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Topic that's back in the news: What do world religions teach on polygamy, pro and con?

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Topic that's back in the news: What do world religions teach on polygamy, pro and con?

THE QUESTION:

What do world religions believe on polygamy, pro and con?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

With religion, age-old issues such as polygamy vs. monogamy never disappear, and a recent Jerusalem Post article discussed Jewish practices, which we’ll examine below.

First, some terminology: What’s called “polygamy” occurs in two ways. “Polyandry” means one woman with more than one husband, a rare form found among, for instance, some Buddhists in Tibet where the husbands are commonly brothers. The familiar form technically named “polygyny” is one man with more than one wife. “Bigamy” applies when civil law makes plural marriages a crime.

All of that needs to be distinguished from modern “polyamory,” namely multiple and consensual sexual ties with various gender configurations minus marriage (see this recent GetReligion podcast and post). These range from “free love” to “open” relationships to formalized temporary or permanent sexual groupings. Notably, this movement is now acceptable within one U.S. religion. Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness is officially recognized as a “related” organization of that denomination serving members who support and promote such a sexual identity.

Polygamy has been opposed by Christianity throughout history but exists without dispute in lands dominated by the world’s second-largest religion, Islam. Most other nations make it a criminal offense. The United Nations Human Rights Commission expresses moral abhorrence and urges abolition, arguing that legal polygamy violates “the dignity of women.”

Indigenous religion that involves polygamy continues in some sectors of Africa. South Africa allows it not only for the Muslim minority but for those who maintain their traditional cultures, for example former President Jacob Zuma of the Zulu people, who has four wives. Modern India forbids polygamy even though it was part of Hindu tradition, but similarly allows it for Muslims.

In U.S. history, hostility was such that in 1856 the major pronouncement by the first convention of the newborn Republican Party declared that Congress must “prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery.”


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Podcast: Big Sexual Revolution victory in New York! Where's the elite news coverage?

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Podcast: Big Sexual Revolution victory in New York! Where's the elite news coverage?

I think I heard this D.C. Beltway question for the first time during the George W. Bush years, when I moved back to greater Baltimore and began teaching full-time at the Washington Journalism Center. It was a time of high expectations for cultural conservatives. As is usually the case, they faced disappointment when wins by the cultural left continued, even though W. Bush was “in power.”

The question: What happens to culturally conservative Republicans when they get elected to, oh, the U.S. Senate and then immediately start losing their nerve?

I heard an interesting answer during an off-the-record chat session with some Senate staffers. It helps to remember that this was back in the day when many people still had radios in their cars that had button systems that allowed them a limited number of pre-set stations they could quickly punch while driving.

The answer: There are two kinds of Republicans inside the Beltway — those who have NPR as the first button on their car radios and those who do not.

Unpacking that answer was crucial to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on media coverage, or the lack thereof, about a recent court ruling in an important LGBTQ rights case in New York.

Ah, but was this a case that LGBTQ-rights activists and Sexual Revolution evangelists wanted to see publicized? That’s one of the questions that host Todd Wilken and I discussed.

We will work our way back to the NPR symbolism angle. But first, here is some key material from the top of a New York Post report that ran with this headline: “NYC judge rules polyamorous unions entitled to same legal protections as 2-person relationships.” This is long, but important. First, there is this:

In the case of West 49th St., LLC v. O’Neill, New York Civil Court Judge Karen May Bacdayan reportedly concluded that polyamorous relationships are entitled to the same sort of legal protection given to two-person relationships.


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Adding a few sources for those post-midterms thumbsuckers on the religion beat

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Adding a few sources for those post-midterms thumbsuckers on the religion beat

When the dust has (thankfully) settled following Election Day, writers on politics, and on religion, and on religion-and-politics, will be analyzing what it all means for the future direction of U.S. culture.

Some matters on the agenda:

* Are the results a fluke, or a trend? What do they signal about 2024? Is the “religious right” a growing or receding force? How will the expected Trump 2024 campaign affect evangelicalism? What will Trumpism be post-Trump? Did the abortion issue hurt Republicans? Did religious liberty issues hurt Democrats? How do moral concerns shape inflation? Immigration? Crime? Ukraine?

* Then factions. What’s going on with the pivotal white Catholics? And Hispanic Catholics? Can Republicans ever make inroads among Black Protestants? Did religiously interesting new figures emerge among the Republicans’ record number of minority candidates?

* Here is a growing niche that should get its own sidebar: How crucial are non-religious voters for Democrats’ prospects?

* Oh, and how should journalists define “Christian nationalism” and how influential is that crowd anyway?

* And whatever else develops.

Specialists will be familiar with ReligionLink, a valuable service of the Religion News Association that, among other features, posts periodic memos on a specific topic in the news, providing detailed background, links to articles and proposed sources. Subscribe for free here.

Its October 18 posting laid out he midterm elections, listing no less than 76 background items from varied media and 25 expert sources. This material will remain just as useful for those post-election analyses next week and beyond.


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Is Hollywood afraid to be 'woke'? That's a question with moral and religious implications

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Is Hollywood afraid to be 'woke'? That's a question with moral and religious implications

It’s one of the most famous quotes ever about the realities of working in Hollywood. That quote: “If you want to send a message, try Western Union.”

Of course, the Tinseltown giant who said that was Frank “It’s a Wonderful Life” Capra, a hero of ordinary people in the heartland. So what would he know about working with the woke powers that be on the left coast, these days?

I bring this up because of a fascinating New York Times lament that ran the other day with this headline: “After #MeToo Reckoning, a Fear Hollywood Is Regressing.” Apparently, progressives in Hollywood are very, very upset with the American people — think heartland folks, again — about some nasty recent returns in ratings and at the box office. Some “message” flicks are bombing.

Here’s the thesis statement: “The takeaway, at least to some agents and studio executives: We tried — these ‘woke’ projects don’t work.”

What does religion have to do with this? Very little, according to the Times (but we will get to that).

It’s clear that, to the team that produced this Times sermon, Middle America simply does not share the concerns of woke artists about systematic racism, sexual abuse and the whole diversity project in general.

Now, you can forget that “Black Panther” juggernaut in multiplexes nationwide, including red zip codes. Stunning, well-crafted Black superhero tales don’t count. Americans just aren’t lining up to watch the morality tales that Hollywood wants them to embrace. But what’s interesting — at least to me — is the degree to which the movies and big-ticket streamed TV series at the heart of this debate often contain content about religious and moral issues that, yes, are LINKED to diversity issues.

In other words, is this a new news story or the latest chapter in an old story about Hollywood’s struggles to understand the more religious and culturally conservative half of the American marketplace?

Let’s start where the Times has chosen to start — with Hollywood’s efforts to clean up its act in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, etc. Here’s the thesis about the #MeToo aftermath:

The movement led to increased diversity and representation in the entertainment industry, but now there is worry that executives have turned their attention elsewhere.

What happened?


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Doctrine and fashion: As Iran protests persist, what women's clothing does Islam require?

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Doctrine and fashion: As Iran protests persist, what women's clothing does Islam require?

THE QUESTION:

As Iran protests persist, what women’s clothing does Islam require?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The facts are these. On September 13, Iran’s morality police arrested 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for violating the legally required Muslim dress code for women. She was wearing the mandatory head scarf (hijab), but apparently it did not correctly conceal all of her hair. Three days later, Amini died while still in police custody. The government blames a heart attack, but suspicions that she was abused run rampant.

In the spontaneous uproar that resulted, refusal to wear the hijab became a symbol of resisting oppression as protests across the nation targeted not only restrictions for women but expressed over-all rejection of the harsh theocratic regime that has ruled revolutionary Iran the past 43 years. At this writing, at least 200 Iranians have reportedly been killed and 1,500 demonstrators arrested.

Azadeh Moaveni of New York University wrote in The New York Times that resentment boiled over in part because women in Tehran’s wealthy and politically-connected elite flagrantly ignore the Muslim dress laws without arrest.

There’s always been vigorous discussion of the complexities about exactly what attire is properly modest and thus faithful to Islam.

Responding to events in Iran, Deina Abdelkader at the University of Massachusetts Lowell contends that clothing rules “have nothing to do with Islamic tenets” while Muslim countries have imposed — or forbidden — forms of women’s attire in order to proclaim their ideology, whether secular or scrupulously religious.

Islam’s fundamental concern here is not unique, since religions normally advocate modesty and propriety. In particular, Jewish tradition associates attire as part of a general admonition in the Torah (Deuteronomy 23:15, JPS translation): “Let your camp be holy; let Him [God] not find anything unseemly among you and turn away from you.”


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Podcast: 'Culture Wars' again, as Muslims protest LGBTQ advances in public schools

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Podcast: 'Culture Wars' again, as Muslims protest LGBTQ advances in public schools

If you read newspapers or magazines in America, you have heard the term “culture wars.”

If you have read GetReligion for any time at all, then you probably know that, in the work of sociologist James Davison Hunter, the term “culture wars” was given a very specific definition that rarely shows up in news coverage.

In the early 1990s, Hunter published a bestseller entitled, “Culture Wars: The Struggle To Control The Family, Art, Education, Law, And Politics In America.” The term leapt into news jargon and, as often happens, it became totally politicized.

What was Hunter talking about? Hold that thought, because we will come back to it. We will need to apply it to a story that’s in the news right now, a story that many will describe as a “culture wars” fight. We discussed all of this during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Let’s start with this local headline from the Detroit Free Press: “LGBTQ and faith communities struggle for unity in Dearborn, Hamtramck.” What we have here is one of those stories in which conservative religious parents are making a stand in protest LGBTQ education efforts — and some other gender trends — in their local schools.

Sound familiar? But there’s a twist. This time, the evangelical Protestants have what journalists clearly consider some unlikely parters. Here is the (long) overture to the Detroit story, which went national:

The protest began with a prayer.

On a Sunday afternoon last month in Dearborn, Nagi Almudhegi took the stage to address the crowd gathered outside Henry Ford Centennial Library to demonstrate against some LGBTQ books in Dearborn Public Schools' libraries.

"I'd like to start off first of all with a prayer," Almudhegi said. "And I'm going to read, recite the chapter on Fatiha (opening of Quran) in Arabic and then I will read the English translation."

As he spoke, some in the crowd held up signs denouncing books and educational materials in the public schools that they believe are too explicit for children.


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Story of 2022 finalists (hello Julia Duin) to speak at Religion News Association awards

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Story of 2022 finalists (hello Julia Duin) to speak at Religion News Association awards

The Religion News Association will present its 2022 Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence in a ceremony next week at Columbia Journalism School in New York.

Finalists, for work produced in 2021, were announced in August. See the full list.

Wednesday night’s hybrid in-person and online event will feature a panel discussion by finalists for Religion Story of the Year, including:

• GetReligion’s own Julia Duin, for “The Christian prophets who say Trump is coming again,” for Politico. And click here for a post noting Duin’s work on this topic over the years.

• Deepti Hajela (representing a team that included Luis Andres Henao and Mariam Fam), for “Two decades after 9/11, Muslim Americans still fighting bias,” for The Associated Press.

• Emily Kaplan, for “The rise of the liberal Latter-day Saints,” for The Washington Post.

• Marie-Rose Sheinerman, “‘Second class citizens’: LGBTQ students allege culture of alienation and fear at Yeshiva University,” for The Forward.

I plan to watch the ceremony and report on the winners in next week’s Plug-in. In case you missed it, ReligionUnplugged.com’s own Paul Glader and Michael Ray Smith earned third place for Religion Story of the Year last year for “God and guns: Why American churchgoers are packing heat.”

In other contest news, the American Academy of Religion has announced the recipients of its 2022 journalism awards: Peter Manseau, Dawn Araujo-Hawkins and Ken Chitwood for best in-depth newswriting and Mike Cosper, Monique Parsons and Kylie McGivern for best in-depth multimedia journalism. Read about all the winners.


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In Islamic tradition, what is a fatwa? Why the demands to kill novelist Salman Rushdie?

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In Islamic tradition, what is a fatwa? Why the demands to kill novelist Salman Rushdie?

THE QUESTION:

In Islam, what is a fatwa? Why the demand to kill novelist Salman Rushdie?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

In 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s theocratic ruler, ordered the assassination “without delay” of novelist Salman Rushdie because of his novel “The Satanic Verses.” Remarkably, this official fatwa imposed the duty of freelance killing in the name of God upon masses of Muslim believers in all nations, and also demanded death for the editors and publishers involved with the book.

Three decades later, a Lebanese-American stands accused of attempting to murder Rushdie by repeated stabbings onstage at New York’s Chautauqua Institution. The author suffered severe injuries but survived. Though the Muslim Council of Britain condemned the attack, the Iranian regime’s Kayhan newspaper dispatched “a thousand bravos” to “the brave and dutiful” assailant while militants in other Muslim lands celebrated. We’ll see what prosecutors and defense attorneys finally say about links between Iran’s fatwa of death and the sensational bloodshed.

Rushdie’s complex fantasy had dream sequences in which depraved enemies of Islam — not the author himself — complain about moral absolutism and treatment of women and demean the Prophet Muhammad’s wives and closest Companions. They also challenge the divine inspiration of the Quran. A Wall Street Journal op-ed correctly noted that the far greater threat to the Quran is the revisionist theorizing on its origins by the late John Wansbrough at the University of London.

The Rushdie novel resulted in book-banning and riots in the Muslim world, and the famous fatwa sent Rushdie into hiding for years. In 1998, Iran’s president declared the case “finished” during diplomatic efforts, but the regime did not actually abolish the fatwa. It was reaffirmed by Khomeini’s successor as Supreme Leader in 2017, and re-published on a government Web site five days before the Chautauqua stabbing. During the past decade, Iranian groups have pledged to pay a $3.9 million bounty to anyone who slays Rushdie.


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This time, will U.S. Supreme Court finally clarify rights of same-sex marriage dissenters?

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This time, will U.S. Supreme Court finally clarify rights of same-sex marriage dissenters?

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021-2022 term produced biggies on abortion, religious freedom and the separation of church and state. The term that opens October 3 will bring another blockbuster — if the high court finally settles the unending clashes over LGBTQ+ rights versus religious rights.

Newsroom professionals will want to watch for the date set for the oral arguments in 303 Creative v. Elenis (Docket #21-476).

In this six-year dispute, graphic designer Lorie Smith is suing Colorado officials over the state’s anti-discrimination law, seeking to win the right to refuse requests to design websites that celebrate same-sex marriages, which she opposes, based on the teachings of her faith. She does not reject other work requests from LGBQ+ customers.

As currently framed, the case involves Smith’s freedom of speech rather than the First Amendment Constitutional right to “free exercise” of religion. The U.S. Supreme Court sidestepped the religious rights problem in 2018 (click here for tmatt commentary) when it overturned Colorado’s prosecution of wedding cake baker Jack Phillips (who is still enmeshed in a similar case per this from the firm that also represents Smith). Nor did the high court rule on religious freedom aspects when it legalized same-sex marriage in the 2015 Obergefell decision.

Last month, the Biden Administration entered 303 Creative (.pdf here) on the side of Colorado and LGBTQ+ interest groups. Essentially, the Department of Justice argues that as enforced in Colorado or elsewhere, “traditional public accommodations laws ... burden no more speech than necessary to further substantial government interests — indeed, compelling interests of the highest order.”

Smith has support from 16 Republican-led state governments and 58 members of Congress, while 21 Democratic states and 137 Congress members take the opposite stance alongside e.g. the American Bar Association.

The issue will face the U.S. Senate after the November elections as Democrats try to “codify” Obergefell into federal law but for passage may need to accept a Republican religious-freedom amendment. The Equality Act, which won unanimous support from House Democrats but is stalled in the Senate, would explicitly ban reliance on federal religious-freedom law in discrimination cases, include crucial laws passed by a broad left-right coalition during the Bill Clinton administration.


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