Category Archives: Religion

Dying the Christian Science way: the horror of my father’s last days

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The anti-medical dogma of Christian Science led my father to an agonising death. Now the church itself is in decline – and it can’t happen fast enough. By Caroline Fraser

When I was a baby, my grandfather delighted me by playing a game. He made a fist sandwich, fingers laced together and hidden in his palms, showing me his thumbs closed upon them. Slowly, he would say, “Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple,” raising his index fingers together to form a peak. Then, throwing his thumbs apart, he flipped his interlaced fingers over, wriggling them and crying out, “Open the doors and see all the people!”

My grandfather was a Christian Scientist. His mother had been a Scientist. His only child, my father, was a Scientist. I was raised to be a Scientist.

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Cypriot bishop faces hate speech inquiry over homophobic remarks

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Greek Orthodox cleric claimed gay men recognisable from ‘particular odour’

Police in Cyprus have opened an investigation into homophobic remarks made by a controversial bishop.

At the request of the island’s attorney general, investigators will examine whether the Greek Cypriot Orthodox prelate, known popularly by his first name, Neophytos, violated hate speech laws after he claimed that homosexuality could be passed on when pregnant women had anal sex.

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‘We feel empowered’: Saudi women relish their new freedoms

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New laws on travel, divorce and applying for documents have largely been embraced

Saudi women have largely embraced new laws allowing them to travel, divorce, and apply for official documents without the permission of a male guardian, and claimed conservative resistance to the sweeping decrees is doomed to fail.

The measures, announced late on Thursday, amount to a partial dismantling of guardianship laws that have long confined women in Saudi Arabia to narrow gender roles and marginalised their role in society. Such moves have been long awaited and are a centrepiece of the kingdom’s much-touted reform programme, which has pledged to overhaul rigid laws and customs that have made the country one of the most oppressive in the world.

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Saudi women can now travel without male guardian’s approval – report

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Okaz newspaper reports key step in dismantling strict controls over nation’s women

Women in Saudi Arabia will no longer need the permission of a male guardian to travel, according to local news reports. The policy, if confirmed, would mark a key step in dismantling controls that have made women second-class citizens in their own country.

Saudi women over the age of 21 will be able to apply for a passport and travel outside the country, without approval, Okaz newspaper reported on Thursday. The change would put them on an equal footing with men. They would also reportedly be able to register births and deaths, a right previously restricted to men.

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Dutch ‘burqa ban’ rendered largely unworkable on first day

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Police and transport companies have signalled unwillingness to enforce face covering ban

The Netherlands’ so-called burqa ban has been rendered largely unworkable on its first day in law after both the police and Dutch transport companies signalled an unwillingness to enforce it.

Under the terms of the Partial Ban on Face-Covering Clothing Act, the wearing of ski masks, full-face helmets, balaclavas, niqabs and burqas is prohibited in public buildings including schools and hospitals and on public transport.

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Author of Christian relationship guide says he has lost his faith

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Joshua Harris says his marriage is over and apologises to LGBT+ people for promoting bigotry

The American author of a bestselling Christian guide to relationships for young people has announced that his marriage is over and he has lost his faith.

Joshua Harris, whose biblical guide to relationships I Kissed Dating Goodbye sold nearly 1m copies around the world after it was published in 1997, has also apologised to LGBT+ people for contributing to a “culture of exclusion and bigotry”.

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Foreskin reclaimers: the ‘intactivists’ fighting infant male circumcision

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Emboldened by the body-positive movement and a sense of rage, a growing chorus is pushing back against a common custom

The media officer of one of the UK’s top medical schools doesn’t realise she hasn’t muted herself as she puts me on hold.

She sniggers with her colleague as she passes on my request – to speak to an expert on male circumcision – before informing me they don’t have one.

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The Catholic rebels resisting the Philippines’ deadly war on drugs

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President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent crackdown has left 20,000 dead, and in a devout country, he has repeatedly hurled insults at bishops, the pope – and even God. But only a handful of Catholic activists are brave enough to speak out. By Adam Willis

One of the most famous victims – and a rare survivor – of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is a 30-year-old pedicab driver named Francisco Santiago Jr. In September 2016, while cycling through central Manila, Santiago was abducted by a Philippine national police (PNP) officer posing as a passenger. Santiago’s name was not on the “kill list” of the PNP’s now-infamous drug-sting operation known as Oplan Tokhang, or “Operation Knock and Plead”, but he had become a target, nonetheless.

After he was taken to a police station and beaten for the better part of a day, Santiago was led back into the streets and shot multiple times, suffering wounds to his chest and arms. Thinking him dead, one officer approached Santiago and placed a pistol next to his hand. Santiago waited, barely breathing as blood pooled around him, until he heard the hurried sounds of journalists arriving at the scene. He sat up, pleading for his life and waving his blood-soaked arms in surrender. By the next morning, local newspapers had already assigned Santiago a new name: Lazarus.

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Tattoos, tans and techno: the photographers capturing the unseen Beirut

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Ravers, semi-naked sun-worshippers, booming queer culture … we meet the photographers chronicling a new generation of Lebanese shaking off the trauma of civil war

‘Parties are a privileged place, a space for exploration, a time for fusion,” says photographer Cha Gonzalez. They’re also the focus of her series Abandon, which looks at the way some Lebanese people have used nightlife – and techno music in particular – as a release after the trauma of the country’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. “I knew a lot of people who were either born during the war or in exile,” she says. “What was put aside during the day came to light – and their internal struggles surfaced.”

Abandon is a pertinent theme not only for Gonzalez, but for all of the 16 contributors to an exhibition in Paris called C’est Beyrouth (This Is Beirut), at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam. Gonzalez in particular seized on the city’s dance scene, and later continued the series in Paris, where she lives, because “there was something to say about countries that are very far from war as well. The war is inside us: how we feel useless, alone, bored, guilty, horny.”

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Muslim community shuns women released from prison, says report

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There is a ‘much more forgiving attitude’ towards Muslim male offenders, say former convicts

The Muslim community in Britain shuns women who have been to prison while forgiving convicted men, “no matter what they’ve done”, according to a report.

Female former prisoners told researchers, Muslim experts in the criminal justice system, that they suffered a “conspiracy of silence” after being released from jail, having to hide or move away in order to not bring shame on their families.

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Boris Johnson claimed Islam put Muslim world ‘centuries behind’

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Anger as 2007 essay lamenting ‘no spread of democracy’ in Islamic world comes to light

Boris Johnson has been strongly criticised for arguing Islam has caused the Muslim world to be “literally centuries behind” the west, in an essay unearthed by the Guardian.

Writing about the rise of the religion in an appendix added to a later edition of The Dream of Rome, his 2006 book about the Roman empire, Johnson said there was something about Islam that hindered development in parts of the globe and, as a result, “Muslim grievance” was a factor in virtually every conflict.

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Archbishop: church ‘shabby and shambolic’ in abuse case

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C of E’s John Sentamu admits lack of support for victim but denies he made personal mistakes

The archbishop of York has admitted the Church of England’s treatment of a vicar who was raped as a teenager by another cleric was “shabby and shambolic” but denied he had made personal mistakes in the case.

John Sentamu told the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse that more support should have been given by the church to the Rev Matthew Ineson when he told of his abuse. The archbishop accepted an earlier description by the bishop of Bath and Wells that Ineson’s treatment was “shabby and shambolic”.

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Country diary: a house of God open to heaven and house martins

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Segenhoe, Bedfordshire: The birds are stacked in the air above a shallow trench, taking turns to skim insects from it

A flying congregation had assembled by the church gate. We approached on foot, coming on the coffin route, a straight path through fields along which pall bearers had once carried the dead from the nearby village of Ridgmont.

Mourners might have walked through this meadow after the hay had been cut, as we did, and looked down at the grass laid out in strips to dry where it fell. Did a passage from the Bible come to mind? “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall.”

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Nigeria’s ‘Gucci Pastor’ takes leave of absence over rape claims

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Biodun Fatoyinbo steps aside amid allegations of historical attack on photographer

A celebrity pastor in Nigeria is to take a leave of absence after a photographer accused him of rape.

Nicknamed “Gucci Pastor” for his expensive taste in clothes and cars, Biodun Fatoyinbo runs the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (Coza), one of the country’s fastest-growing pentecostal churches.

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Israel Folau: Australian Christian lobby hosts new fundraising effort

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ACL steps in after GoFundMe pulls plug on former Wallabies star’s online appeal

The Australian Christian Lobby is hosting a fundraising effort on its website for the former Wallabies star Israel Folau after his GoFundMe page was shut down.

As at 7am Tuesday, almost $50,000 had been donated via the link on the ACL site, with the group also committing to tip in $100,000 to Folau’s legal challenge. By 8.30am, $250,000 had been raised.

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Belgian monks finally launch website to sell ‘world’s best beer’

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Beer lovers will still have to travel to St Sixtus abbey to pick up their allotted crates

It has been described as the world’s most sought-after beer. Just over 5,000 barrels are brewed annually by the 19 Trappist monks of St Sixtus abbey in Westvleteren, Flanders, and drinkers tempted by the regular appearance of its darkest brew at the top of the world rankings must travel in person and on appointment to pick up their allotted two crates.

But even the reclusive brothers are having to change with the times – to an extent. In order to stay one step ahead of those seeking to sell on their beer at steeply inflated prices, the abbey has announced it is going digital. A website has been set up where customers can order their two crates, with priority given to recent and new customers.

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Chile bishop resigns after suggesting there is a reason the Last Supper had no women

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Carlos Eugenio Irarrazaval stands down, weeks after appointment by pope to clean up church’s public image

A Chilean auxiliary bishop appointed by Pope Francis less than a month ago has resigned, just weeks after he made controversial comments about the lack of women in attendance at the Last Supper.

Carlos Eugenio Irarrazaval was appointed by the pope in an effort to rebuild the church’s credibility following a pervasive sex abuse scandal that exposed hundreds of allegations now being investigated by Chilean criminal prosecutors.

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Pope Francis declares ‘climate emergency’ and urges action

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Addressing energy leaders, pope warns of ‘catastrophic’ effects of global heating

Pope Francis has declared a global “climate emergency”, warning of the dangers of global heating and that a failure to act urgently to reduce greenhouse gases would be “a brutal act of injustice toward the poor and future generations”.

He also endorsed the 1.5C limit on temperature rises that some countries are now aiming for, referring to warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of “catastrophic” effects if we crossed such a threshold. He said a “radical energy transition” would be needed to stay within that limit, and urged young people and businesses to take a leading role.

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