Today's religion and world affairs from the United States and across the globe: the Syrian human rights catastrophe, the Pope's visit to the Mexican-American border, and the role of religion in 2016 presidential campaign.
BERKLEY CENTER IN THE NEWS
International Community Must Defy Syrian Regime Amid Human Catastrophe
by Drew Christiansen and Ra’fat Aldajani
National Catholic Reporter
rhttp://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/international-community-must-defy-syrian-regime-amid-human-catastrophe
The world should have acted in 2010 when President Bashar al-Assad's troops first used live fire on tens of thousands of nonviolent protestors. Six years later, the Assad regime is being compared to Cambodia's barbaric Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s. Assad has remained defiantly indifferent to the suffering of the Syrian people.
AROUND THE WORLD
British Effort to Identify Potential Radicals Spurs Debate Over Profiling
by Kimiko De Freytas-Taumra
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/world/europe/british-effort-to-identify-potential-radicals-spurs-debate-over-profiling.html?ref=world&_r=0
Encouraging fellow citizens to identify potential radicals has also raised questions about racial and religious profiling and the balance between security and civil liberties, igniting a debate here over whether Prevent holds the risk of further alienating Muslims in Britain.
El Paso Bishop Says Pope’s Border Stop is Pastoral, but with a Political Edge
by John Allen Jr.
Crux
http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2016/02/08/el-paso-bishop-says-popes-border-stop-is-pastoral-but-with-a-political-edge/
“It’s not wrong to think the pope is coming to the border to make a statement about the human dignity of immigrant,…It’s the Church’s role to speak to the human face of people who are struggling, to try and free them from our tendency to make them a number and [depict them] as some kind of threat to our way of life…It’s our role to see them as individuals and to understand their experience,” he said, “and ultimately to see the face of Christ in them.”
NATIONAL
Chinese Students Are Flooding U.S. Christian High Schools
Foreign Policy
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/08/chinese-students-are-flooding-u-s-christian-high-schools-new-data/
Most Chinese attend Christian schools — even though they come from the world’s largest atheist state. Because of restrictions on foreign student enrollment in U.S. public high schools, Chinese secondary students headed Stateside overwhelmingly attend private institutions. And Chinese parents don’t seem to care if that institution has a Christian underpinning.
What’s God Got to do With It?by Arthur C. Brooks and Gail Collins
New York Times op-ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/opinion/campaign-stops/whats-god-got-to-do-with-it.html?ref=opinion
Arthur C. Brooks and Gail Collins discuss whether the religious rhetoric on the campaign trail is overwrought and what Thomas Jefferson might have made of it.
Sick and Tired of ‘God Bless America’
by Susan Jacoby
New York Times op-ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/opinion/sunday/sick-and-tired-of-god-bless-america.html
The population of nonreligious Americans — including atheists, agnostics and those who call themselves “nothing in particular” — stands at an all-time high this election year. Americans who say religion is not important in their lives and who do not belong to a religious group, according to the Pew Research Center, have risen in numbers from an estimated 21 million in 2008 to more than 36 million now.
Wake Up Christians: The Flint Water Crisis is an Issue of Public Justice
by Kevin R. den Dulk
Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/09/wake-up-christians-the-flint-water-crisis-is-an-issue-of-public-justice/
For Christians, access to water ought not be about the arbitrariness of birth and geography or the vagaries of power. It is a matter of justice, and our response is grounded in God’s call to seek shalom, in this case by addressing the access problems and inevitable conflicts that arise when a good is both basic and unevenly distributed.
Why Sikhs are Often Misunderstood
Washington Post video
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/why-sikhs-are-often-misunderstood/2016/02/09/62084122-cf44-11e5-90d3-34c2c42653ac_video.html
Sikhs in the U.S. are a small, often misunderstood community, readily identifiable by their turbans. Here is what you need to know about the Sikh faith and why male believers wear a turban, which has often made them a target of suspicion in an increasingly terror-weary world.
Wheaton College Professor to “Part Ways” After Her Remarks on Muslims
By Christine Hauser
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/us/larycia-hawkins-wheaton-college.html
A college professor in Illinois who had been at risk of being fired for her remarks on Islam and Christianity has agreed to “part ways” with the institution. Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian institution, and Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science, said in a joint statement that “they have come together and found a mutual place of resolution and reconciliation.”
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