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Buildings at Princeton University’s Princeton Theological Seminary are pictured in Princeton, N.J. Last year, the university released a report on the school’s role in American bondage. Although the seminary did not own slaves and slave labor was not used on constructing the school, slave owners were major donors and responsible for as much as 40 percent of the seminary’s revenue.

‘We are therefore demanding …’ : Reparations in the Christian church

By Editors' Choice, News & Current Affairs

By Wyatt Massey, Frederick News Post — The Rev. Dr. Ernest Campbell said no, James Forman could not speak at his church service the next day. Campbell was the senior pastor at Riverside Church, a predominantly white church on the west side of Manhattan. Forman, a black civil rights leader, wanted to read something to the congregation at the next day’s service on May 4, 1969, according to a history…

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Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota

The Fight Over Ilhan Omar Is a Fight Over the Identity of the Democratic Party

By Commentaries/Opinions

A House vote on bigotry underscored powerful changes in the party’s coalition, including among young Muslims. By Emma Green, The Atlantic — The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to condemn anti-Semitism, along with a litany of bigotries against Muslims, immigrants, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, LGBT people, and members of other religious minorities. The resolution followed a week of drama in the Democratic Party, with members clashing over…

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Henrietta Hilton, front left, daughter of tenant farmer William Hilton, and her fellow students, are seen in their ninth grade classroom in Summerton, S.C., June 4, 1954.

Race, Not Abortion Was the Founding Issue of the Religious Right

By Editors' Choice

Though opposition to abortion is what many think fueled the powerful conservative white evangelical right, 81 percent of whom voted for Donald Trump, it was really school integration, according to Randall Balmer, chairman of the religion department. By Margery Eagan, The Boston Globe — Here are some facts that might surprise you. In 1971, two years before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, the biggest white evangelical group in America, the…

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The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on Oct. 5, 2015.

Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship seminary details its racist, slave-owning past in stark report

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Marisa Iati, The Washington Post — More than two decades after the Southern Baptist Convention — the country’s second-largest faith group — apologized to African Americans for its active defense of slavery in the 1800s, its flagship seminary on Wednesday released a stark report further delineating its ties to institutionalized racism. The year-long study by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary found that all four founding faculty members owned slaves…

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Ghana’s goalkeepers, Stephen Adams (L) and Fatawu Dauda (R), pray before a 2014 World Cup match. Robert Ghement/EPA

Football and religion: two competing domains with a lot to offer Africa

By Editors' Choice

By Mohammed Girma, The Conversation — In this age of globalisation few events draw more attention than sport as the World Cup in Russia illustrates with billions of people across the globe glued to their screens. At this time in football crazy Africa, specialists and ordinary fans are watching, discussing and analysing the World Cup. But the excitement and euphoria come with a unique challenge to the continent’s religions. Africa remains firmly devout across…

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Donald Trump

Trump Can’t Reverse the Decline of White Christian America

By Commentaries/Opinions

Two-thirds of those who voted for the president felt his election was the “last chance to stop America’s decline.” But his victory won’t arrest the cultural and demographic trends they opposed. By Robert P. Jones, The Atlantic — Down the home stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, one of Donald Trump’s most consistent talking points was a claim that America’s changing demographics and culture had brought the country to a…

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The Mormon church is still grappling with a racial past.

Mormons confront a history of Church racism

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Matthew Bowman, The Conversation — On June 1 of this year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – or the Mormons – will celebrate the 40th anniversary of what they believe to be a revelation from God. This revelation to the then-President of the Church Spencer W. Kimball – which is known as “Official Declaration 2” – reversed longstanding restrictions placed on people of black African descent in the…

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The Israelites despoiling the Egyptians. Image from f. 13 of the ‘Golden Haggadah.” 1325–1349

The Torah Case for Reparations

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Aryeh Bernstein — Introduction: It has been two-and-a-half years since Ta-Nehisi Coates published “The Case for Reparations,” his Polk Award-winning masterpiece, in The Atlantic. The article makes a detailed and riveting case for the principled justice of reparations payments to Black Americans by the American government for the accrued, exacerbated, and lingering damage of slavery and subsequent manifestations of national plunder of Black Americans, such as Jim Crow laws in the South, and structural…

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