Joseph DSouza

On Wednesday, Feb. 26 — Ash Wednesday — many members of the global church will enter the Lenten season. Lent, which dates back to the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., is a 40-day period dedicated to prayer and fasting. During this time, Christians reflect on the mission and suffering of the Messiah, leading up to his passion on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. Lent culminates on April 9, Holy Thursday, the night Jesus shared his Last Supper with his disciples before he went to the cross. In his farewell discourse during the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples they would suffer. He said, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33, ESVUK). When Jesus said “in this world you will have tribulation,” he was referring to more than just suffering because of the faith. Suffering is one of the great realities of human life. Consider the tens of thousands of people who in the past few weeks have been infected and have died because of the new coronavirus from China. Or the millions of people who suffer hunger and starvation on a daily basis in developing nations across the world. Or the victims of persecution such as the Uighur Muslims in China, a million who are imprisoned in “reeducation camps,” or the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar who have been the victims of genocide at the hands of the government. Likewise, Christians around the world continue to be persecuted and killed for their faith. Open Doors, a nonprofit that aids persecuted Christians, estimates that 260 million people in 50 countries “experience high levels of persecution.” North Korea, [...]

When President Donald Trump touches down in India this week for a state visit, he'll find himself in a nation that is only 2.3% Christian, yet counts 28 million adherents to the faith on an Asian continent that is already home to 350 million Christians — on its way to 450 million by 2025. These figures put into perspective the recent editorial in Christianity Today that called on America's evangelical Christian voters to support Trump’s removal from office in his impeachment trial. The article by outgoing editor Mark Galli went viral and prompted a new round of handwringing over whether evangelicals in the United States should have voted for a man who doesn't appear to live up to Christian values. Evangelicals' loyalty to President Trump, the editorial alleged, will “crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel.” Largely missing from the conversation was the voice of those Christians from the "global south" who represent 60% of the world’s evangelical population. The assumption is that evangelical Americans are the custodians of global evangelical witness, a notion that is, plainly put, ethnocentric. Church historians have long known that the topography of the Christian religion, including evangelicalism, has shifted dramatically over the past century. While America and Europe are increasingly secular, Christianity has spread exponentially across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and South and East Asia and is in fact thriving in many countries despite facing severe persecution and opposition. For many of us, the time American evangelicals risked endangering the witness of the gospel was the Iraq War, which was urged on us by President Bush, unlike Trump, a self-professed evangelical. At one point Bush argued — astonishingly — that his view on [...]

Since Dec. 15, hundreds of Muslim women have been camping at a crossroads near New Delhi known as Shaheen Bagh. They have braved the frigid winter temperatures, the coldest in more than a century, to protest a law they believe discriminates against them as a minority in Hindu-majority India. The Citizenship Amendment Act, passed on Dec. 12, grants citizenship to refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan but excludes Muslims. The law has triggered massive demonstrations across the country, many of them led by university students, but the protest in Shaheen Bagh has caught everyone’s attention because it has become a unifying rally led by women in a fragmented society. The Shaheen Bagh protest remarkably has attracted Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and other religious minorities. These women represent nearly 600 million Indian women who believe in the democratic foundations of free speech, liberty, equality and religious freedom — ideals that seem to have come under threat by the citizenship law. On Jan. 12, tens of thousands of people flooded this crossroads, and multi-faith religious services were held there in solidarity. The protest has inspired other women across India, who have started similar demonstrations in Kanpur, Allahabad and Patna. But is the government paying attention? The Shaheen Bagh protest reminds us that it is impossible to turn India’s religiously pluralistic society into a one-faith nation, which many believe is the subtle motivation behind the bill. Those protesting are fighting for the long history of India as a religiously diverse nation. The protest was initiated by a diverse group of Muslim women, from septuagenarians to young mothers cradling their children. Some of them wear hijabs; others don’t. And some are college-educated, while primary school is the highest educational attainment [...]

2019 was a seminal year for the cause of religious freedom. In July, the U.S. State Department held its second annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. The ministerial convened more than 1,100 civil society and religious leaders and foreign delegations, making it the largest event dedicated to religious freedom in the world. This was followed by the United Nations designating — for the first time in its 74-year history — a day in August to commemorate the victims of acts of violence based on religion or belief. Then in September, President Trump made history by becoming the first American president to host an event dedicated to religious freedom at the U.N. General Assembly. Thanks to these developments and to the efforts of leaders such as President Trump and Pope Francis, who this year became the first pontiff to visit the Arabian peninsula, more nations are paying attention to this issue and making commitments to protect religious freedom. Yet, even as there is much to celebrate, there’s still work left to be done. Roughly three-fourths of the world’s population lives in countries with high or very high levels of government restrictions and social hostilities on religion, according to Pew Research Center. Here are some of the biggest challenges 2020 will pose to religious freedom and what we can do to address them: Historical Revisionism This is happening in Muslim-majority Turkey, where the government is trying to convert the Hagia Sophia — a historic Greek Orthodox church that dates back to the 6th century — from its current status as a museum into a mosque. A recent court ruling ordering a 1,000-year-old church in Istanbul wit a similar status to be converted into a mosque has raised concerns [...]

The recent extrajudicial killings of four men who were accused of the rape and murder of a woman in India should not be celebrated as justice. On the contrary, they are a dire warning of how law and order can breakdown when a democratic society fails to address its most serious social problems. In this case, India’s inability to curb the prevalence of sexual violence against women has resulted in not only the denial of justice for a victim of rape and murder, but also the denial of due process for four Indian citizens, who however guilty they may be of the crime still have constitutional rights. Now, I cannot blame people — especially Indian women — for being outraged by the crime these men are believed to have committed. As a resident of Hyderabad, where the charred remains of the victim were found, I commiserate with the sense of fury many of my fellow citizens experienced when the details of the case came to light: how the men saw the woman, a veterinarian in her mid-twenties, park her scooter near an empty toll plaza and punctured one of the vehicle's tires so she would be stranded when she returned to the parking lot; how she called her sister and asked her to stay on the phone because she was afraid; and how the men lured her with the pretext of fixing her scooter before forcibly taking her to an abandoned building, where they brutally assaulted her. People across India identified with the plight of the victim and the pain of her family. This young woman could have been anyone’s daughter, wife, or mother. The crime, so reminiscent of the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old [...]

For nearly 30 years, women of menstruating age in India have been banned from entering the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. That may change soon when India’s Supreme Court reviews the constitutionality of the ban. Enacted by Kerala’s high court in 1991, the ban prevents women of menstruating age — 10 to 50 years — from entering the temple. According to tradition, the temple houses the shrine of Lord Ayyappa, a Hindu deity celebrated for his celibacy, and the presence of women of menstruating age would defile it. The ban was lifted last year after the Supreme Court ruled that it violated the worship rights of women, but the ruling was immediately challenged by dozens of review petitions, and the state’s government is still forbidding entry to women. Whenever women have attempted to worship at the temple, they have been met by police and protesters. I have written before about Sabarimala and its significance to the spiritual rights of Indian women. Sabarimala is the second-largest pilgrimage destination in the world, after Mecca in Saudi Arabia. More than 30 million Hindu pilgrims visit the temple annually. The sad truth is the Sabarimala temple is but one story in the greater narrative of women’s struggle for their spiritual rights. Throughout history and to this day, women across all major world religions have been denied equal access to worship sites and barred from leadership positions they are qualified to fill. For example, in many mosques women are segregated from the main prayer services and even denied entry. In India, women’s right to enter mosques is also being reviewed by the Supreme Court. In France and America some women have taken matters into their own hands and founded their own mosques, [...]

Religious tensions in India, particularly between Hindus and Muslims, have been fraught over the past few years. So when the Supreme Court recently awarded Hindus the contested holy site in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, where the Babri Masjid mosque stood for 500 years, fears that religious violence would erupt were palpable in India. When a Hindu mob demolished the mosque in 1992, violent riots broke out and thousands of Indians died. Yet the Muslim community’s response to the Supreme Court’s verdict was a refreshing reminder of what kind of democratic society India was meant to be. The Muslim parties involved in the legal dispute said they would comply with the ruling and called for the Muslim community at large to maintain order and not protest. Of course, this doesn’t mean the Islamic community agrees with the court’s decision or believes it’s fair. On the contrary, they have called it “unjust” and some of the litigants announced they would appeal court’s decision, which has been criticized as being based more on faith than facts. The senior Muslim member of parliament stated that while he accepted the Supreme Court’s supremacy in the rule of law, it did not mean the court was infallible. I have written before about the complicated and violent history of the Ayodhya holy site, claimed by both Muslims and Hindus, the latter who believe it is the birthplace of the Hindu deity Lord Ram. Evidence presented to the Supreme Court by the Archaeological Society of India stated that there was a religious structure at the site before a mosque was built, but as many Hindu leaders throughout India would admit, it’s a question of faith as to whether it was the birthplace of a mythical [...]

Recent news that popular Christian comedian John Crist has been accused of sexual harassment put the spotlight once again on sexual sin within the church. This would not, of course, be the first time a prominent Christian figure has fallen from grace because of a moral failure. With the advent of the #MeToo movement, more stories of sexual abuse and harassment and even rape within the church have come to light. It should break our hearts that the body of Christ has failed to protect the most vulnerable among us and, at times, has even been complicit in covering up for abusers. The good news is that these revelations, as painful as they are, have prompted churches and denominations to do more to protect people in their community who may fall prey to an abuser. Some churches are implementing measures such as background checks for volunteers and installing security cameras. Denominations also are setting up committees and encouraging member churches to treat any instance of sexual abuse as a crime and report it to the authorities instead of dealing with it internally. Yet there remains the issue that these measures are largely reactionary, not preventative. Because how do you hedge against a sin that originates in the human heart? As the New Testament’s Letter of James reads, When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Is there a better approach churches can take to dealing [...]

Meet one of my friends.  She was the kind of child who wondered, “Why is the sky blue? How do birds fly? How do fish breathe?” Now she is a bright and curious teenager and her questions are more complex.  She has a fire inside that makes her want to learn, want to succeed. And she will, because there is a team a people who believe in her, who invest in her, who help her believe that her life and her dignity matter. This is poverty alleviation. This is justice. This is freedom. Watch: The Curious Mind of Reshma

The world celebrated when news broke out that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, extremist leader of the Islamic State, was killed during a raid by U.S. special forces on his hideout compound. Baghdadi’s death, and the reported death of his second-in-command ISIS spokesperson Abu Hasan al-Muhajir, is a victory for every freedom-loving person across the world. The Islamic Caliphate he established, which at one point covered a territory as large as Britain, was a threat not only to those it imprisoned and robbed of their lives, homes, dignity and personal freedoms, but to people everywhere who might fall victim to terrorist attacks carried out by ISIS and its affiliates. Yet, even as we celebrate the demise of one of the worst terrorist leaders the world has known, we must remember the fight against extremism is far from over. In fact, we might be at the most dangerous time in the history of extremist movements as they have taken more subtle forms and infiltrated mainstream society. Allow me to explain. Whenever we think of extremism, the first thing that comes to mind is violent extremist groups like terrorist organizations such as ISIS or militant factions such as Hezbollah. Of course, their violent attacks are the most obvious displays of extremist behavior, but we must not confuse tactics for ideology. What is at the heart of every extremist movement — whether religious or secular, or on the hard right or far left — is an overarching mission to establish an authoritarian system of government that denies basic human rights such as freedom of religion or belief, freedom of speech and assembly, free enterprise and the right to own personal property, among others. While terrorist groups advance this mission through violence, [...]