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On Religion: Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla Draws Cheers And Jeers For His Outspoken Faith

June 19, 2024

(ANALYSIS) It’s rare to hear eight seconds of dead silence during an NBA Finals press conference.

Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla was asked if, because of the “plight” of Black head coaches, it was significant that both teams in the Finals were led by Black men for the first time since 1975. Was this a source of pride for him?

Mazzulla's answer was blunt: “I wonder how many of those have been Christian coaches?”

The son of an Italian father and a Black mother, Mazzulla is...

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‘Forgive us our trespasses’: Boston-area minister goes to jail to fight climate change

May 2, 2024

 

What leads a clergy member to break the law? 

On Saturday April 20, climate activists from Extinction Rebellion Boston (XR) disrupted passenger boarding at Hanscom Airfield in Massachusetts, to protest a proposed expansion that would lead to a 300% increase in private jet traffic and related greenhouse gas emissions in the Boston area. State police eventually arrested 20 protesters, charging them with trespassing. Among them was Rev. Dr. Susanne Intriligator, minister of the Melrose Unitarian Universalist Church in Melrose, MA.

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New York to Pay $17.5 Million for Forcing Removal of Hijabs in Mug Shots

April 5, 2024

New York City has agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by two women who said their rights were violated when they were forced to remove their hijabs before the police took their arrest photographs.

The financial settlement filed on Friday, which still requires approval by Judge Analisa Torres of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the latest development in the class-action lawsuit filed in 2018 by Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz, two Muslim women who said they felt shamed and exposed by the police officers’ actions.

“When they...

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How common is religious fasting in the United States?

April 5, 2024

Muslims are currently observing Ramadan, a holy month when people fast by abstaining from certain activities, including eating and drinking, during the day. Many Christians, Jews and adherents of other religions also practice some form of fasting at certain times of the year. Many Catholics, for example, recently fasted for Lent by abstaining from meat on Fridays, among other things.

In the United States, 21% of adults overall say they fast for certain periods during holy times, according to a Pew Research Center survey from February. Muslim Americans are by far the most...

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Awe and dread: How religions have responded to total solar eclipses over the centuries

April 4, 2024

 

Throughout history, solar eclipses have had profound impact on adherents of various religions around the world. They were viewed as messages from God or spiritual forces, inducing emotions ranging from dread to wonder.

 

Ahead of the total solar eclipse that will follow a long path over North America on Monday, here’s a look at how several of the world’s major religions have responded...

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New York inmates are suing to watch solar eclipse after state orders prisons locked down

April 2, 2024

NEW YORK -- Inmates in New York are suing the state corrections department over the decision to lock down prisons during next Monday's total solar eclipse.

The suit filed Friday in federal court in upstate New York argues that the April 8 lockdown violates inmates' constitutional rights to practice their faiths by preventing them from taking part in a religiously significant event.

The plaintiffs are six men with varying religious backgrounds who are incarcerated at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Woodbourne. They include a Baptist, a Muslim, a Seventh-...

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Mosques in NYC struggle to house and feed an influx of Muslim migrants this Ramadan

April 2, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — Above a bodega in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, a mosque congregation hosts iftar, the traditional Islamic end of fast meal, for hundreds of hungry migrants every night during this holy month of Ramadan.

Up north in the Bronx, an imam has turned the two-story brick residence that houses his mosque into a makeshift overnight shelter for migrants, many of them men from his native Senegal.

Islamic institutions in the Big Apple are struggling to keep up with the needs of the city’s migrant population as an increasing number of asylum seekers come...

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A year after deadly Nashville shooting, Christian school relies on faith — and adopted dogs

April 1, 2024

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nearly a year after a shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville that left three adults and three children dead, the students and their families have formed tight bonds out of their shared suffering. They’ve also adopted a lot of dogs.

Among the adopters is Matthew Sullivan, who now cares for a Rhodesian ridgeback named Hank. He is the chaplain at Covenant School, which endured an all-too-common tragedy on March 27, 2023, when a former student shot through the exterior doors and kept going. Sullivan isn’t allowed to talk about...

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LGBTQ-inclusive church in Cuba welcomes all in a country that once sent gay people to labor camps

April 1, 2024

MATANZAS, Cuba (AP) — Proudly wearing a rainbow-colored clergy stole and a rainbow flag in her clerical collar, the Rev. Elaine Saralegui welcomed all to her LGBTQ+ inclusive church in the Cuban port city of Matanzas.

“We’re all invited. And no one can exclude us,” Saralegui told same-sex couples who held hands sitting on wooden pews in the Metropolitan Community Church where she had recently married her wife.

These words and this kind of gathering would have been unimaginable before in the largest country in the conservative and mostly Christian Caribbean, ...

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