Christianity has played a central role in African-American life from the late 18th century to the present. Black churches raised funds for fugitive slaves, served as schoolhouses, and provided space for political meetings and activities, among other functions. Leaders of black congregations such as Richard Allen or Daniel Payne were…
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Aeon
This is a guest account for articles from Aeon (aeon.co) republished under a Creative Commons license.
When philosophy needed Muslims, Jews and Christians alike
If you were asked to name the most important philosopher of 10th-century Baghdad, you would presumably not hesitate to say ‘al-Farabi’. He’s one of the few thinkers of the Islamic world known to non-specialists, deservedly so given his ambitious reworking of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics and political philosophy. But…
What can we learn from the mediaeval attitude to pagans?
In a world like that of mediaeval Christian Europe, where everyone was a religious believer, how was the moral standing of non-Christians to be approached? Could people who did not share the faith everyone acknowledged as true nonetheless be virtuous?Mediaeval Christians were educated in a culture derived from antiquity.…
Understanding other religions is fundamental to citizenship
By walking down the street of any major city, you are likely to see more diversity than an 18th-century explorer did in a lifetime. People with very different ideas of how society should function must live together, and there is no idea more divisive than that of religion. Many of…
How socialism helped seed the landscape of modern religion
For most people today, socialism is associated with a secular or atheistic worldview. Since the October Revolution of 1917, most socialist regimes have built on Marxist doctrines, and taken clear anti-religious stances. From another perspective, however, secular or anti-religious socialism is exceptional, and religious socialism common. The vast majority of…
Why religion is not going away and science won't destroy it
In 1966, just over 50 years ago, the distinguished Canadian-born anthropologist Anthony Wallace confidently predicted the global demise of religion at the hands of an advancing science: ‘belief in supernatural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world, as a result of the increasing adequacy and diffusion of…