Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.
Credit: Human Rights Center, University of Dayton, Ohio
NEW YORK, Apr 21 2020 (IPS) – Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal is set in medieval Sweden, as the bubonic plague ravages the countryside. In one famous scene, a procession of zombie-like flagellants enters a village and interrupts a comic stage-show.
The townspeople are present to hear the procession’s leader, a bombastic preacher who proclaims that death is coming for them all: they are full of sin – lustful and gluttonous – and the plague is God’s punishment for their wicked ways.
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Prof. Azza Karam is Secretary General, Religions for Peace International
Religions for Peace Interreligious Council of Albania distributing Covid relief supplies from the Multi-religious Humanitarian Fund. Credit: Erzen Carja
NEW YORK, Aug 4 2020 (IPS) – I have never been interested in religion or spirituality before, but I found myself tuning in to all sorts of on-line religion and spirituality related forums “in search of something.”
These are the words of a 30-something single young, middle class man (born into a Protestant-Catholic family background) in a European country.
The latter is known more for turning several churches into museums …
Member of Parliament Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn. Credit: Kate Chappell
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Feb 12 2021 (IPS) – It was a joyful, tearful celebration in the early morning hours of Dec. 30, 2020 for countless Argentinians when they heard the news: the senate had legalized terminations up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. Prior to this, activists have said that more than 3,000 women died of botched, illegal abortions since 1983. And across the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, this renewed sense of optimism was compounded after President Joe Biden what is known as the “global gag rule,” which essentially denied funding to international non-profit organizations that …
Siddharth Chatterjee with CS Eugene Wamalwa, Heads of Missions from the United Nations Mission and other development partners visited the Frontier Counties Development Council Counties with a view of leveraging on opportunities considering geographic proximities in addressing shared developmental challenges in the marginalized Counties. Credit: West Pokot County, February 2020
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 4 2021 (IPS) –
Happy New Year, Kenya.
Several milestones in my personal and professional life have made Kenya a cherished place for me. I started my UNICEF career in Rumbek, South Sudan in June 2000, and my rest and recuperation breaks were in Nairo…
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 17 2021 (IPS) –
Getting hard to breathe
hard to believe in anything
at all, but fear.
Peter Gabriel, Mother
of ViolenceLike most male Swedes of my age I had to enter obligatory military service for almost a year. In my barrack was a “born-again-Christian” who when he became angry shouted “Now you mock me, but when the Last Judgement has come I will sit in heaven and smile down at you while you burn in Hell!” Since then I have wondered about the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation. It was written by a frustrated Christian man who by the end of 100 CE by Roman authorities had been deported to an isolate…