shant be uttered even in the context of discussion of themselves. Might as well let the traditional heresies stand. At least they tend to be somewhat less of a capricious target. Kinda.

 

[Birdjaguar]

As we have seen in recent years, freedom of speech crying and censorship charges can now be applied to any situation one chooses!

In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term “Islamophobic” was therefore flawed. We strongly support academic freedom for all members of the Hamline community. We also believe that academic freedom and support for students can and should co-exist. How this duality is exemplified on our campuses, especially in the current multicultural environment in which we live, is an exciting, robust, and honest conversation for academics, intellectuals, students, and the public to have.

Statements from Hamline University | Hamline University

Recent public statements from Hamline University.

www.hamline.edu

 

[Gori the Grey]

Maybe the job description for a VP of inclusive excellence can involve trying to mediate such situations rather than inflame them.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Even if Muslim's don't like it, Mohammed did have a face.

 

[Samson]

I really do not get the controversy. The problem with pictures of the Prophet is that they may be worshiped, right? So what is the problem with non-muslims looking at the pictures, or with non-religious artwork? No one is going to bow down before Charlie Hebdo. An even discounting that, why of all the things people do should that be the one to get so upset about? Does not the Quran say that sins against god are less serious than sins against man?

 

[bernie14]

Even if Muslim's don't like it, Mohammed did have a face.

Well, how do you define "face"?.

I really do not get the controversy. The problem with pictures of the Prophet is that they may be worshiped, right? So what is the problem with non-muslims looking at the pictures, or with non-religious artwork? No one is going to bow down before Charlie Hebdo. An even discounting that, why of all the things people do should that be the one to get so upset about? Does not the Quran say that sins against god are less serious than sins against man?

It's dogma.....no, it's historical. Thus, those being in favor of spreading images of the prophet are inciting violence via stochastic terrorism

 

[Birdjaguar]

Well, how do you define "face"?.

What we all have on the front side of our heads.

 

[bernie14]

What we all have on the front side of our heads.

So, you are a faceist?