Dr Ivan Khovacs explores how the current social restrictions are affecting religious communities and how they join together for worship.
Category: Faith and religion
Remembering medieval Canterbury’s relationship with its Jewish community
Dean Irwin looks at the historical relationship between England, Canterbury and the Jewish Community.
- January, 24
- 1043
- Faith and religion, History
- More
Jerusalem – ‘place’ matters!
Professor Peter Vujakovic discusses how a sense of place can impact upon world affairs.
- December, 19
- 1412
- Faith and religion, Geography, Politics
- More
Let’s talk: Helping students ask questions that bridge science, technology and religion
Professor Berry Billingsley explains how work at Christ Church is supporting students to ask questions on topics to help their understanding of the world around them.
- December, 15
- 1022
- Education, Faith and religion
- More
Is there a future for RE in schools?
Professor Trevor Cooling looks at today’s report on RE in schools by the Commission on Religious Education and asks: is it a game changer?
- September, 21
- 2210
- Education, Faith and religion
- More
A liberal and tolerant society?
Professor Trevor Cooling explores whether Tim Farron was correct when he said you can’t hold faith and public office.
- June, 16
- 1770
- Faith and religion, Politics
- More
Sex, Violence, Terror: A Troubled Church and the End of Religious Protectionism
Professor Bee Scherer, Director of the Intersectional Centre for Inclusion and Social Justice (INCISE) looks ahead to the Church of England’s General Synod on Wednesday.
It has not been a good week for the Church of England (CoE). The allegations of the horrific physical abuse endured by elite evangelical Anglican youths at the hand of the former head of the Iwerne Trust, John Smyth QC, shine a long overdue light on a culture of thinly tinted sadism which was allowed to flourish (or fester) within a charismatic Christian personality cult in the context of a sexually repressed, ‘violent and punitive Theology’ as the Rt. Rvd. Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham, recently pointed out (Christian Today, 4 February). On top of that, as the two year CoE consultation process on same-sex marriage draws to its close this Wednesday with a debate in the General Synod, the Church is rocked by an unprecedented rebellion of fourteen retired bishops who, in an open letter dated 10 February, condemn the church’s failure to listen to the lived experiences of LGBT Christians.
Bishop Alan is right to ask “Why can’t the Church of England talk in a grown-up way about sex?” A recent OASIS foundation study on the link between church teaching and mental health detriment among Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Christians exemplifies the struggle of stigmatised community members seen as falling short of the moral black and white. Further, the revelation of widespread psycho-sexually tinted physical abuse provides yet another example of the detrimental treatment of vulnerable young by those branches of exclusivist Christianity which exert strict regimes of regulatory powers and bio-politics through the extension of absolute truth claims to repressive moral codes. The dualistic true-false absolutisms of closed forms of religious belongings expresses itself regularly in religious violence – be that centripetally in abuse or centrifugally in religious state violence and terrorism. Conversely, in the media, only one religion is regularly linked with terror – while abounding forms of ‘Christian terrorism’ as recently in Quebec are framed in other terms, for instance as ‘right-wing’ or ‘white supremacism’.
We need to challenge popular myths about Christianity/-ies and more broadly ‘religion’ as ‘good’ per se and as the foundation of superior values for ‘enlightened’ societies. Throughout history, Christianity, as any routinized religion, has manifested itself to be as much a force for harm as a force for good. Religions function as forms of vestigial governmentalities and continue to wield undue powers over the mental and physical health and integrity of both followers and opponents. It is, therefore, opportune to question the rationale of the continued privileged protection of ‘religion’ under, for instance, the Equalities Act 2010. We may want to acknowledge that the contested category ‘religion’ points to value-neutral and morally protean cultural traditions which should not claim any a priori position in the hierarchy of Human Rights. As I have argued elsewhere, moving on from the dubious reliance on absolute truth claims and their derived moral regimes, the pragmatic principle of ‘mental-physical integrity’ should be adduced as the leading principle of legal and ethical scrutiny for the forming of societal values and consensus. Society needs to protect itself from closed worldviews resulting in regulatory regimes of mental and physical oppression.
Christianity and all religions can manifest as strong allies to basic Human Rights principles; when not, they should not be able to hide behind the label of ‘religion’ as an – absurdly – protected characteristic.
- February, 13
- 1490
- Faith and religion, Social Justice
- More
Leonard Cohen’s Jewish farewell
Dr Maria Diemling, Reader in Jewish-Christian Relations in the School of Humanities, looks at the influence of Leonard Cohen’s Jewish background on his final album.
- November, 15
- 1653
- Culture, Faith and religion, Music
- More
LGBT rights at the UN and beyond?
Director of the Intersectional Centre for Inclusion and Social Justice (INCISE), Professor Bee Scherer, comments on the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon’s, recent speech supporting LGBT rights across the world.
Outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has rightfully attacked ‘weak opponents of LGBT rights’ in a recent speech. While the South Korean UN chief himself has been an outspoken ally to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex and Queer citizens around the world, the United Nations has a questionable record on LGBT rights’ support; Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for its Human Rights violations, took over as head of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR). The effect of this hypocrisy has been chilling and immediate: in April this year, Saudi Arabia supported the right to torture and execute LGBT people at the UNHRC.
It will be crucial for global LGBT rights that the new UN Secretary General is successful in negotiating the minefield between governmental Human Rights’ abuse apologists and those in the Global Northern elite, who defend them in the name of postcolonial ‘agency’. Religiously and culturally camouflaged, state-sponsored heterosexism and anti-LGBT violence sometimes strangely ally with the counter-solidary, self-petrification of the radical urban elite in the Global North, who dare not speak out against it. This is out of fear, to be seen as complicit in neo-imperialist projects such as ‘homonationalism’ (the instrumentalisation of LGBT rights for neo-colonialist state-politics) and islamophobia. But clearly, absolutist and closed ideologies driving discrimination and violence need to be challenged, regardless of their cultural disguises.
Grassroots activism, such as our Queering Paradigms (QP) project undertaken in the Intersectional Centre for Inclusion and Social Justice (INCISE), with its global-local agency and solidarity concept, can help bridge the divides and make meaningful contribution to the lives of LGBT people, as the QP projects recent successes in South America and the Caribbean demonstrate.
The hope to aid sustainable inclusion and social justice has given birth to QPs new academic home at Canterbury Christ Church University, the INCISE research centre.
Find out more about the research projects being undertaken by INCISE, by attending the official launch of the Centre on 14 October 2016 at Canterbury Christ Church University. More information about the launch and how to book a place can be found on the INCISE website.
- September, 23
- 1479
- Faith and religion
- More
Lifting of the admissions cap for faith schools
Professor Trevor Cooling discuses the government’s recent decision to remove the admissions cap for Catholic schools.
- September, 14
- 1426
- Education, Faith and religion
- More