Throughout the seventeenth century, European civilisation was tortured by religious conflict. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and other political thinkers of the time wrote against a background of terrible dislocations: the wars of religion, religion-tinged political struggles between great European dynasties, and the ruinous conflict between the British Crown and parliament. The troubled times provided an occasion to rethink the proper relationship between the claims of religion and the operation of worldly (or secular) political power. Although Hobbes’s greatest single work, Leviathan... Read more

by C J RhodesR3 Contributor This post first appeared on the CJ Rhodes blog *This was presented for a course I taught for the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc., Congress of Christian Education. Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Chicago’s Willow Creek Community Church, boldly proclaims that the local church is the hope of the world! Hybels avers, “The hope of the world is not government, academia, business, but the church because it is to the church that God has entrusted... Read more

I have never subscribed to nonviolence as a way of life, simply because I have never felt strong enough or courageous enough, even though as a young activist and organizer in the South I was committed to the tactic. “I tried to aim my gun, wondering what it would feel like to kill a man,” Walter White wrote of his father’s instruction to shoot and “don’t . . . miss” if a white mob set foot on their property. If... Read more

Over the past several months we’ve been doing a lot of deconstruction work with the Bible on my blog, discussing how an unquestioning reading of Scripture leads to a lot of hurt. It’s an important conversation to have, one motivated by compassion. Because we care about people, and because we love the Bible we need to confront a way of reading that justifies harm as wrong. Still, even so, it’s hard. It takes a toll because, even though we believe... Read more

The Benghazi quasi-controversy took an ugly turn at a recent panel on the issue conducted by the Heritage Foundation, when prominent anti-Islam activist Brigitte Gabriel decried “180 million to 300 million Muslims’ quest for the destruction and dominance of Western civilization” — comments that prompted the room to erupt in applause. According to Gabriel, the moderate Muslim majority is useless, since it does not do enough to actively oppose militants like al-Qaeda — a view apparently shared by the other... Read more

Many have researched and written on the politicization of religion or the religionization of politics in Nigeria (Bienen, 1986; Clarke, 1988; Ibrahim, 1989; 1991; 1994; Agbaje, 1990; Hunwick, 1992; Kukah, 1993; 1995; Kastfelt, 1994; Enwerem, 1995; Kukah & Falola, 1996; Falola, 1998; Mu’azzam & Ibrahim, 2000; Best, 2001; Obadare, 2006; Loimeier, 2007; Imo, 2008; Marshall, 2009; Wakili, 2009; Adebanwi, 2010; Sodiq, 2009). Of these, the earlier ones have indeed dwelled sufficiently on how religion shaped and heightened the tempo of... Read more

by Andre KeyR3 Contributor When hip hop mogul Jay Z appeared at a Brooklyn Nets game with a medallion sporting the symbol of the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earth, the media went into a frenzy trying to interpret what it meant to the one-time minority co-owner of the team.  The New York Post controversial title, “Jay-Z bling from ‘whites are devil’ group” is certainly meant to gain readers and tarnish the image of the Brooklyn-born rapper.  Of the several reprints of... Read more

Dr. Andre E. Key is an Assistant Professor of History at Paine College. He received his Ph.D. in African American Studies from Temple University in 2011. He also earned a M.A. degree in History from Chicago State University and a B.A. in History from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. He has held a Graduate Research Fellowship at the Temple University Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and Center for Afro-Jewish Studies where he developed and taught... Read more

With all the headlines about new abortion laws in various states and Supreme Court’s deliberations on gay marriage, there’s no escaping the politics of sex and sexuality these days—or the role of religion in shaping the culture’s conversation about such subjects. While we aren’t likely to come to consensus on these issues anytime soon, we can work to sharpen our understanding of disagreements, which usually means getting back to basics. One of those core questions about gender, sex, and power... Read more

From the blog Per Caritatem  Cambridge Scholars Publishing has issued an advance contract for an edited volume that offers scholarly insight into the moral, political, and religious thought of Frederick Douglass. The co-editors, Dr. Timothy Golden and R3 Contributor Dr. Cynthia R. Nielsen, seek essays serving as book chapters that address Douglass as a moral philosopher, political philosopher, theologian, and a philosopher of religion. Essays are also welcome that engage Douglass’s thought vis-à-vis moral philosophy, theology, social and political philosophy,... Read more