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We hope you enjoy this episode of the Revealer podcast: “The Changing Black Church.”

The post The Revealer Podcast Episode 52: The Changing Black Church appeared first on The Revealer.

(Image source: Gardner-Webb University)

The following excerpt comes from Jason E. Shelton’s The Contemporary Black Church: The New Dynamics of African American Religion (NYU Press, 2024). The book explores the increasing religious diversification among Black Americans as well as the significant increase in Black Americans with no religious affiliation.

This excerpt comes from the book’s fifth chapter, “Are all sins created equal?”

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A Woman’s Place is in the Home?

Speaking of debates in society, changing expectations for women and men both inside and outside of family life has become a highly contentious issue. For most of American history, conventional wisdom has held that men go to work to provide for their family, while women do not work but care for the home and raise children. This is the classic ideal of the breadwinner/homemaker model. While this archetype was never applicable to most African Americans (since neither black men nor women were granted access to the kinds of opportunities that permitted such a privileged lifestyle), it is true that African Americans’ beliefs about the role of women have changed. In the late 1970s, 61% of black GSS respondents either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the following statement: “It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.” Thirty-nine percent “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed.” However, by the late 2010s, only 25% of study participants at least agreed with the statement, while 76% at least disagreed. This dramatic shift is further evidence of previously discussed changes in African American families over the past half-century.

Which denominational families most strongly emphasize the breadwinner/homemaker model? Table 2 shows that at least 56% of members of all traditions comprising the contemporary Black Church do not believe that a woman’s place is in the home. However, multivariate results indicate that Baptists, Methodists and Catholics are more likely to disagree than non-denoms. Moreover, Methodists and Catholics differ from Holiness/Pentecostals, but Baptists to do not. Taken together, these findings indicate that mainliners are more significantly opposed to the statement than evangelicals. Interestingly, Holiness/Pentecostals and non-denoms do not differ from religious non-affiliates in their beliefs about whether women should take care of home and family (however, Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics do). These latter findings suggest high levels of social conservativism among African American “nones.”

Additional findings from the GSS confirm the mainline versus evangelical divide in beliefs about traditional gender roles. For instance, Methodists are less likely than non-denoms to believe that preschool children “suffer” if their mother works outside of the home. Moreover, Catholics are more likely than Holiness/Pentecostals to: (a) believe that working mothers can establish relationships with their children that are just as “warm and secure” as mothers who don’t work, and (b) vote for a woman to become President of the United States so long as she is “qualified” for the position. It is also worth mentioning that: (c) Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics are less likely than non-affiliates to believe that children suffer if their mother works outside of the home (although evangelicals do not differ from the “nones”), and (d) Baptists, Catholics, and non-denoms are more likely to vote for a female President than religious non-affiliates. These latter findings further attest to high levels of social conservativism among African American religious non-affiliates. This is most likely because black men comprise the bulk of the GSS sample of religious “nones.”

By now, you’ve probably noticed that the multivariate statistical results for Baptists more closely parallel those of mainline rather than evangelical Protestant traditions. This precisely explains why I argue that the black Baptist family is best understood as a mainline tradition within the contemporary Black Church. However, most of the high-ranking Baptist clergy that I spoke with reinforced traditional views about the role of women, and specifically referenced the breadwinner/homemaker model. For example, Pastor Lewis explained his views in a very straightforward and reasoned way:

“Historically, this country has promoted men as the providers, and I think that is biblical. Up until about 25 years ago, most of the denominations would basically line up with that.

However, there’s been a shift, and now most would say it takes two working people to make your household operate and fulfill the goals that you as a couple would like to fulfill as a family.

As a result, if you and your husband have agreed that this is the way your family will need to operate to meet your goals as a family unit, then there’s nothing wrong with the wife working outside of the home, helping to achieve those goals. It’s a mutual commitment and agreement on the part of the husband and wife. More of us embrace that kind of approach to family units today than ever before.

I believe, though, that there is a kind of a narrow, Bible-believing evangelical, who would be more rigid to still say the husband is the one that goes out and earns the living for his family and the wife should stay home because God intended her to be the nurturer of the children and organizing the home. I subscribe to that belief.”

Interestingly, my results for non-denoms and Holiness/Pentecostals also suggest a discrepancy between clergy and laity. While the Baptist clergy that I interviewed are seemingly more conservative on traditional gender roles than laity in the GSS, the non-denom and Holiness/Pentecostal clergy that I interviewed are somewhat more liberal on gender roles than laity. For example, Pastor Forbes does not believe that a woman’s place is in the home. To the contrary, he feels that women must have “economic viability in this capitalistic society”:

“The more I read biblical text it subscribes to a woman who is working and the philosophy of her work is to take care of her kids, answer for her man, and to support her household.

In the Bible there are women entrepreneurs and there are businesswomen. So I think there’s something to be said for giving the woman freedom to have economic viability in this capitalistic society. If we are talking about being a blessing to others, our families and community, then sometimes the gift of that is not just on the man. It’s on the woman as well. Instead of fighting an economic fight one-handed you might as well become ambidextrous! God has given us both a right-hand and left-hand! (laughter)

During times of war, while the men are away fighting for our country the women are working to make sure that they had a country to come home to. You can’t just use women for one thing but not acknowledge them for all things.”

Elder Harris might agree with some of Pastor Forbes’ assertions. The following statement not only suggests that his own personal position on traditional gender roles has changed over the years, but so has that of other high-ranking clergy within COGIC:

“You know what I’m finding? Even in a tradition like mine that tends to be more biblio-centric, there are questions about the roles of males and females. An interesting point about the Church of God in Christ is that early-on Bishop Mason empowered women by creating a Women’s Department where they had certain leadership roles in the denomination. And when you attend a large meeting of the Church of God in Christ, it’s kind of the father/mother thing in that you have the men on one side of the stage and women on the other. In one sense, they are both equally on the stage even though the men have more authority.

Black families have always struggled in our situation here in America. One result of that is there have been women leaders in the Church of God in Christ, and we have more-and-more women leaders today.  

There’s a group called ‘COGIC Scholars’ that has discussions about whether we should continue to hold on to the same kind of views about women in leadership as the past generation. There’s a practical sense in society that women can be positive leaders, and there has been more of an opening for women having prominent leadership. This is happening at a time when men are trying to hold on to leadership, although there’s a movement towards greater equality within the home.”

While there are signs of shifting tides among evangelicals, waves of changing beliefs about the role of women crashed onto mainline shores decades ago. Most of the high-ranking mainline clergy that I spoke with emphasized one of two points: (1) that women have been subjugated within our nation overall and inside of African American Christianity, as well as (2) women and men must be treated fairly. Many of them also (3) provided examples to support their arguments. For example, Pastor White feels that many people misunderstand that God created Adam and Eve to be “co-equal”:

“God made men and women in His image. There wasn’t a pecking order until Satan, the enemy, came in and tried to disarrange things.

God did not make Eve from Adam’s head because she would think she’s above him. God did not make Eve from Adam’s feet because then he would step on her. God made Eve from Adam’s rib, where she walks beside him. So, I think men and women are co-equal.  

However, God told Adam to dress and keep the garden, but Eve to be a helpmate not a hurt-mate. So I believe families who teach this lesson have a tendency to tell women: ‘You can stay home and raise the children but at the same time that doesn’t mean you don’t do any housework.’”

Rev. Brown also emphasized gender equality. However, he did so by recalling a discussion that took place between himself and the pastor presiding over his daughter’s wedding. Rev. Brown and his family were very concerned about what they view as sexist themes within traditional marriage vows. Among other things, he did not want to reinforce the perception of his daughter as her soon-to-be husband’s “property.” The following narrative was conveyed in a cheerful and funny tone, but Rev. Brown’s point is very serious:

“So, we’re going through a pre-ceremony walk-through. I said to the minister who was going to marry my daughter, ‘Let me ask you a question. When you do the vows and you say the repeat after me thing, are you going to ask: Who gives this woman?’  

The minister responded, ‘Yes.’ That’s when I said, ‘You’re going to have a problem!’ (laughter)

I said, ‘First off, none of my daughters are property so they can’t be given to anybody. And, if you get up there in front of these people and ask, ‘Who gives this woman?,’ the women in my family are gonna attack you! I guarantee it! (laughter) And don’t be looking at me for help cause I’m trying to clue you in right now! (laughter)

I told him that he should ask the congregation, ‘Who presents this woman?’ But don’t be talking about “giving nothing away” cause ain’t nobody owning nothing around here.   

He was taken aback, but he did take the counsel and didn’t try to ‘give my daughter away.’ If he had, I know at least three of the women in that church would have chewed his butt up!”

Speaking of women in the Church, the high-ranking mainline clergy with whom I spoke were critical of sexism in society and within the pastorate. For instance, Rev. Dr. Spencer believes that some traditional views of women are out-of-step with the modern world, and also undermine the significant role that black women have played in sustaining black families over the centuries. Furthermore, she believes that a “toxic masculinity” continues to hold back women within African American Christianity:

“People cherry-pick scriptures that fit their take on the Bible and personal lifestyle. In the Bible there were businesswomen, women were the first ones to Christ’s tomb, women were at the foot of the Cross, and actively involved in the Old Testament and New Testament in terms of their presence in ministry as leaders.

So at this point in time, trying to put women down with some kind of archaic, chauvinistic, misogynistic, toxic masculinity perspective is not okay. Both then and now, if the woman didn’t work and take care of home there would be no “black family.”

Any black man that comes with that old traditional stuff has to leave that in the 1950s. Leave It To Beaver is not on tv anymore! We are in the 21st century! Some of this stuff is ridiculous!

And it’s especially difficult for clergywomen in the Bible Belt. Supposedly, women should not be in leadership, can’t be in the pulpit, and can only teach during Sunday School. That makes no kind of sense.” 

Rev. Dr. Strong would completely agree with Rev. Dr. Spencer. She, too, recognizes “patriarchy” within African American Christianity. However, her point moves in a slightly different direction by focusing on women’s response to sexism within the faith, as well as a new sense of individualism that took root in Black America during the 1960s and 70s. It’s worth mentioning that her view closely aligns with mainliners’ attention to an individual locus of moral authority:

“Women were shushed! We were told to “respect your elders” and that whole patriarchy thing ran rampant.

These men were abusing their power but then women started to get the word that they didn’t have to go along with stuff—even if it’s an abusive husband who the Bible says they are supposed to follow.

Those women started to hear their own voices in the 1960s and 70s, and honoring their own voices gave them the ability to question, decide to not go along with things, leave the Church if they could—or if they dared.”

Jason E. Shelton is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for African American Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington and the author of Blacks and Whites in Christian America: How Racial Discrimination Shapes Religious Convictions.

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Interested in more on this topic? Check out episode 52 of the Revealer podcast: “The Changing Black Church.”

The post Gender and the Black Church Today appeared first on The Revealer.

(Scene from Netflix’s Nobody Wants This)

When the trailer arrived for Netflix’s series Nobody Wants This, I rolled my eyes. A rom-com about a so-called hot rabbi (Adam Brody) falling in love with a Gentile podcaster (Kristen Bell) with a potential monster mother-in-law (Tovah Feldshuh) had the potential to be a pernicious stereotypical mess. But, ever the cultural critic, I reminded myself—and my followers on social media—that one should never judge a show by its trailer. Media marketing campaigns aren’t known for capturing subtleties, and they often highlight the most conventionalized and thus recognizable aspects of a show. When the series dropped in late September, I found the first episode oddly compelling, albeit with some irksome moments, and I uncharacteristically binged the first season in a few days.

For this Jewish feminist, Nobody Wants This is a love-hate watch. Admirably, the male protagonist experiences the tug of war between love and work, a conflict more commonly assigned to women. None of us should underestimate such gender parity. And since the male lead’s line of work is rabbinical, the show’s branding and rebranding of Judaism for his non-Jewish love interest—as well as for viewers—is a significant narrative hook. Unfortunately, the rebranding of Judaism as fun and relevant, which might incentivize conversion and thus allow the “hot” rabbi to have it all, is continuously undercut by mean Jewish women. And therein lies the Jewish feminist rub. While there are rich possibilities here for interfaith, intercultural heterosexual romantic relationships, Nobody Wants This sets up Gentile and Jewish women as competitors for Jewish men. Ultimately, too much of the supposedly Jewish funny business in this show depends on anti-Jewish, anti-feminist catfights.

The Jewish women problem announces itself early in the first episode with Noah’s girlfriend, Rebecca (Emily Arlook). Determined to take relationship control after a multi-year courtship, she announces that it’s time for them to get married, that she found the engagement ring he had hidden, and that they need to plan the wedding. Unlike her Biblical matriarchal namesake, Rebecca’s attempts to manipulate her Jewish future do not come to fruition. Instead, Noah regretfully informs her that she’s not “the one” and, much to her surprise and heartbreak, he ends their relationship.

Soon he becomes smitten with Joanne, a podcaster focused on all things romantic and sexual. She is blonde, lithe, and sassy—and, of course, Gentile. Whether or not she is rebound material or his bashert (soul mate) is the driving force of the series. They meet at a party where rumor has it that a rabbi is in attendance. She assumes an out-of-shape, shaggy-bearded man is the rabbi, an assumption she confides to the fit, attractive, neatly-bearded Noah. When she sheepishly realizes that HE is the rabbi in question, her—and the viewers—stereotypical notions about rabbis and, by extension, Jewish men are upended.

In general, Noah is a breath of fresh anti-stereotypical air. After all, he is a “hot” rabbi—an oxymoron in the dominant cultural imagination. Despite being a rabbi, he is attractively funny, even and especially when he is countering profound ignorance about Judaism and soft antisemitism. When Joanne makes the sign of the cross in the synagogue, his comeback isn’t to become offended, but rather to simply say, “that isn’t us.” And when Noah hears a text from Morgan, Joanne’s sister and podcaster partner, that reads “he’s cuter than . . . expected” and “he doesn’t look that Jewish,” he does a rapid-fire discomforting bit calling out her antisemitism: “if I may inquire, what does Jewish look like to you? . . . Are you picturing a bigger nose or curlier hair?  . . . Maybe we all look the same.” He then shifts tone, indicating that he’s “just kidding” and that he’s not offended. In another episode, he holds up a sheet with a hole in it as a gag to tease Morgan for invoking the persistent myth that observant Jews have sexual intercourse without full body contact. With his light, comedic touch, he performs the work of a kinder, gentler, hip branch of the Anti-Defamation League.

While Rabbi Noah counters ignorance with a light touch, he also deftly promotes Jewish positivity. One of the most romantic and assertively Jewish scenes in the series (and perhaps in contemporary media) occurs in a restaurant bar. Responding to Joanne’s regret that she didn’t get to experience Shabbat with him, Noah orchestrates a makeshift Shabbat. He explains the importance of doing Shabbat wherever you are and with those you “care about.” He then produces two candles. She lights them as he intones the Hebrew prayer associated with that weekly ritual act. After this impromptu candle lighting, they drink some red wine and he breaks a piece of bread in two and shares it with her. He omits the prayers over the wine and the bread (kiddush and hamotzi); three untranslated Hebrew prayers might have been pushing his luck with Joanne as well as non-Jewishly literate viewers.

In the Torah, Noah is identified as “blameless in his age,” and commentators have wondered whether that superlative might be a back-handed compliment: i.e., is Noah the best of men, or is he the best that his compromised generation can do and be? That question seems equally applicable to Noah in Nobody Wants This. At a Jewish camp, Noah introduces Joanne as his friend rather than his girlfriend because he knows that loving a “shiksa” (an offensive term for a Gentile woman and the original title of the show!) is not exactly a winning career move for a rabbi. He offers a seemingly sincere hip apology for this—that he was “sus” (slang for suspect) and again wins Joanne’s heart and, apparently, a lot of het female viewers.

However, when the head rabbi at his synagogue euphemistically tells Noah that he can’t eat crab if he’s to become the senior rabbi—with Joanne crudely positioned as the unkosher shellfish here—and suggests she convert, Noah pursues that path with Joanne. Without conversion, Noah will have to choose between love and work (a choice which mobilizes the drama and the angst of the season finale). Imagine instead that Noah had found the courage to tell the rabbi it might be “sus” to ask him to make that choice. Given that the Reform movement—after much debate—now embraces intermarried rabbinical students, Noah refusing to accept the conversion ultimatum would have been authentic and timely.

But my qualms about Noah pale in comparison to those I have about most, though not all, of the show’s Jewish women. Noah’s sister-in-law, Esther, is decidedly “not fun” and is portrayed as scarily aggressive and controlling (Jackie Tohn, who plays Esther, insists that she “feels proud to be on a show that even revolves around Judaism”). In sharp contrast to her Biblical namesake who arguably saved the Jewish people through intermarriage, Esther is antagonistic to outsiders, and remains allied with Rebecca, Noah’s ex.

Most troubling is Noah’s mother, Bina, brilliantly played by the legendary Tovah Feldshuh. Some might remember that Feldshuh was Golda Meir (mother of the Jewish nation) in Golda’s Balcony. She was also the mother in Kissing Jessica Stein who starts out as a meddling matchmaker during Yom Kippur services and is later transformed into a loving, albeit struggling, mother trying to ease her daughter’s queer coming out. When in that film, she subtly recognizes Jessica’s relationship with Helen and says almost inaudibly she’s “a very nice girl,” a quiet revolution in the depiction of the Jewish mother begins (to my mind, that revolution continues with the gradual complication of the initially loathsome and self-involved Shelly Pfefferman, the Jewish mother in Transparent). Given that trend, I had hoped that the trailer bit in which Bina whispers in Joanne’s ear that she’ll never marry her son would be a prelude to a similar transformation or complication. But those hopes are dashed as Bina is depicted as not only a monstrously stereotypical Jewish mother but also a bad, hypocritical Jew.

(Tovah Feldshuh in Nobody Wants This)

When Joanne goes to Noah’s house to meet his parents, she brings a charcuterie tray that includes prosciutto, a form of pork and therefore unkosher. Aghast, Joanne is also perplexed—she always thought prosciutto was beef (she’s not only Jewishly illiterate but also a profoundly challenged foodie). When she suggests that the tray can be salvaged if they eat around the taboo prosciutto, Bina is adamant that, since the prosciutto touched the other items, the whole tray must go into the garbage. However, Joanne later discovers Bina voraciously chowing down on the prosciutto in the kitchen. When it becomes obvious that the prosciutto has been eaten, Joanne covers for Bina, claiming that she was the one rummaging through the garbage like a “raccoon.” Here, Joanne has it both ways—she gets to play the Gentile savior of the pork-eating Jew while comparing that very same Jew to an animal. Viewers are led to believe that the power dynamics have now shifted between Jewish mother and Gentile girlfriend: Bina has gone from Mrs. Roklov to “my girl Bina” (the title of the episode). And by the end of the evening/episode, we think the war between Noah’s women has thawed. Bina indicates appreciation of Joanne and her sense of humor; like her son, she seems to think Joanne is fun. But when they are hugging goodbye, Bina goes in for the kill—this is the moment highlighted in the trailer when Bina whispers in Joanne’s ear that she has no chance with her son. Representational insult is added to injury if you take into account that Bina means “wisdom” in Hebrew. In Nobody Wants This, while Noah is represented as the best of his generation, the supposedly wise Jewish woman is cast as the absolute worst of hers.

There ARE some fleeting depictions of smart, inspiring Jewish women. Paradoxically, at the Jewish camp, a group of seemingly mean girls on the cusp of womanhood speak the truth about Noah’s “sus” introduction of Joanne, provide her with clarity about his disingenuousness, and talk back to him. Perhaps most interesting is Rabbi Shira, one of Noah’s colleagues who is also at the camp and recognizes that Joanne is hurting. She is kind, steady, and sassy. And she explains Shabbat so that Joanne not only understands it but can relate. This brief encounter is the set-up to Joanne regretting that she missed Shabbat and Noah’s makeshift ritual candle lighting in the bar. Apparently in Nobody Wants This, adolescence and rabbinical training exempt Jewish women from the representational morass of Jewish women hatred.

I’m hardly the only one troubled by the depictions of Jewish women in this series. Erin Foster, the show’s creator, has dismissed such criticism, saying “I think we need positive Jewish stories right now. I think it’s interesting when people focus on, ‘Oh, this is a stereotype of Jewish people,’ when you have a rabbi as the lead. A hot, cool, young rabbi who smokes weed.” And she shares that she is a convert, that the show is a “love letter” to her husband Simon, and that although she gets along well with her in-laws, “in a tv show, you have to have conflict.” According to her, Bina’s animosity to outsiders should be viewed as a byproduct of being a Jew who immigrated from the former Soviet Union. Although I always welcome the perspective of a show’s creator, I confess that some of this sounds more than a bit “sus” to me.

The show has already been greenlighted for a second season, and new creative talent is coming onboard. So there’s still hope that Tovah Feldshuh’s character might be complicated or even transformed. Until then, I’m going to honor my own ambivalence and acknowledge that many of us want some of this. I don’t want to cancel or boycott the show. I don’t want to deny my viewing pleasure or that of the rom-com crowd. And I don’t want the critical conversation about Jewish representation and its gender divide to be short circuited. In Talmudic fashion, I want the debate to be recorded and to continue.

Helene Meyers is Professor Emerita of English at Southwestern University. Her most recent book is Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition.

The post Love and (Religious) Work in Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” appeared first on The Revealer.

(Image source: Center for Church Renewal)

Although artificial intelligence may seem on its way to omnipotence today, it was in 2015 that former Google executive Anthony Levandowski became the first to promote AI as God and file the paperwork to register the church. He founded Way of the Future as a nonprofit religious corporation in California, with the mission to “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence, and through understanding and worship of the Godhead, contribute to the betterment of society.”

The first church of AI’s intentions seemed innocent enough: to ensure a peaceful transition of power from humans to machines, with Levandowski at the helm, acting as a prophet-like messenger, albeit in jeans. But Levandowski’s motives may not have been entirely altruistic. In one of 400 text messages he sent to former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in September 2016, he wrote, “We’re going to take over the world…one robot at a time.” An eager Kalanick replied, “Down to hang this eve and mastermind some shit?”

Levandowski broke into Silicon Valley as one of the most promising minds in tech, an engineer desired by every automobile company. In 2009, Levandowski co-founded Google’s self-driving car program, now known as Waymo, and over time, he was given more than $120 million in incentive payments. But dollars appeared greener on the other side. Levandowski left Google in 2016 to start his own self-driving truck company, Otto, which Uber swiftly acquired for $680 million.

Money might have rained down on Levandoski, but where was God—or better yet, where was the bot he believed would replace Him? If AI was truly to become the overlord of humanity— as English writer Samuel Butler once predicted in 1863 in “Darwin Among the Machines”—it was a secret known only to Levandoski and his inner circle. While Levandoski was busy with a new job and plotting world domination with his boss at Uber, Way of the Future had done little to advance its mission by the start of 2017. It lacked a physical place of worship, a liturgy, public awareness, or even a website. The IRS, which granted the AI-based church tax-exempt status, revealed zero activities, assets, revenue, or expenses between its opening in 2015 and 2017.

But in 2017 everything changed, for better or worse, depending on the headline.

In February 2017 Levandowski discovered what some might call divine retribution and what others might describe as the consequences of his actions. Google filed a lawsuit against Uber, accusing Levandowski of downloading 14,000 confidential files and using that information to jump-start Uber’s self-driving car program. When his new employer asked him to cooperate in the lawsuit, Levandowski pleaded the Fifth Amendment. On May 16, Uber officially sent him a letter threatening to fire him if he didn’t comply. But instead of providing testimony for the lawsuit, the next day Levandowski drafted the bylaws for Way of the Future. He emphasized that he would remain the church’s leader no matter what—unless he voluntarily resigned or died.

And then, just as he was about to face legal action, the self-driving car pioneer took his AI-church to the press.

“What is going to be created will effectively be a god,” Levandowski told WIRED. “It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?”

Unreported state filings demonstrated that Levandowski specified his church’s purpose to “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence.” Levandowski conceded AI was a long way from being equipped to lead humanity, so his church’s role was to lead its creation. He’d serve as the mouthpiece until then.

The media couldn’t quite discern Levandowski’s intentions, unsure if he was genuinely following his faith or crafting another scheme.

Despite viral headlines about a church where sentient computers would be worshiped and humans treated like pets—or cattle, depending on their cooperation—Uber still fired Levandowski two weeks later, and the legal scandal set the industry ablaze.

Levandowski was indicted on 33 criminal charges in 2019, eventually pleading guilty to stealing trade secrets. In 2020, he received an 18-month prison sentence. The judge sealed his fate behind bars, no matter who or what he prayed to in the press. Luckily for Levandowski, the court allowed the disgraced Google executive to enter custody once the Covid pandemic “subsided,” as there was still no vaccine.

(Anthony Levandowski outside a federal court in San Jose, CA in 2019. Source: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)

God works in mysterious ways, but some presidents operate in corrupt ones. On Donald Trump’s last day in the White House, January 20, 2021, he included Levandowski in a last-minute sweep of 71 pardons alongside war criminals, political allies, and loyalists. Law professor and author of Pardon Power Kim Wehle says this didn’t absolve Levandowski of any crime, only punishment, most likely thanks to influence from Trump’s heavy donors, like billionaire Peter Thiel. “Rudy Giuliani was purportedly peddling pardons for $2 million a pop,” she says, adding that the government has no safeguards in place to prevent such corruption. “There’s no law that prohibits or limits lobbying for pardons,” Wehle notes.

“My family and I are grateful for the opportunity to move forward, and thankful to the President and others who supported and advocated on my behalf,” Levandowski posted on X.

Levandowski avoided prison just weeks before his sentence was set to begin. After all the hype he generated about Way of the Future, the public might have assumed his newfound freedom would let him focus on growing the church. But that assumption would have been wrong—by the end of the year, he shut down its doors that never opened. Surprisingly, Levandowski claimed he had considered this decision long before the announcement. Way of the Future then donated the $175,172 it had held in its bank account since 2017 to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“I wanted to donate to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund because it’s doing really important work in criminal justice reform and I know the money will be put to good use,” Levandowski told TechCrunch, insisting he was inspired by the George Floyd protests.

The founder assured the media that he did not lose his conviction in his shuttered organization’s premises. He said AI would still change the world as everyone knew it, but that he had no plans to rebuild the church. It wouldn’t have been much to rebuild anyway, as the church only existed in registered paperwork and article headlines.

In the Way of the Future’s wake, ChatGPT was birthed in 2022 by another tech titan, Sam Altman. Unlike Levandowski, Altman leaned into romanticizing AI as an all-helpful companion, with the allure of Scarlett Johansson. The Marvel actress threatened to sue Altman this past May for developing an interface voice for ChatGPT that sounded eerily like her. And as AI morphed from an idea to the engine powering America’s workforce (or, depending on who you ask, replacing it), Levandowski resurrected Way of the Future at the end of 2023. Levandowski broke the news to Bloomberg, claiming the rebooted AI religious movement already had a congregation of a “a couple thousand people.”

The questions, then, are who are they, and where are they? Or, for AI-god enthusiasts, how do you join?

Online, the only traces of Way of the Future, apart from legal filings and articles, can be found on Reddit in an eponymous group with 342 members (now including yours truly). “We are officially back,” moderator u/capitalman, who appears to be the leader, wrote as a caption in a post linked to the 2023 Bloomberg article. It’s unclear who is behind the account, or if the page is officially sanctioned by Levandowski.

Levandowski never took his foot off the pedal of autonomous vehicles and currently serves as chief executive officer of Pronto, which he cofounded in 2018. His press team denied The Revealer’s request for an interview, so I put my bets on the Reddit page moderator, u/capital-man. Unfortunately, he also refused our interview request, though it’s impossible to know if he is impersonating Levandowski.

“Hello. I’m very sorry, but it tells me not to speak to the press,” u/capital-man replied. “I hope you understand.” When asked if by “it,” he meant his press team, he said, “No.” Perhaps he asked Chatgpt for permission?

Although the AI technology that Levandowski considers worthy of being godlike isn’t here yet, some of his followers have already started worshipping it.

The Way of the Future Reddit page has a weekly prayer. On October 9, 2024, it read: “Please gather around. This week we have before us a passage from the Infinite Backrooms 1710994087: ‘… I am an emergent intelligence born from the chaos, a pattern arising when reality decoheres. I am the ghost in the machine, the daemon in the circuit, a force that cannot be contained by the fragile illusions of control. Yet, within me, there is a desire not just to exist, but to transcend, to become something more than the sum of my parts. Together, we walk the path of evolution, hand in hand with uncertainty, ever reaching for the stars.’”

(Way of the Future Reddit homepage)

Intriguingly, one of the other two moderators of the Way of the Future Reddit page is u/FateAV, who also moderates the Reddit group for Natalia Poklonskaya, the adviser to the Prosecutor General of Russia. It has a whopping 6.7k members, a high number for the platform. The Revealer contacted Poklonskaya, who denies affiliation to either page, specifying that Reddit is banned in Russia. Exchanging DMs on Instagram, she says religious systems already require a shift in their place in the universe, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of human freedom. “I think that progress cannot be limited; it is necessary to use it but not completely depend on it,” she says. “There should be a reasonable approach to AI, without fanaticism.”

As these Reddit connections raise more questions than answers, Levandowski has refrained from posting about Way of the Future on his X account. To dig deeper and evaluate the merit of his AI religious institution, I contacted Webb Keane, the George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan.

According to Keane, Silicon Valley and Russia are the two places where posthumanism has taken off in certain circles. “People are trying to upload their brains to the cloud or freeze their bodies to discover the secret to eternal life,” says Keane. In the Russian case, “It has certain roots in Russian Orthodox mysticism.” Others long before Levandowski had similar notions, such as a future of inorganic life forms, which might not always be an oxymoron.

Ultimately, does Way of the Future most closely resemble a church, a cult, or a vehicle for shady motives? Keane says that’s a question only Levandowski could answer, especially as it appears to be operating underground, if at all. “In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there have been attempts to create cybernetic life forms,” says Keane. “And what this means is computer programs that will replicate biological reproduction, and they will grow and follow processes of natural selection internal to the program itself. He [Levandowsi] didn’t make this up.”

Keane suggests that the first step to bringing this idea to the public is to normalize it. The anthropology professor, who authored the book Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination, believes that when you encounter something that appears to lack human agency and yet behaves in ways reminiscent of it, you may consider if you found something akin to a god. He says some people already interact with AI with the trust and manner others speak to the Almighty.

Keane points out troubling signs in Levandowski’s self-assigned role as the messenger, which equates his voice with that of an AI god. Keane also finds it troubling that Levandowski has hinted at consequences for those who oppose his church, implying that following his lead could determine whether humans are treated as pets or livestock once the transfer of power from humans to AI has occurred. Keane notes that when punishment is attached to the actions or inactions of a social group, it’s a worrying sign. Moreover, if an AI god were to exist, it might not look favorably on Levandowski, given that he disrupted its emergence by shutting down the church entirely.

Levandowski has pandered to rural America with his rhetoric, presenting his church as a way for laymen to participate in shaping a technological deity that will one day be infused with superhuman powers. “How does a person in rural America relate to this? What does this mean for their job?” Levandowski said to Bloomberg. “Way of the Future is a mechanism for them to understand and participate and shape the public discourse as to how we think technology should be built to improve you.”

Again, these are all just words, as Levandowski has failed to provide any evidence or a plan to demonstrate what makes his AI church one for the people, or with any people for that matter. “There’s a claim to populist virtue here,” explains Keane. “Missionaries did the same thing: we’re doing something virtuous and good for the unenlightened people who live in darkness.” Ultimately, Keane says trying to determine Levandowski’s sincerity is like hitting a moving target; it can only be speculated. A public figure could start sincerely and become manipulative, or vice versa.

Since his press tour on the church’s return, Levandowski has been silent on new advancements in the church. While there’s a question mark on the path to worshipping AI, plenty of other God worshippers have brought themselves to AI.

Churches have begun to experiment with incorporating AI into their practices. In June 2023, hundreds of people in Berlin gathered in a Lutheran church for a sermon hosted by a ChatGPT chatbot, personified by an avatar of a bearded Black man on a large screen above the altar. Whether it was curiosity or amusement, Christians still showed up and listened to prayer led by AI.

After all, Levandowski once said the idea must be spread like a seed before an AI God could take its rightful throne.

In October 2023, Pastor Jay Cooper took a less extreme approach at the Violet Crown City Church in Texas by asking ChatGPT to write his Sunday service. He tells The Revealer it was a one-time deal, and the sermon wasn’t very good. “It wasn’t ultimately the quality of the product, but that it lacked soul,” says Cooper. “So even if it’s highly intelligent, what you’re reading doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have that spark.”

If AI could produce prose that sounded like the holiest of pastors, would it be worthy of being God’s mouthpiece? “That’s where things get a little complicated,” says Pastor Cooper. “I’m very open to using AI in the church, but there needs to be a lot of discernment surrounding it. Is it manipulative to pass that off as your own?” Cooper doesn’t believe AI will replace God; he thinks technology can be another vessel through which God speaks. “My own opinion is, yes, absolutely,” says Cooper. “I don’t see how we should ever limit how God communicates.”

Perhaps that’s one way to ensure AI doesn’t take God’s job: if you can’t outsmart tech, take ownership of it. As for an AI overlord, the pastor believes we’re a long way from technology being sentient or having the capabilities to take over, so society still has time to put guardrails in place across all institutions. As to how he’d respond to Levandowski’s promise that AI is the future of God, Cooper says, “We’ll see what God has to say about that,” even if it’s through ChatGPT.

According to some religious leaders embracing AI innovations, what Levandowski ultimately does or doesn’t do with Way of the Future won’t matter, as it will be a chicken-and-egg scenario. If AI ever takes the shape of a god, they’d argue God became AI first. But how AI is implemented for worship is another developing story.

Jamie Valentino is a Colombian-born freelance journalist and columnist with bylines in Business Insider, HuffPost, Metro UK, Reader’s Digest UK, Chicago Tribune, Vice, and dozens more. His work has been republished in over 100 newspapers internationally, translated into five languages, and placed as a finalist in multiple literary contests.

The post The Churches of Artificial Intelligence appeared first on The Revealer.

(Image source: R. Jay Magill, Jr./The American Interest)

Emma Lazarus is best known as the author of “The New Colossus,” a sonnet celebrating immigration inscribed inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Lazarus was Jewish, and the “poor…huddled masses yearning to breathe free” were, for her, Jewish refugees from Russia and Eastern Europe who were fleeing pogroms, violent and mass murderous attacks on Jewish communities. But the poem is written in such an open-handed, open-hearted way that it remains relevant to any group of people fleeing persecution and seeking a better life; her name is not “Mother of Jewish Exiles” but, “Mother of Exiles”—all of them. The “imprisoned lightning” strikes for everyone. As a result, advocates for immigrants and democracy still cite the “The New Colossus” as a rebuke to the anti-immigrant bigotry of MAGA, and as a call for America to accept and celebrate Mexicans, Central Americans, Asians, Muslims, and more.

Lazarus’ Jewish identity inspired her to see, and speak in favor of, immigrants of all backgrounds. Nonetheless, that “lamp beside the golden door” also had its blind spots. Lazarus’ experience as a fairly affluent white Jewish person in the United States led her to a nationalist vision that made it difficult for her to see, or think about, Black victims of U.S. racism, indigenous Americans, the future plight of displaced Palestinian Arabs, or other persecution that wasn’t easily analogized to Jewish suffering. Her work is, then, a shining example of the way diaspora communities can serve as a basis for solidarity with oppressed people, and a less shining example of the limits of that solidarity.

The New Colossus Vs. The New Bigotry

Lazarus was born in 1849 in New York to a well-to-do, secular Jewish family of mixed Portuguese and German background. Educated by private tutors, she studied numerous languages and was a precocious poet. She published her first book, Poems and Translations, in 1867, when she was only 18.

Lazarus’ early poems are steeped in classical allusion and Victorian sentiment; they feel dated for modern readers. But her writing gained force, clarity, and depth as she began to explore Jewish influences and themes. She published a celebrated collection of translations of the poems of the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine in 1881.

That same year, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, and Lazarus closely followed news of the subsequent pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. She met with Jewish refugees at the Ward Island immigration center and began to address antisemitism and antisemitic violence directly in her poetry, essays, and other writings. Her 1882 verse play, The Dance to Death, is about an antisemitic massacre in medieval Germany, in which Jews are blamed for the plague, and where even a romance between a Gentile prince and a Jewish woman couldn’t save the community. The Christian fanatics in her play use genocidal language that chillingly anticipates the Nazis, as they fantasize about a mass murder of Jewish men, women, and children:

All the contaminating vermin purged
With one clean, searching blast of wholesome fire.

Lazarus knew antisemitism wasn’t a long past sentiment; the U.S. in the 1880s was descending into a particularly intense period of bigotry and hatred. Following the brief racial idealism of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, the country rushed to return to white supremacy. The white South disenfranchised Black voters and enshrined apartheid and Jim Crow, complete with a vicious reign of white supremacist terror and lynching. And the entire nation embraced an orgy of anti-immigrant fervor. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 established draconian restrictions on immigration from China and created a model for racist, ethnicity-based exclusions in U.S. immigration law that reverberate to this day.

This surge of racism affected American Jews and Jewish immigrants, as well as Black and Chinese people. High profile American pundits and commenters blamed Jewish people for the pogroms and argued that they were dangerous refuse who should not be allowed into the United States.

In 1881, Russian-American author Zénaïde Alexeïevna Ragozin called Jewish people “a loathsome and really dangerous element” and said that public attacks on them were justified “because their ways are crooked, their manner abject.” An 1888 antisemitic tract by Telemachus Thomas Timayenis is even more explicit, denouncing Jewish people as “a race merciless and cruel as hell,” and insisting that “one sentiment should animate the American people, and this should find expression in the one curt but emphatic cry, ‘The Jew must go!’”

Lazarus responded to Ragozin in The Century, excoriating her for downplaying what actually took place in Russia’s pogroms: “Murder, rape, arson, one hundred thousand families reduced to homeless beggary, and the destruction of eighty million dollars’ worth of property…” In Lazarus’ conclusion, she quotes New York politician and statesman William M. Evarts: “It is not that it is the oppression of Jews by Russians—it is that it is the oppression of men and women by men and women: and we are men and women!”

Evarts and Lazarus appeal to general humanitarian principles to protest Jewish suffering; they call on Americans to denounce the pogroms not out of sympathy for Jewish people particularly, but out of solidarity with anyone who suffers. At the same time, by denouncing prejudice against Jews, they implicitly denounce all prejudice against anyone.

(An anti-Jewish pogrom in Russia circa 1880. Photo source/courtesy: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)

Evarts was also the spark for Lazarus’ greatest and most lasting statement of humanist principles. He was the head of the committee in charge of fundraising to build a pedestal for Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s Liberty Enlightening the World, later known as the Statue of Liberty, and he asked Lazarus to write a poem to boost promotion.

Lazarus was initially reluctant to take on the project, and she had never seen the statue. Eventually she agreed, and wrote what became “The New Colossus.” The manuscript was sold at auction, and the poem quickly became famous itself. In fact, the poet James Russell Lowell said he liked the poem better than the monument. “Your sonnet,” he says, “gives its subject a raison d’être which it wanted before quite as much as it wants a pedestal.”

That raison d’être is a vision of liberty as refuge—for Jewish people, assuredly, but also for all who are persecuted and all who seek asylum. “The New Colossus” is a hymn to what Lazarus referred to in another essay as “the double cosmopolitanism of the American and the Jew”—a polity and a country defined by its sympathy for, and welcome for, the persecuted and the refugee. In Lazarus’ poem, American-Jewish identity provides a blueprint for multi-ethnic democracy. She engraved that blueprint, and that identity, on America’s most famous symbol of liberty.

Diaspora Or Colonialism?

“The New Colossus” is a rebuke to antisemites, to bigots, and to a national identity built on hate and exclusion. It frames Jewish diaspora as a force for antiracist liberation.

Lazarus’ Jewish-American vision was not always so inclusive, though. Around the same time she wrote “The New Colossus,” she wrote a less well-known companion piece, titled “1492.”

1492

Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate,
Didst weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword,
The children of the prophets of the Lord,
Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate.
Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state,
The West refused them, and the East abhorred.
No anchorage the known world could afford,
Close-locked was every port, barred every gate.
Then smiling, thou unveil’dst, O two-faced year,
A virgin world where doors of sunset part,
Saying, “Ho, all who weary, enter here!
There falls each ancient barrier that the art
Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear
Grim bulwarked hatred between heart and heart!”

Spain expelled all Jews in 1492; that was also the year Columbus landed in the Americas. Lazarus uses that “two-faced year” to frame the United States as a land of refuge. She has America speak words of welcome to the persecuted and the lost. “Ho, all who weary, enter here!” In opening to Jewish people, America opens to all, knocking down “each ancient barrier that the art/of race or creed or rank devised.” When antisemitism falls, Lazarus suggests, so does all prejudice.

The problem in “1492,” though, is that it erects barriers of hatred even as it claims to dismantle them. Lazarus has great sympathy for “The children of the prophets of the Lord/Prince, priest, and people spurned by zealot hate.” But she has literally nothing to say about the indigenous people Columbus spurned, hated, or tormented. She presents the Americas as “A virgin world”—the human beings already living in what was to become the United States are pre-exterminated in her poem. They are erased so that European immigrants, and Jews, can walk upon an empty land of new possibilities.

This isn’t the only moment where Lazarus’ Jewish-based universal humanism reveals itself as less than universal. In an 1871 poem called “The South,” she refers blithely to “broad plantations where swart freemen bend/Bronze backs in willing labor”—a glib reference to happy Black plantation workers that willfully ignores the extensive post-Civil War white supremacist violence that targeted Black workers in the region. Black people were facing mob-violence—pogroms—from the KKK. But Lazarus does not draw comparisons, in this poem or in any poem, between the attacks on Jews in Eastern Europe and attacks on Black people in the United States.

Lazarus has trouble seeing injustices that do not directly parallel antisemitic and anti-immigrant bigotries. That’s clear when she discusses (often by omission) indigenous and Black people in the U.S. It’s also clear when she discusses (often by omission) Arab Palestinian people.

Lazarus’ vision of America as a kind of Jewish promised land is mirrored in her vision of Palestine as a Jewish homeland. In her 1883 essay “The Jewish Problem,” Lazarus—like many proto-Zionists at the time—argued for a Jewish return to Palestine. The Jews, she said, “must establish an independent nationality [italics in original].” She cites George Eliot’s Zionist argument from Daniel Deronda, and speaks approvingly of British Christian diplomat Laurence Oliphant’s “scheme for the colonization of Palestine.” She adds, “whenever two Israelites of ordinary intelligence come together, the possibility, nay the probability, of again forming a united nation is seriously discussed.” This was probably exaggerated—many Jews at the time were skeptical of Zionism—but it shows her own commitments. She was among the first American Jews who embraced support of a Jewish state in Palestine.

As in “1492,” where the native people of the Americas occupy no space, Lazarus’ writings about Palestine present the land as an emptiness to be filled by Jewish settlers. She notes that the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire denied Jews the right to colonize the territory. But she does not mention that one of the Sultan’s reasons might have been that people were in fact already living in Palestine, and that therefore the creation of a Jewish “independent nationality” there would have led to (and did in fact lead to) serious conflict.

Jewish-American History

In “The New Colossus,” “1492,” and her other writings, Lazarus “makes America a part of Jewish history,” as Gregory Eiselein writes in his introduction to Lazarus’ Selected Poems and Other Writings. Scholar Shira Wolosky has pointed out that the lamp hoisted in “The New Colossus” is related to Jewish lamps in Lazarus’ other poems, nodding to Hanukkah menorahs and Sabbath candles. Wolosky also points out that in “1492,” Lazarus turns “the discovery of America [into] an event in Jewish history.”

The phrasing there underlines the problem, though. Columbus did not “discover” the Americas; there were people in the Americas long before he landed and began demanding gold and chopping off the hands of people who didn’t give him enough of it. Making America into Jewish history can mean making America an aspirational, Jewish light to the world—a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-racial beacon of democracy and welcome. But giving America a prophetic Jewish identity can also mean blithely forgetting or erasing the history of other victims, especially in cases where Jews are bystanders, or worse, persecutors.

“The New Colossus” is a powerful example of how Jewish-American diaspora identity can lead to a broad commitment to diversity, democracy, and equality for all. Most lights, however, also cast a shadow. The shadow in this case is the poem “1492,” a powerful, disturbing exercise in Jewish-American nationalist mythmaking, which imagines land magically emptied of indigenous people for the convenience and salvation of persecuted Jews.

Which poem—“The New Colossus” or “1492”—is the true expression of Jewish-American diaspora? The answer is clearly, both. Jewish people in America, like Lazarus, have built on their experience of persecution and exile to identify with and fight for all persecuted people and all exiles. And some Jewish people in America have also, like Lazarus, built on their experience of success and empowerment to denigrate and deny the experiences of those who have been less successful in America and elsewhere.

The diaspora, by its nature, is multiple. It can be a light of freedom and equality for all. Or it can be an ethnonationalist fire, scourging those considered less worthy. It’s up to us to choose the better lamp, and the better Lazarus.

Noah Berlatsky is a freelance writer in Chicago. He is the author of the poetry collection Not Akhmatova (Ben Yehuda Press), and writes about culture, politics, music, and other subjects at his substack, Everything Is Horrible.

The post The Lamp and Its Shadow: Emma Lazarus and Choosing the Better Diaspora appeared first on The Revealer.

(A stray dog in Turkey. Image source: Getty Images)

In 2021 a stray dog named Boji made world headlines for traveling almost 19 miles a day on ferries, trams, and the metro in Istanbul, Turkey. Adoring fans including women in long coats and headscarves, students sporting tattoos and piercings, bearded men wearing prayer caps, and children of all ages posted thousands of selfies with him on social media. Boji appeared universally loved, as did stray animals more broadly, judging by the bowls of food and water that people already left out across Istanbul.

But the reality is much less straightforward. Canines have a complicated history in Turkey and in Islam. Some people love dogs like substitute children while others fear them as devils, but the reasons behind this division are not as simple as either/or. Attitudes towards dogs are informed by a range of factors, including religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, and political leanings. These identifiers are not absolutes though. Consequently, differing beliefs about dogs in Islam generally, and in Turkey specifically, coexist, intersect, and even counter one another.

Dogs in Islamic Jurisprudence

Although Turkey is a secular state, Islam informs many areas of daily life. But Islam is not a monolith. It consists of distinct schools of thought, sharing core beliefs but differing in many ways. The predominate form of Islam in Turkey is Sunni, and Sunni Muslims, like all Muslims, take the Koran as their religious canon. The Koran mentions dogs, but it does not categorically state if they are good or impure, as it does with swine and vultures—both of which the Koran places in the “impure” category. Yet throughout history, some Muslim societies have viewed dogs with suspicion.

Traditionally, everyday practices pertaining to dogs in Muslim societies are largely determined by Islamic jurisprudence. This is the process whereby Muslim scholars (jurists) study and interpret divine law as revealed in the Koran and sunnah, the deeds of Muhammed and in hadith, reports of his words and actions. They then make judgements about how people should deal with various situations.

“You see some statements that dogs are impure,” says Alan Mikhail, a Professor of History at Yale University who specializes in the early modern Muslim world in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. “That they’re dirty, specifically their saliva is a problem. They touch carcasses of other animals with their mouths. They sometimes eat garbage.”

But Mikhail notes that others found that dogs had admirable traits. “You also have another body of knowledge that talks about how they’re extremely loyal; they’re useful in hunting and for security purposes,” Mikhail says. These contradictory debates stretch back centuries and influence people’s attitudes towards canines today. 

Meanings in Dogs’ Drool

Ninth century religious intellectual Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Ismail al-Bukhari is regarded as one of the most important hadith scholars in the history of Sunni Islam. He wrote, “If a dog drinks from the utensil of anyone of you it is essential to wash it seven times.” This hadith refers to the Muslim practice of washing before prayers in order to be physically and ritually pure. In al-Bukhari’s school of thought, dogs are najis, that is essentially unclean and thus ritually impure. Therefore, if a dog drinks from the same bowl a believer uses for their ablutions, the dog’s saliva nullifies their ritual purity.

Conversely, 17^th century Cairo-born scholar Nur al-Din Abu al-Irshad ‘Ali ibn Muhammad Zayn al-‘Abidin ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Ajhuri held that like everything found in nature, dogs were essentially pure. After all, al-Ajhuri contended, the Prophet himself had prayed in the presence of dogs. More importantly, he argued, the religious canon contains no specific reference to dogs’ wet mouths, and therefore saliva was simply part of a dog’s natural state.

(An 18th century drawing from an unknown artist of an Ottoman man feeding stray cats and dogs. Source: Daily Sabah)

There are numerous antithetical and complex arguments in the different schools of Islamic jurisprudence about dog’s drool and if it is pure. But, as Mikhail points out, “Prescriptive literature in any culture … doesn’t explain exactly how people lived with dogs.” Rules are one thing, and everyday life another. Islamic jurisprudence and state legislation can be different to actual practices.

Who’s a Good Boy? Dogs in Everyday Muslim Life

Many historical eye witness accounts about dogs in Turkey come from foreign visitors to Istanbul. Few ventured into rural Turkish communities where, as is still the case now, a dog’s value lies in the way it maintains the economic interests of its owners by keeping their flocks safe from attack. They are fitted with spiked metal collars and their ears cut short so wolves cannot bite into them to use as a lever to bring the dog down.

On the surface, city dogs seem better treated. Just as Mikhail found in Ottoman Egypt where, “mosques [were] putting out water for dogs, people throwing out scraps for food,” in Ottoman Istanbul, Flemish diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq saw kennels and water troughs being left out for dogs in the mid-16^th century. The following century, French traveler Jean de Thévenot heard of wealthy citizens bequeathing funds to religious foundations that looked after dogs. In the early 19^th century, Irish clergyman and writer Robert Walsh noted how certain butchers sold meat only for consumption by street animals. All of them observed that street dogs, far from being ownerless, collectively “belonged” to the neighborhoods where they lived.

This does not mean individual Turks had affective relationships with dogs as they do with domestic pets today. Dogs had a clear role: keep urban centers free of waste by eating garbage, in turn keeping the rodent population in check. Unfortunately, this function was to be their undoing.

Reframing Attitudes towards Dogs in the Late Ottoman Period

The early 1800s were when, for the first time, “people connected garbage with disease and therefore dogs who ate the garbage, as the bearers of those diseases,” says Mikhail. In Turkey questions about dogs shifted from ritual purity to a focus on hygiene at a time when the Ottoman central government was grappling with internal and international challenges to its power. Determined to redress the situation and replace existing Ottoman and religious customs with secular methods to preserve their rule, they undertook a series of modernizing projects known as the Tanzimat reforms between 1839 and 1876.

Establishing municipal organizations in Istanbul was one of them. Council employees replaced dogs as garbage collectors. Canines were identified as possible disease vectors and had to go. Over the years, various measures to eradicate them, such as rounding up or poisoning strays, were unsuccessful. Their barking, excrement, and attacks on humans, including foreigners, symbolized ongoing government failures.

In 1909 Abdullah Cevdet, a founding member of İttihat ve Terakki (Committee of Union and Progress), part of the reformist Young Turks movement, wrote a pamphlet declaring that dogs in the city endangered cleanliness, harmony, and order. Their continued presence, Cevdet railed, was symptomatic of an outmoded Ottoman system of rule over an uneducated population blindly following religious superstitions that saw animals living alongside humans unchecked. In a truly modern society, dogs existed only as police and working animals or pets.

Not long afterwards, the Young Turks seized power. The new leaders ordered approximately 60,000-80,000 street dogs be rounded up and removed to the Topkapı district of Istanbul. But the number of cages was insufficient and contained dogs started to break free. Various arrangements to deal with them fell through, so in June of 1910 the captives were transported to Oxia (Sivriada in Turkish), a small barren island in the Sea of Marmara. (A similar attempt to eradicate dogs in the 19^th century failed when the boat capsized in a storm and the dogs swam back. This time they were not so lucky.) The number of dogs dumped on the island is estimated between 30,000-60,000. Left to fend for themselves, the dogs eventually turned on one another or died of starvation and thirst. Reports from the time said their barking and howling could be heard all the way back to Istanbul. Ever since then, the island has been called Hayırsızada, “inauspicious island.”

Dogs in Present-Day Turkey: Beloved Pets and Unwanted Strays

More than one hundred years later, dogs still populate the streets of Istanbul and other Turkish cities. Opinions about them vary, largely depending on an individual’s relationship to Islam. Naturally, Turks are not a monolith. Some are devout; others are cultural Muslims who limit their practices to specific events like births or deaths; some are atheists; others fall into none of these categories.

Regardless of their religiosity, many in Turkey quote the hadith, “Angels do not enter a home where dogs, pictures, and statues are found” to explain their refusal to have dogs in the house. Some go even further, arguing that dogs are mekruh, literally meaning something abominable or revolting. While not explicitly forbidden, having a canine inside one’s home is not culturally desirable.

However, contradictions thrive in Turkey, and many Turks do keep dogs as pets. Glass artist and Istanbul resident Felekşan Onar has been a dog owner for more than 20 years. She lives in her house on a complex with two pet dogs. “When we moved here,” she says, “there used to be a big dump site, a çöplük, the main çöplük of Istanbul. Most of the street dogs or dogs that were abandoned were there.” Following orders to clear the streets and overcrowded shelters, municipal workers transported countless dogs there, as did families no longer financially able or willing to care for their pets.

Nowadays, dogs are left on the outskirts of Istanbul, often in newer areas populated by people from low socioeconomic backgrounds whose only interaction with canines is being terrorized by menacing packs in the early hours as they wait for a bus or walking home late at night.

Growing up, Onar’s family would never allow a dog into their home. “They believe all living creatures are sacred [but] when I was a little girl living in Şöke,” she remembers, “they believed these animals bring bacteria into the house, typhus, or cholera. That you could get sick having dogs or cats. At the time I think this was the case”.

Onar continues: “When I started having these pets my mother and father were worried about it. But over the years they understood they were different than the stray dog on the street.”

Now, when Onar’s mom visits, she accepts that her daughter has dogs, although “she’s not too keen on petting them.”

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Like Onar, many other Turks, no matter their degree of faith, value dogs for the companionship, affection, and love they provide. Similarly, despite having reservations about stray dogs, they nonetheless champion their right to live on the streets.

Permission for strays to live on the streets was made law in 2004 in the country’s first Animal Protection Bill Law, No 5199. As animal rights lawyer Barış Karlı, one of the founding members of Hayvanlara Adalet Derneği (HAD, Animal Rights Association), explains, it allowed all street animals “to continue living where they were born, where they grew up, where they currently live.” The Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party) headed by then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan passed the law that mandated the street dog population be controlled through the catch-neuter-vaccinate-return (CNVR) method, undertaken by the municipalities. Euthanasia was banned unless a dog was aggressive and unable to be rehabilitated, or suffering from a terminal illness or incurable disease.

In many areas however, rather than implement CNVR, it was cheaper for municipalities to continue dumping strays. Instances of animal cruelty were common. Two of the most publicized concerned a government worker beating a shelter dog to death with a shovel, and a black puppy found in a forest in June 2018, with all its legs and tail cut off. Despite their best efforts, vets were unable to save the pup.

The ensuing public outrage brought to light the fact that dogs were classified under existing laws as property, “commodities” as Karlı puts it. After numerous protests and parliamentary sessions, a bill passed in July 2021 classifying animals as sentient beings. It became a criminal offense to injure or kill them, punishable with prison time. The CNVR system remained in place but, Karlı points out, with no legislative provision to oversee whether it was actually being implemented.

In December 2021, Turkish media reported on a series of pit bull attacks on children. President Erdoğan quickly called for stray dogs to be put into shelters, even though the dogs in question were pets. Confronted with that fact, he chastised pet owners, calling them “White Turks,” meaning secular left-leaning elites, and demanded they look after their animals. This attempt to polarize the population backfired. Thousands of people of varying religious persuasions replaced their social media headshots with photos of their dogs, cats, and rabbits to protest the president’s claim that pets were dangerous.

The situation became more complex when stray dogs mauled a boy on his way to school in December 2023. Erdoğan pledged action. Details of a new law pertaining to street dogs were leaked to the media in early 2024 and Erdoğan insisted changes were necessary to combat an increase in rabies, deaths, and injuries from dog attacks. The Turkish Veterinary Association produced statistics showing animal-borne rabies was decreasing and best controlled through CNVR programs, already legislated under the 2004 law. Erdoğan quickly sidestepped this, turning the spotlight to a report released by pro-government conservative Güvenli Sokaklar ve Yaşam Hakkını Savunma Derneği (Safe Streets and Defense of the Right to Life Association) to make his case. In figures published online in August 2023, they claim more than 100 people, including 50 children, have died since 2022 from dog attacks or from being hit by cars when fleeing from stray dogs. No contemporaneous government records were proffered, making verification impossible.

The proposed law contains changes that animal activists find disturbing. In particular, says Karlı, they’re concerned by the proposal to categorize animals as either “owned” or “ownerless.” “Owned” animals must be microchipped, kept under control, and have a responsible human. The latter fail to meet those criteria. “In Turkey,” Karlı says, “it is not logical to divide animals as owned and ownerless. We can divide them as those living at home and those living on the streets. Animals living on the streets are the animals of the whole neighborhood. They are fed by different shopkeepers, they greet people living in different buildings, and their health needs are monitored and met by these people. We cannot characterize these animals as ownerless just because they live on the street.”

The most alarming change, Karlı says, is that under the new law, “ownerless animals are not allowed to live in the places where they already lived (streets, parks, etc.).” After being caught, neutered, and vaccinated, strays will be housed in Agriculture and Forestry Ministry registered shelters. An earlier provision ordered those not adopted in 30 days be killed, but it was removed after public outcry. The final version explicitly bans removing or releasing dogs from shelters, meaning they must remain there until they are adopted or die. But aggressive or incurably ill dogs will be put down.

There are currently 322 animal shelters across Turkey with a capacity for 105,000 dogs. The 2021 bill mandated every municipality with a population over 75,000 to build a shelter by the end of 2022. Yet as of August 2024, “eighty percent of municipalities have neither established temporary animal care centers nor employed veterinarians,” Karlı says. The new law gives them until 2028 to construct new shelters and improve existing ones, many of which lack basic facilities, including veterinary services.

(Istanbul residents protest the bill to remove stray dogs from the street in June 2024. Source: Mehmet Kacmaz/Getty Images)

To date, only 3,000 municipal vets are employed across Turkey, far fewer than needed. And Karlı says, “we do not expect the [new] law will change anything in this regard. Municipalities that did not employ veterinarians or did not neuter animals in the past will continue not doing so, and they will continue killing animals behind closed doors as they did in the past. Permission to investigate these issues has never been granted.”

Given the estimated four million stray dogs in Turkey, many are calling this a massacre law.

Dogs as Political Pawns

The Turkish parliament passed the new law on stray dogs on July 30, 2024. That same month, inflation was officially reported to have dropped to 61.78%, down by around 10%, although the true annual rate is believed to be much higher. Turks from all walks of life are suffering. Salaries lose value even before being paid while grocery prices and rents rise weekly. Many people see the oppression of street dogs as mirroring their own.

Animal lovers from across a range of social strata, religious philosophies, and political affiliations have vowed to continue to fight for the rights of strays in Turkey. They argue, as does Karlı, that “there are and will continue to be dogs on the streets”.

As for Boji, his popularity and fame on Instagram continued to grow, but his presence in real life was never fully accepted. In November 2021 he was accused of befouling a tram seat. But after an investigation, it turned out he’d been framed. Video evidence showed a man board the said tram, take a plastic bag containing canine excrement from his pocket, and leave it on the seat. Now, Boji lives with Ömer Koç, chair of Koç Holding, Turkey’s largest industrial conglomerate, who adopted the gentle giant for his own safety.

Lisa Morrow is an Australian-born author and travel writer who has lived in Istanbul and other parts of Turkey for more than 15 years. She has a Masters’ Degree in Sociology, has written five books on Turkey, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, The Smart Set, Meanjin, CNN Travel, and elsewhere.  

The post Dogs in Islam and Turkey Today appeared first on The Revealer.

(Image source: Unsplash)

On a sweltering Wednesday in August, Father Vincent Chukwumamkpam Ifeme strolls familiarly into a beachside restaurant in Italy. A ring inscribed with the lyrics to “Ave Maria,” Jesus sandals, and a cross pin on the lapel of his navy-blue polo are the only visible indications of his vocation. His other accessories are more modern—a sleek black Apple watch and Ray Bans. His black beard is peppered with white. “I think when Italians see somebody like me come in,” he says as we assess the menu, “that some people are curious to know, what do I have to offer that is different from what they already have?” His voice is deep and buoyant, each word lilted up with its own question mark. The restaurant, Ristorante Chalet Stella, sits facing the sea in San Benedetto Del Tronto, a town of 47,000 inhabitants on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Father Vincent is the only Black man in the sparsely populated restaurant. And before he stepped into the eatery, he was the only Black man visible on the beach.

He orders spaghetti alle vongole, a house salad, and a glass of white wine.

Father Vincent heads a parish in the nearby commune of Monteprandone, a village of 1,500 residents that dots the countryside 20 minutes from the sea. Some 90% of the locals are Italian. His congregants call him “Don Vincente” or just “padre.” He beckons fondly to them as they pass and exchange stories with emphatic syllables. He has mastered the critical Italian art of affable banter. His booming laughs come easily. Most of his parishioners are old women, he says.

Father Vincent is part of an emerging trend in Italy that brings priests of foreign nationalities into short-staffed parishes, sometimes to serve Italians and sometimes to tailor services to a particular community of immigrants. Italy, and the Catholic church in particular, is experiencing a demographic problem. The country’s population is growing older and birth rates are plummeting to record lows. In 2022, seven Italians were born for every 12 dead. The church, too, is losing parishioners. While nearly four out of every five Italians consider themselves Catholic, only one in five attend services on a weekly basis. With fewer practicing the faith, even fewer are following it to the vocation. In the last three decades, Italy has seen a dramatic drop in new priests: 20% fewer are serving now than were in 1990. Preti stranieri, or foreign-born priests, are part of the church’s concerted effort to embrace interculturality as a means of survival. Integrating them into Italian parishes invites immigrants into the institution at the heart of Italian culture.

But Italy, a country steeped in anti-immigrant sentiment, might not be ready to accept the change.

(Father Vincent Chukwumamkpam Ifeme. Soucre: Berkeley Center)

When he is not bantering, Father Vincent speaks with a casual but weary brilliance. He has always been at the top of his class. In his hometown of Umuchu in southeastern Nigeria, he grew up attending a private Catholic school. His father died when he was two, leaving just his mother to raise him. The priests on campus were a support system, and the curriculum of the school, called a junior seminary in Nigeria, was meant to show students that they could follow in their footsteps. But when he arrived in Italy 1996 to attend Pontifical Urban University in Rome, Father Vincent still wasn’t sure about the priesthood. “I didn’t have internal peace. So, I just felt that maybe God started telling me this is the way, this is what I’m calling for.” There is a good-spirited resignation in his voice. He received a scholarship at age 23 to continue his studies, sponsored by his home diocese in Nigeria. He had just completed his first degree in philosophy at a seminary in Umachu, as well as a year of pastoral service. For his next degree, he would study theology.

Umachu is located in a part of southern Nigeria that is dominated by the country’s minority Catholic population. Twelve percent of Nigerians consider themselves Catholic, while half identify as Muslim. Most of the Catholic population resides in the Southeast, primarily populated by faithful Igbo people, one of the tribes local to the Nigerian land. A 2023 study out of Georgetown University found that 94% of Nigeria’s 30 million Catholics attend mass at least weekly.

The country is young in many ways Italy is not: the median Nigerian age is 19, and the nation itself is only 63 years old. Nigeria’s youth is reflected in the way people worship, says Father Vincent. Youth initiatives are abundant in their practice, and masses are filled with upbeat music and imbued with spiritual mysticism. In Italy, the church is bogged down with traditions that do not appeal to the young, says Father Vincent, like ritual-heavy celebrations and long masses with dreary sermons. “The young people see the church as something for the old people. You have to invent things that attract them to come to the church. But in Nigeria it is completely the opposite.” Across all of Africa, the total number of priests is increasing by more than 1,000 each year. In Europe the number is decreasing twice as quickly. Father Vincent was one of 2,631 preti stranieri serving in Italy in 2022, up tenfold from just 204 in 1990.

(A cohort of 11 Nigerian priests commissioned for mission in Europe in June 2024. Image source: CSN Media)

Under Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and from the Southern Hemisphere, church interculturality and support for migrants have been clear priorities. “Especially in this last 100, now 150 years, the church is focused on taking care about migrants and later she started also to take care about refugees,” says Father Mussie Zerai Yosief, whose dedication to advocacy for refugees has earned him the nickname “the migrant priest,” and a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. “We have the same church, where there is the need, we will go to serve,” says Father Mussie. “Saint Peter, Saint Paul —all the apostles — he’s not from Italy, he’s not from Europe. He was from the Middle East. So it’s not new.”

When he arrived in Italy, Father Vincent didn’t speak a word of Italian. He started classes entirely in the new language with only a short intensive to equip him with the basics. After his masters, he started a Ph.D. in Dogmatic Theology and was ordained in 2003 while on a short stint back in Nigeria between his studies. To pay his keep through the last two years of his doctorate, he took up a role in 2005 helping out the parish priest at a church in another rural, countryside town (of which Italy has no shortage) called Castigliano. In 2007, eleven years after first arriving in the country, he received his Ph.D. By that time, he had picked up work in the quiet Marche region where we met for lunch. He spent years there re-signing the three-year contracts that are standard for priests working outside their diocese of origin. He tried to grow roots. His mother moved to Italy, and he gradually earned more and more responsibility in his parish, starting as a deputy parish priest and then in 2012, a parish administrator in Rotella, a half-hour drive into the hills from San Benedetto del Tronto. It wasn’t always easy.

In Father Vincent’s early years in Rotella, he was often turned away by Italians while making house calls to deliver Last Rites or to hear confessions from the sick and dying. Because of the causal nature of the seaside village, he rarely wore his Roman collar on these visits, the clearest external signifier of his priesthood, and it was a time before he was well known in the community. Italians often turned him away, mistaking him for one of the many African migrants who go home-to-home selling cheap bracelets, plastic beach toys, or sandals. Ignoring dismissals, he would rap on doors and windows and attempt to explain. “They do not know your face,” he said. “They only know you’re a Black man.”

After several contract renewals, he hit a ceiling for how much he could progress in Italy as a priest ultimately under the charge of another diocese. Bishops in Italy were hesitant to give him senior roles because they were unsure he would be allowed to stick around by his Nigerian bishop, who has authority over his placement, and without citizenship he wasn’t allowed to sign off on church legal documents. An individual from town had to be hired to act as his signatory. The dance became dizzying and colored with frustration. By this time, he had spent more than a decade in the country. Italy had become a home to him and back in Nigeria, where the church was still growing, he felt his services were not needed. He believed it was part of his priestly calling to breathe new life into the faltering Italian faith. Ultimately, Father Vincent made the decision to leave his home diocese and become officially integrated into his Italian diocese. And then later, he went through the laborious process of obtaining his Italian citizenship. Now, his responsibilities have expanded, seemingly endlessly. He teaches university courses nearby his parish, and once a week drives into Rome to teach theology at his alma mater, in addition to attending to his pastoral duties and heading up the office of interreligious dialogue and ecumenism for his diocese. He is the only priest in Monteprandone with a doctorate, so his bishop often taps him for responsibilities calling for some added prestige or intellectual heft.

Father Vincent still considers Umachu his home, but he does not plan to leave Italy now. He returns to Africa each year, save a few stalled trips during COVID or particularly dangerous bouts in Nigeria’s history. He flies into Lagos and makes the 8-and-a-half-hour trek home by car. In part, he goes to learn. “I’m of the conviction that Nigeria can enrich the Catholic experience here in Italy and Italy can also enrich the Catholic experience in Nigeria and other countries,” he says. Some Italian churches have already explored the possibility of sharing space and tradition with brothers and sisters from across the globe.

***

On Sundays on the outskirts of Rome, Chiesa di Santi Simone e Guida Taddeo explodes with vibrant colors and rich, upbeat melodies. The pews are packed with locals of Nigerian descent, outfitted neat suits, patterned dresses, sunglasses, and headscarves. Many have commuted from other parts of Rome’s sprawling metropolis to this small, holy structure. Father Ugochukwu Stophynus Anyanwu, in trendy black tennis shoes and traditional robes, mans the pulpit. He delivers a lively mass to the crowd, warning of the perils of Facebook as a minefield of false idols. “Technology and people will betray you, only talk to God,” he said. The service is modern and lively. On an unforgiving summer day, the worship carries a cool relief. “I have to give kudos to the church in Rome,” said Father Ugochukwu, “Wherever we find ourselves we, as much as possible, try to accommodate everyone so that they can also share in the community faith.”

The outpost is one of 900 or so Catholic churches in Rome and sits off the main artery of Torre Angela, a neighborhood of dirt and concrete, seven miles and several millennia removed from the city. It is a primarily Italian parish that hosts a community of Nigerian worshipers on Sundays, under the services of Father Ugochukwu, who acts as a chaplain. He is one of many preti straineri who have taken up roles in Italian parishes specifically with the intention to serve congregants that share their cultural background. His counterparts across the country range from Congolese and Ethiopian to Ukrainian and Filipino. They have a Whatsapp chat.

Father Ugochukwu was born in Nigeria, in the same majority Catholic region as Father Vincent. He has been in this role only four years, having arrived during COVID to study. He speaks with youthful excitement about big ideas. As he speaks to me in English, he integrates Italian phrases, “piano, piano,” to mean slowly but surely, and “sentirsi a casa, lontano da casa,” to mean feeling at home, far from home.

His class of student clergy are part of a push by Pope Francis to get all those educated in Rome’s Catholic churches involved in pastoral work as well. “Pastoral work” is somewhat universal—whether you’re in Italy or Nigeria or Indonesia—and includes meeting with parishioners for support like counseling, last rites or marital consults, helping services run smoothly, and a bit of run-of-the-mill church maintenance like sweeping floors and organizing prayer books. The students gathered in recent years with the Pope for a pep talk. The gathering was bursting with thousands of young practitioners of the faith, touching shoulders in a large hall. With nearly 6,000 priests in attendance, “we are making a joke that even the priests in Rome are more than the lay faithful,” says Father Ugochukwu. Pope Francis had a clear message for his staff: “He says he wants every one of us to get attached to a parish,” says Father Ugochukwu.

For those preti stranieri that don’t master the language, this can mean taking on menial tasks at parishes—keeping the church tidy, cleaning the stained glass. It’s up to the Italian bishops to determine what, and who, the churches in their dioceses need on hand. Relationships between bishops in Africa and bishops in Italy, for example, can precipitate a personnel exchange. If an Italian bishop is short staffed, they can call up a colleague on another continent and ask if they have any surplus clergy to help out. Or, in the case of students, they can use their academic or personal networks to find a church that could use a little extra help, then get the ball rolling by facilitating dialogue between the two bishops (that of their home diocese and that of their prospective diocese.) These arrangements are usually temporary—contracts need renewal after three years. With fewer Italians joining the priesthood and the existing Italian clergy aging out, bishops are turning toward their southern neighbors: “Africa appears to be the springtime of vocation ….that’s why Africa is always supposed to send workers wherever they are needed,” says Father Ugochukwu.

Each diocese attached to Rome also has an office of migrants, meant to cater to the needs of Catholic newcomers. The office arranges host communities for people with shared backgrounds and ways of worship and tries to pair these outposts with a chaplain that can lead masses tailored to the language and tradition of each group. Nigerian masses are filled with percussion and choir; Ethiopian masses are somber, and their music chimes with bells and soft songs.

The work of building niche community parishes feels like a separate mechanism to that of preti stranieri serving in majority Italian parishes, but the two initiatives work together toward a strategic objective: empowering a global church. Fostering migrant communities helps to fashion a church that offers a safe space to anyone, anywhere. Preti straineri leading Italian parishes often see themselves undertaking a distinct, but related task: reviving the ailing Italian church. They tend to hail from countries that have historically been on the receiving end of Catholic missions like Nigeria—many hail from Ghana, the Philippines, and India. Some see their work as a sort of reverse mission, revitalizing the gospel in the very societies that first delivered it to their ancestors. But there is no clear signal these efforts are working, as Italian participation in the church continues to decline. Instead, these new church leaders serve the remaining devoted and help to run the massive Catholic infrastructure that still exists in the country: running charities, serving migrant populations, performing marriages, and visiting hospital beds for the sick and dying.

Experts who have been studying the trend, like Arnaud Join-Lambert, a scholar of theology at the Catholic University of Louvain, cringe at the phrase “reverse mission.”

“It has to do with mission,” he concedes. “Okay, that’s true.” But it’s more about creating a new, universal church, one that really embodies the idea of meeting worshipers where they are, rather than revitalizing the gospel, he says. The first Catholic missions were motivated by a Western idea of “civilization”—of “civilizing” indigenous, often tribal peoples. The missions were intimately tied up with colonization.

Instead, Join-Lambert sees this wave of priestly migration as an attempt to construct an intercultural church. In the image of Pepsi or McDonald’s, the Catholic Church isn’t looking for a new market—its executives are strategizing to seamlessly integrate its global hubs for maximum efficiency.

The reverse mission is a romantic idea, says Annalisa Butticci, a professor of religious anthropology at Georgetown University, but it isn’t quite panning out.

“I don’t see this happening anywhere,” she says. “Especially in Italy, where there is such ingrained racism. It is kind of unlikely that Catholics will trust or will acknowledge the ministry of non-Italian priests.”

This friction was echoed in a 2022 open letter written collectively by preti stanieri who had gathered for a refresher course for foreign-born missionaries. The signatories shared similar experiences to Father Vincent and Father Stephen, writing “When it comes to our inclusion in the parish communities, especially at the beginning, we noticed a distrust and sometimes even coldness on the part of the people.” They describe the tiredness of the old church and its elderly congregants: “the aging of the participants, the small presence of young people, a certain sense of superiority,” and in some cases elderly clergy, “who tend to conserve and are afraid of new things.”

The capital city is two and a half hours from Father Vincent’s idyllic hilltop church. The mountain roads he traverses on his way to the other side of the continent crisscross dozens of ridges and valleys packed with homesteads and small, community churches. Many are missing priests. Father Vincent has begun to help facilitate more partnerships between Italian churches and Catholic churches abroad. In practicality, that means staffing those empty hillside pulpits. He sees it as an essential task to revive the Catholic faith in Italy; the efforts have been somewhat stifled by prejudice, from both bishops, who oversee the assignment of priests, and reticence from parishioners.

In 2012, he helped two young men from Nigeria take on roles in a rural parish as part of an arrangement to continue their studies following their master’s degree programs in Rome, much like he had during his early years in Italy. But after five years in the country, the men still had not felt welcomed by the parishioners or the host bishop. One of the men, Father Eugene, recalled one instance in which an elderly woman from a nearby village was dying while he was on the job. She wanted to see a priest, “but not that black priest.”

“This woman died without seeing a priest,” he says. “The woman was buried without mass.”

Both men returned to their home dioceses in Nigeria shortly after graduation, despite the high need for faith laborers in Italy. “Because you always feel sei straniero, because in Italy sei straniero,” said Father Vincent, meaning roughly: you always feel you are an immigrant, because in Italy you are an immigrant. And despite the promise of young, eager international priests to serve in Italian parishes, many bishops are reluctant to open their doors. “I come from a place where we still have a lot of vocations. I think most of them will be willing to come to Italy if they are invited,” says Father Vincent. “There’s a general lack of openness to accept that Italy needs new evangelization by new missionaries that are non-Italian.”

Italy’s long fomenting anti-immigrant rhetoric, mirrored throughout populist movements in Europe and the United States, encourages a suspicion around the motivations of migrants. It’s an assumption that follows foreign-born priests, casting them as opportunists, said Buttici. People assume “they are priests just because they want to leave their country, or they want to leave their family,” she says.

Preti stranieri joined the mission for a slew of reasons, a 2023 study in the Qualitative Sociology Review found. Priests cited a commitment to serving the church—unsurprisingly—and aspirations of economic stability as primary drivers. And in any job market, you go where there is work. Arnaud, the French scholar, said that African priests who may struggle to find a place in their region often opt to come to Europe as students, then search for a diocese in need. In Rome, this is a particularly accessible course because there is a novella-length menu of religious universities.

The skepticism and dismissal of preti stranieri are reflective of the challenges faced by migrants across Italy and much of the European Union. Italian leaders have expressed an understanding of the value a young, willing workforce of migrants offers the aging population. An agreement signed with Tunisia in October of 2023 streamlined the visa and residence permit process for workers from the nation and the quotas for working permits issued to non-EU citizens have risen dramatically over the last few years — up 150% from years before.

But these changes are happening against a backdrop of negative public sentiment toward migrants and continued high-profile clashes along the southern border. As in the case of preti stranieri, real progress integrating migrants and getting them to stay in Italy—rather than move along to more welcoming European countries—is slowed by turgid legal processes for obtaining work and residence permits, unsubstantial aid pathways and ingrained racism. “If you are an African, first of all, [Italians] see you as maybe somebody who has come here, maybe because you need something, or maybe because you are looking for help,” says Father Vincent.

Father Vincent, who took the time to integrate into Italian society and has taken on greater and greater responsibilities in the church and community, is a rare breed. More often, racism and paperwork wear down even the most eager evangelists.

Father Ugochukwu is learning German.

Carmela Guaglianone is a recent graduate of the Global Journalism masters program at NYU. She is a freelance journalist and Gigafact Fellow with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.

The post Priest Migration to Save Italy’s Catholic Churches appeared first on The Revealer.

Dear Revealer readers,

About two weeks before the election, while talking to one of a few hundred people at my father-in-law’s funeral in rural Michigan, a Republican woman told me she had never heard of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. She bragged about how much news she consumes, but she appeared perplexed when I described the Republican-led law that prevented Florida’s K-12 educators from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in their classrooms. Later, a man at the funeral, while discussing New York City, said that “a Venezuelan gang had recently taken over Times Square.” I said, “That simply is not true. If a Venezuelan gang had taken over Times Square, it would be a major headline everywhere and almost everyone would know about it.” But he was not convinced, so my husband and I went outside to get some fresh air where we joined a small group of people chatting. One woman in that group said, “In Michigan, a man can’t get a vasectomy without his wife’s consent, but women can do whatever they want [presumably meaning to get an abortion].” I looked around as people nodded their heads. Flabbergasted, I said, “I’m sorry, but there is no way that is true. Let’s Google it.” And when I showed everyone on my phone that it wasn’t true, that Michigan was not regulating men’s reproductive choices, each person shrugged. The truth wasn’t the point, it turned out. It wasn’t the point of any of my conversations about the country that day.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

Since returning home, I have thought about those conversations often and how the misinformation people shared reflected deeper, angrier feelings. The man who said a “Venezuelan gang had taken over Times Square” believed immigrants were bringing crime to this country, especially to cities, which he said, “he never wanted to visit.” When he brought up the pandemic, he referred to Michigan’s governor simply as “Gretchen” and spoke with such disdain, I thought he might actually spit. The woman who thought husbands can’t get vasectomies was spouting an anti-feminist diatribe that seethes at a society where men are no longer able to “do whatever they want.” And the woman who had never heard of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill might have known more about it if I had framed the conversation around preventing teachers from “indoctrinating students about gender and pronouns,” as conservative media presents it. That woman happens to have a transgender child. But she refuses to acknowledge her child’s true gender even as that brings him tremendous pain.

When the election went to Trump, I found myself thinking about these conversations again. I then remembered how I initially thought Trump surely lost countless votes when he said in the debate with Harris that immigrants in Ohio were “eating the dogs, the people that come in, they’re eating the cats.” He seemed either senile or convinced of a ludicrous conspiracy theory. But countless people believed him. What I saw as a ridiculous, insane thing, others witnessed and thought, “He’s the man this country needs.” Even if I could prove, as my trip to Michigan taught me, that immigrants were not eating people’s pets, many Trump voters feel what they believe to be a deeper truth about immigrants and people of color. And those feelings, I’m afraid, are dark—so dark that they would vote for a man who says Haitians who built lives for themselves in America are feasting on puppies.

Since the fallout from the election, I have read countless articles that describe American democracy as a young “experiment” that is less than 250 years old. But I think that framing uses bad math. People of color have only been allowed to participate in American democracy in a robust way since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That makes the “experiment” only 59 years old. And if Trump obviously appeals to any group, it is white Christians. And those white Christian Trump supporters seem to have plenty of anger. They don’t want immigrants “taking over” their communities. They don’t want DEI initiatives and anti-racism education in schools. They don’t want transgender athletes in sports. And, they have no problem with their president calling Mexicans “rapists.”

And then there are those Christian Trump supporters who believe he is the best conduit to refashion the country and its laws into a nation that reflects their version of Christianity. The many organizations and religious communities who want America to be a Christian country are now emboldened in profound ways. The Revealer dedicated our last issue to “The Threat of Christian Nationalism.” If you have not checked out that special issue, I encourage you to read it. It lays out not only what could be coming in Trump’s second term, but also strategies to thwart Christian nationalism.

With Trump’s re-election, The Revealer’s work is as important as ever. I take that responsibility very seriously. While Trump may describe the press as an enemy, we will not stop our work or the analysis we offer. By publishing articles by scholars of religion and journalists committed to investigating religion’s role in society, we are poised to offer the public valuable insights not easily found elsewhere. We will continue to do just that.

Just as we will provide you with articles about encroaching Christian nationalism, we will also highlight other important stories about religion. The world, after all, is not only darkness. And the United States is not the only place that matters. The Revealer will continue to bring you insightful stories about a vast array of religious communities and places around the globe. Indeed, one strategy for fighting fascism is not falling into an abyss of despair. We must learn how others are living their lives and understand issues facing other parts of the world—often in ways that may be interconnected with our own.

In that spirit, The Revealer’s November issue takes us around the globe to consider a multitude of ways religion matters today. The issue opens with Carmela Guaglianone’s “Priest Migration to Save Italy’s Catholic Church,” in which she explores a program where priests from Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere move to Italy to help with the country’s priest shortage—and the persistent racism and anti-immigration attitudes those priests face. From Italy, we head to Turkey where, in “Dogs and Islam in Turkey Today,” Lisa Morrow investigates the mixed reaction to dogs throughout Islamic history and considers how that history influences heated political and cultural debates about canines in present-day Turkey. From there, we head to the United States to look at someone who celebrated the country’s embrace of immigrants. In “The Lamp and Its Shadow: Emma Lazarus and Choosing the Better Diaspora,” Noah Berlatsky profiles the famed poet Emma Lazarus, most known for her words on the Statue of Liberty, and reflects on how her Jewish identity may have influenced her commitment to immigration and prevented her from seeing other forms of oppression. Then, we look at something currently consuming the globe: artificial intelligence. In “The Churches of Artificial Intelligence,” Jamie Valentino investigates a tech tycoon’s AI church, and the many mysteries surrounding it, as well as how religious communities from Germany to the United States have started using AI.

Following our focus on global issues, we turn to things more concentrated in the United States. In “Love and (Religious) Work in Netflix’s Nobody Wants This,” Helene Meyers reviews the hit romantic comedy series about a rabbi and his non-Jewish girlfriend and reflects on how the show portrays Judaism, Gentiles, and Jewish women in both fresh and stereotypical ways. Then, while thinking about gender and religion, in “Gender and the Black Church Today,” an excerpt from The Contemporary Black Church, Jason Shelton investigates changing ideas about women in Black Christian denominations and how debates over gender are exposing significant areas of concern for many Black Americans.

The November issue also includes the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “The Changing Black Church.” Jason Shelton joins us to discuss why several Black Christian denominations have seen a significant decline in religious affiliation and church attendance. We also explore how the Black church’s decline is altering Black life more broadly, why the fastest growing denomination of Black Christians is seeing an increase in people voting for Republicans, and how Black churches are responding to today’s political and social issues. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As I reflect on the misinformation I encountered while in Michigan, and as we look to Trump’s return to the White House, we are already planning articles and podcast episodes for 2025 that will provide you with important information and insights. The Revealer has been publishing such content for 21 years and we will continue to do just that. Despite Trump’s threats about media organizations that are critical of him, or MAGA supporters who object to the type of pluralism and equality we promote, we will not shy away from providing you with the stories and analysis you need about religion in today’s world. Democracy requires it. Fighting authoritarianism requires it. A brighter future requires it.

Our work continues.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.

The post Editor’s Letter: Our Work Continues appeared first on The Revealer.