Reading Time: 2 minutes Sex outside of marriage can lead to a year in jail according to the new criminal code passed by the Indonesian parliament this week. This news matches the trend of religious conservatism that has risen in the country. Sex before marriage was already banned before the new law was passed but was not enforced by […]
religion and politics
Posted inNews
Did Iran disband its ‘Morality Police’?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Iran’s Gasht-e Ershad, an Islamic morality police force, has been under scrutiny since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was detained and killed in September for refusing to wear a hijab in public. Though her death kickstarted the country’s unrest, it stemmed from longstanding inequality and injustice. Conflicting reports about the fate of the morality police itself have […]
Posted inNews
Millions on brink of starvation under Taliban rule
Reading Time: 2 minutes The second winter under Taliban rule has seen millions of Afghans on the brink of starvation. Some have sold their organs and even their daughters in an effort to survive. For most, that is still not enough. In place of a meal, many parents have been giving their children sleep medication to allow them a […]
Posted inThe Color of Disbelief
It’s secularism, stupid: Why Latino voters aren’t abandoning the Democratic Party
Reading Time: 6 minutes Throughout the 2022 midterm election cycle, there have been countless stories about Latinos abandoning the Democratic Party. A closer examination of the polls and questions around Latino religiosity tells a different story, one rooted in the most dramatic development in Latino politics: the rise of secularism.
Posted inPolitics
Church-shopping for Christian Nationalism
Reading Time: 7 minutes A Washington Post opinion piece titled “America’s religious divide isn’t really about religion” looks at the intersection of politics and religion—much of what we concern ourselves with here at OnlySky—and how, given how “religious” and evangelical politics has become, it’s easy to lose sight of “authentically religious voices.” The relationship between religion and politics is […]
Posted inHistory
The 2,500 days of Mikhail Gorbachev
Reading Time: 9 minutes On March 10, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to the premiership of the Soviet Union. By the time he resigned in December 1991, roughly 2,500 days later, the geopolitical map of the world had been redrawn, including a reunified Germany and a wave of democracy in Eastern Europe. The Soviets’ longest conventional war ended; a 45-year unconventional conflict that brought the world to the brink of annihilation wound down peacefully; and his own nation lay in pieces around his feet.
Posted inReligion
Fascism in India: The weaponization of religious custom
Reading Time: 8 minutes Where I live, Navidad and Semana Santa are significant religious affairs, times when the hustle and bustle of city life eases for a month and a week respectively: to observe Catholic customs, to be with family, or simply to travel to nearby towns and farms. One side effect, though, is the impact of reduced foot […]
Posted inPolitics
The Ukraine-Russia conflict: Let’s talk about Putin’s endgame
Reading Time: 6 minutes Beyond exclamations of shock and horror, what we need to be talking about as Russia invades Ukraine this morning is Putin’s endgame. Putin claims that he is de-Nazifying Ukraine, and that it is not, despite what the West says, a sovereign nation. I listened to one of his spokespeople on the news claim that it […]
Posted inThe Secular
Do you taboo? On the silence of nonreligion
Reading Time: 6 minutes I interviewed Barney Frank for Politico in 2013, on why it seemed to be harder to come out as an atheist than as gay. I’m a historian and a poet, not a journalist, but my writing on atheism leads editors to send me on such missions when something newsworthy happens on the theme. This subject […]
Posted inPolitics
Can religion keep quiet about politics?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Religion takes in all manner of personalities and burnishes what it receives. A mean person, adopting religion, becomes meaner. A kind person becomes kinder. And a political person can become loudly political, as is the case with American evangelical politics. Political religion has much to lament. Politics interlaced with religious fervor invented many techniques for […]