The post first appeared in The Leipzig Glocal. The heavily gated entrance to Freedom Park in Leipzig fails to project an air of leisurely abandon its name intimates. Approaching the territory from the north, you have to pass through a triple gate – a set of iron double doors flanked to the left and right by two archways of yellow brick masonry. With the clandestine resignation of seasoned elders, they inspect blithe visitors. I walk up to the gate on …
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Secularity
The Evangelist-Baptist Church has won the hearts of many in Georgia. In the past two decades, Church leadership has come into the spotlight on numerous occasions for championing the cause of a common humanity and mutual love in the face of xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and gender-based discrimination. While fervent Orthodox Christians decry the denomination for erring from God’s true path, the Evangelical-Baptist Church has garnered sympathy from the liberal faction of society, a feat rarely accomplished by a religious group …
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This blog was originally published as a part of ‘Dossier Corona’, introduced by Religious Matters Project at Utrecht University in the spring of 2020. The sound of religion – reverberations of calls to prayer, sermons, and church bells against the urban topography, ecstatic utterances of devotees, faint sounds of breathing bodies in meditation, devotional songs uttered with dedication – has animated the minds of researchers in various disciplines, including anthropology, religious studies, sound studies, and history. Silence, on the other hand, has been …
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This blog was originally published as a part of ‘Dossier Corona’, introduced by Religious Matters Project at Utrecht University in the spring of 2020. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, in Christian Orthodox churches across Eastern Europe and several post-Soviet countries, the age-old altercation between religion and science is condensing around a small material object – the communion spoon. This shared utensil, used to deliver sacramental bread and wine to the parish, is now brandished by liberal secularists as the ultimate insignia …
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