Category: religion

The Secret Sex Lives of Nuns

Sisters Federica and Isabel knew that their feelings had gone far beyond a platonic friendship when they were on mission in Guinea Bissau in 2012. The nuns were from the same religious order near Turin in northern Italy, and they had never been alone outside the semi-cloistered life until they found themselves in missionary work in Africa.

Sister Federica, who prefers not to give her real name, says she can’t remember if it was an accidental touch that led to an embrace or eye contact that made her blush, but at some point in the mission, they kissed. By the time they made it back to Italy, they had cast aside their vows of celibacy and were madly planning their departure from religious life. In 2016, they were married by Turin’s mayor in one of Italy’s first same-sex unions.

Sister Federica, who is no longer a nun, says romance among women religious is far more common than many might believe. And it is not just lesbian love; nuns commonly fall in love with their priests or parishioners.

The Secret Sex Lives of Nuns

How did Jesus and the Hebrews become WHITE?

How did the Hebrews turn White? Of course they didn’t really; just in the imaginations, and then the histories of White people. Who for probably practical reasons, decided that Hebrews, and also the Blacks who originally lived in the Country’s that they took over, should all become White for posterity’s sake.

Seeing as how it only takes three generations to turn a Black person into a White person (and visa versa). No doubt there came a time when as Europe’s formerly bi-racial populations, became more homogeneously White, White people decided that they could no longer acknowledge that all that they knew and had, was derived from the minds and labors of Black people – even down to their religious beliefs. The logic no doubt being that Whites could not progress to their full potential, if they were always looking up to Blacks, as the personification of knowledge and wisdom. So a change had to be made, and at some point, by somebody, that change began.

Of course, we have no way of knowing when this process of Whitinizing Blacks began, or who did it, or where it was first done. But we do have some materials by which we can track the process, somewhat.

But first, let us go back to see what Hebrews REALLY looked like. The earliest authentic pictures of real Hebrews that we have, date back to before Christ. They are Assyrian relief’s showing Hebrews, and others that they conquered, in pictorial scenes detailing the battles fought, with associated text. These relief’s decorated Assyrian palaces, and were no doubt used to gloat over their conquest of the Hebrews and others. Here we are using pictures of: Assyrian King Shalmaneser IIIs “Black Obelisk” (858 B.C.). Assyrian king Tiglath-pilesar III’s relief’s of his conquest of a city near the Sea of Galilee (730 B.C.). Assyrian King Sennacherib’s relief’s of the conquest of the Judean City of Lachish (701 B.C.). The four pictures below, are from those Assyrian relief’s. (These relief’s are stored in the British Museum, London England).

How did Jesus and the Hebrews become WHITE?

The Last Testament • Jonas Bendiksen • Magnum Photos

In his latest book, The Last Testament, Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen chronicles seven men who all publicly claim to be the biblical Messiah returned. Some have thousands of followers; others only a handful of disciples. All are united in the faith that they themselves are the Chosen One and have come to save the world. In his own words, the Magnum photographer explains what the project means to him.

The Last Testament • Jonas Bendiksen • Magnum Photos

Peter Popoff, the Born-Again Scoundrel | GQ

 

Once, Peter Popoff was a magical, mystical man of God—a giant among ’80s televangelists. And Lord, was he rich! But he was also an enormous fraud who was ruined in scandal. Ah, but here in America, time absolves all that. And if a fellow is clever enough, he can remake his kingdom and amass quite a fortune. For the Lord worketh in mysterious ways.

 

He came to me when I least expected. I was in a hotel bed, enrobed in terry cloth, my teeth brushed, my hand aloft holding the remote. This was a year ago, and the soft glow of cable TV was the room’s only light. I was flitting between channels when I happened upon BET. There I saw an old white man preaching to an audience of elderly black people. And as I wondered what on earth this pasty alter kocker was doing on black TV, it came to me: I had seen this man before.


Peter Popoff, the Born-Again Scoundrel | GQ

My Life Inside ‘The Family’ Cult

“Do you remember me?” she asks, as a hopeful smile spreads on her face, like she’s trying to tease the right answer out of me. We’re not children anymore. We’ve left. Some of us left with our families, some with our friends, and some alone. Now we’re living in this other world where we keep having to explain—why we lived in so many countries, why our accents change when we talk to strangers, why we didn’t go to school, why we can’t sleep. But to one another, to those of us who grew up like me in the Family, we don’t have to explain.

Yet on message boards, on Facebook, and now, outside a coffee shop on South Congress in Austin, this same question—“Do you remember me?”—comes up over and over. It’s usually followed by the volley of questions we’ve tested to figure out who we were then. “What was your name? Who were your parents? Were you in Osaka? Switzerland?”

Part of the problem with growing up in something so secluded as a cult is that our pasts are so unbelievable we need a witness for our own memory. And so we seek out those who remember.

Daily Beast

From Bikinis to Burkinis, Regulating What Women Wear

In the midst of France’s fight over banning the burkini, the bikini is celebrating its 70th anniversary, and photographs chronicling its debut and early history in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s are on display in one of Paris’s chic galleries, prompting parallels to the uproar over the burkini today.

What is it about women’s swimwear and more generally women’s attire that over and over in history has attracted controversy and impelled societies to legislate or regulate women’s choices?

Historians, sociologists and anthropologists have argued about it for decades, but the seemingly simplistic statement that women’s bodies are a battleground has some truth to it. Formally or informally, men (primarily) have been making rules about women’s attire for a very long time.

“Can’t we decide what we want to wear in 2016?” wondered Sarah Fekih, 23, from Lyon, France, in a comment she wrote to The New York Times. “If one wishes to dress skimpily or to be almost nude or to be covered from head to toe, isn’t that a personal choice that can not be dictated by law?”

NYTimes

The Real Face of Jesus

From the first time Christian children settle into Sunday school classrooms, an image of Jesus Christ is etched into their minds. In North America he is most often depicted as being taller than his disciples, lean, with long, flowing, light brown hair, fair skin and light-colored eyes. Familiar though this image may be, it is inherently flawed. A person with these features and physical bearing would have looked very different from everyone else in the region where Jesus lived and ministered. Surely the authors of the Bible would have mentioned so stark a contrast. On the contrary, according to the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane before the Crucifixion, Judas Iscariot had to indicate to the soldiers whom Jesus was because they could not tell him apart from his disciples. Further clouding the question of what Jesus looked like is the simple fact that nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus described, nor have any drawings of him ever been uncovered. There is the additional problem of having neither a skeleton nor other bodily remains to probe for DNA. In the absence of evidence, our images of Jesus have been left to the imagination of artists. The influences of the artists’ cultures and traditions can be profound, observes Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, associate professor of world Christianity at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta. “While Western imagery is dominant, in other parts of the world he is often shown as black, Arab or Hispanic.” And so the fundamental question remains: What did Jesus look like?

This might be the most controversial theory for what’s behind the rise of ISIS

A year after his 700-page opus “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” stormed to the top of America’s best-seller lists, Thomas Piketty is out with a new argument about income inequality. It may prove more controversial than his book, which continues to generate debate in political and economic circles.

The new argument, which Piketty spelled out recently in the French newspaper Le Monde, is this: Inequality is a major driver of Middle Eastern terrorism, including the Islamic State attacks on Paris earlier this month — and Western nations have themselves largely to blame for that inequality.

NYTimes

Map: These are the world’s least religious countries

The survey of 65 countries, conducted by Gallup International and the WI Network of Market Research, is based on 63,898 interviews. China tops the list of the world’s least religious nations by far; it’s followed by countries in Europe — about three fourth of all Swedish and Czech also said that they were either atheists or not religious.

Washington Post