Bravo for Latvia!

                 
                       

Archbishop Vanags (second from right)

A leading player in the tiny nation of Latvia (pop. 2 million) is pushing back against modernity's 'gender ideology.’ The Lutheran archbishop leads Latvia’s largest Christian group: Lutherans (33 percent). They are part of the Nordic Reformation tradition; while 25 percent of Latvians are Catholics, more influenced by Poland. Most Orthodox in Latvia are Russian-speaking and associate with the Russian Orthodox Church.

[This article from a decade ago gives some of the background].

                         

                                                                            

"Poland [to the southwest] conquered Latvia's territory in the mid-16th century, and occupied it until Sweden took over the land in 1629, ruling for a century. The land then passed to Russia for two hundred years. 

The Russian Revolution of 1917 gave Latvia the opportunity for freedom, and the Latvian republic was proclaimed the following year. The republic lasted for twenty years. 

The country was occupied by Russian troops in 1939. German armies occupied the nation from 1941 to 1944 -- when Russia again took control. 

In 1991, Latvia declared its independence."

                                             

Dark Rye Bread -- rupjmaize

"Latvian meals are always served with bread of some type -- usually dark bread -- it's the national staple. People eat it with potatoes, soups, jams, butter, cheese, salad... Actually with almost everything. Latvians treat food, especially bread, with great respect -- because we know it's not something that can be taken for granted and if the slice of bread falls on a floor, a Latvian will kiss it when picking it up."


                     

Here is a statue of beloved artist Voldemars Irbe ("Irbite"), who for most of the year would stroll the Latvian capital barefoot.

He was killed by shrapnel on the last day of the Battle for Riga in 1944, when the Soviets captured the city from the Germans.

                       

                                                                       

In Latvia and Estonia, roughly a quarter of the population is ethnic Russian -- while Lithuania, to the south, has less than 5 percent Russians.

("Russians make up almost a half of the population of Latvia's capital, Riga. In the second largest city Daugavpils [down by Belarus], Russians now make up the majority") !




UPDATE: 'Touchstone' magazine interviewed Archbishop Vanags at length in 1999.

Map on Monday: THE TURKIC PEOPLES

LINGUISTIC AND COMMUNAL LOYALTIES OF THE MIDEAST AND CENTRAL ASIA: A THREE PART SERIES ON THE ARABS, PERSIANS, AND TURKS

PART III: THE TURKIC PEOPLES

by A. Joseph Lynch

To many people, the word 'Turk' refers to the old Ottoman Turkic Empire and its ambitions to conquer eastern Europe and control the Mediterranean. Its more modern connotation places it with the NATO-member state of secular Turkey. While Turkey is of course a Turkic state, it stands at the far western edge of the broader Turkic steppe peoples that share a common language and generally share (with the exception of Shia Azerbaijan) a common Sunni Islamic faith. Despite their Sunni background, Sunni Arab states view them generally as outsiders due to their ethnic and linguistic differences.

Geography was also no help to the integration of Turks within the broader Islamic world as the Turks of central Asia are separated from the Sunni Arab states by the Caspian Sea and Shia Iran dominating the Iranian Plateau. Landlocked, these nations fell under the rule of Soviet communism, and are to this day drawn between Russian, Chinese, and the greater Islamic orbits. At its farthest east reaches, Turks find themselves directly under Chinese rule in Xinjang Province where Turks make up 45% of the population. China invests heavily in central Asia, in large part to keep Chinese Turks from finding an ally in its brother nations of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The most important Turkic player in the Mideast core is, of course, Turkey. Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Turkey maintained a European orientation, joining NATO and hoping to join the EU. As the War on Terror intensified and EU membership slipped out of Turkey's grasp, Turkey's renewed Islamic faith reoriented the nation to the Mideast. At first an outsider, Turkey won renewed favor among its brethren by supporting the Palestinians and working to resolve tensions with Tehran. Having played a vital role in Islamic leadership since defeating the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071 through the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Turkey has returned from its roughly hundred-year European orientation to seek leadership in the broader Islamic world once more.

One cannot fully understand the events in the Islamic world without understanding the underlying communal loyalties of Arab, Persian, and Turkic Muslims in their Sunni and Shia faiths.

This third and final part of our series was preceded by posts on the Sunni Arab States and Persia-Shia Islam.

[This article first appeared on Anthropology of Accord on May 11, 2015]

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, July 23

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

SORTING OUT THE MINNESOTA SHOOTING OF PHILANDO CASTILE
A profile of the policeman.

Many traffic stops for Mr. Castile.

BATON ROUGE AND ALTON STERLING
More details.

A damning video.

BLACK LIVES AND POLICE VIOLENCE
Giuliani on saving black lives.

The Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax -- a liberal black reporter admits he got it wrong.

The two gun cultures by Cain Pence.

Policeman at home kills bipolar intruder after email exchange on BLM: white shooter and black victim.

President Obama at memorial of five slain officers.

President Bush at memorial.

Radical Islam Black Lives Matter and leftist transformation.

A popular black writer sees tit for tat in execution of Dallas police officers.

AFRICAN CARDINALS CHASTISE US CATHOLICS ON SEXUAL IMMORALITY
Two cardinals from Africa mince no words.

A brief history of cardinals from Taylor Marshall.

Putting God at the center of worship -- a Catholic debate.
Speaking of Catholic debates, Dr Pence and Fr John Echert debate on You Tube: on Pope Francis and marriage.
                                                                               
PAN-ORTHODOX COUNCIL IN CRETE
Blessedly unpredictable.

From same author: good description of religious actors in Ukraine.

RUSSIA IS NOT OUR ENEMY
Reevaluating the hysteria about Russia and Vladimir Putin.

US and Russia pledge more cooperation in Syria against ISIS. This is a very positive development which should not be met with an oppositional partisan reflex.

OPPOSITION TO IRAN
The murky world of Congressional endorsements, speaker fees, and Saudi lobbying.

TURKEY: THE COUP
Turkey and President Erdogan have the potential to play a very good or very bad role in the reformation of Sunni Islam. It is very important to have an accurate view of the Gulen movement. Toward that goal -- some different views. Is it a moderate front or a more malignant form of Islam?  or the "moderate Islam" so many of the West are seeking.

Global civics and Islam.

Are Erdogan foreign policy mishaps a possible cause of coup?

Best analysis post coup from War on Rocks.

CHINA CLAIM TO THE SEA -- INTERNATIONAL COURT CLAIM TO AUTHORITY
The court rules as expected.

Watch that map: South China Sea and competing claims.

China joins US in ignoring a law the US refused to agree with.

NEW ALLIANCES IN MIDEAST STRESS ESTABLISHED NATION STATES
Turkey/Russia/Israel.

ISIS not the major security concern of Israel.

ISRAEL IS ONE STATE THAT DOESN’T NEED TO BE DIVIDED
A new Sunni state may be needed in the Mideast but it shouldn’t be cut out of Israel. It is highly likely that a Trump candidacy will reject the two-state solution which has so paralyzed American foreign policy in the Mideast. Here is a highly negative view of this development, but an accurate view of what may be coming. It would be a change of policy, indeed.  

How Trump changed Republican platform.

AOA ON MEN AND RACE IN AMERICA
We have not written about the Dallas shootings and the police shootings of two black men (in Minnesota and Louisiana) which triggered the Black Lives Matter rally and then the Black Power sniper. This breakdown of civic brotherhood is at the core of our concerns here at AOA. We are still taking in what happened. Here are some previous writings:

 The betrayal of Selma and black men.

 The Benedict Option: Christian Fraternity.

 Joshua or Barak: Betraying the Promise.

 Heather McDonald on stopping the demonizing of the police. The amplification of the exception in order to obfuscate the obvious.

MIKE PENCE (TRUMP'S RUNNING MATE) IS A CATHOLIC-TURNED-EVANGELICAL
One profile.

Friday BookReview: The many ways we trip over Africa

[first published October 24, 2014]



               

“I prefer clarity over agreement.”  (Dennis Prager) 

One of the best smackdowns to appear in the 'New York Times' in recent years was when travel writer Paul Theroux took on Irish musician Bono.

                                     

The opening line, plus a few others:

"There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment." 

"I got a dusty reception lecturing at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation when I pointed out the successes of responsible policies in Botswana, compared with the kleptomania of its neighbors... Mr. Gates has said candidly that he wants to rid himself of his burden of billions. Bono is one of his trusted advisers. Mr. Gates wants to send computers to Africa - an unproductive not to say insane idea. I would offer pencils and paper, mops and brooms: the schools I have seen in Malawi need them badly." 

"Africa is a lovely place - much lovelier, more peaceful and more resilient and, if not prosperous, innately more self-sufficient than it is usually portrayed. But because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth. Such people come in all forms and they loom large. White celebrities busy-bodying in Africa loom especially large. Watching Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie recently in Ethiopia, cuddling African children and lecturing the world on charity, the image that immediately sprang to my mind was Tarzan and Jane."

What happens when an American newspaper sends a black reporter to cover Africa, and it turns out his allegiance to political correctness is negligible? A fine book results: Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa.


Author Keith Richburg, a native of Detroit, says:

"I'm tired of lying. And I'm tired of all the ignorance and hypocrisy and the double standards I hear and read about Africa, much of it from people who've never been there, let alone spent three years walking around amid the corpses... Talk to me about Africa and my black roots and my kinship with my African 'brothers' and I'll throw it back in your face... Thank God that I am an American [and] thank God my ancestor survived [the] voyage [to America on the slave ship]..."

Some excerpts from a review by Arch Puddington (1997):

[I]t is his observations on the pathology of African politics, and how that pathology intersects with our own racial perplexities, which ultimately make Out of America not only a provocative but an important book. Richburg has a powerful and very American sense of right and wrong, and he is especially sensitive to the cynical and manipulative use of the racial trump card in relations between Africans and Americans. The brazen exploitation of racial guilt by the thieves and murderers who are the continent’s despots especially appalled him... 

Richburg was present at a 1993 conference in Gabon attended by leading black American civil-rights activists. Among the guests of honor, he reports, was the continent’s youngest dictator, Valentine Strasser of Sierre Leone, a twenty-eight-year-old soldier who had seized power through a coup and proceeded systematically to arrest and execute officials of the previous regime. When Strasser strode into the hall, garbed in the standard-issue outfit of African strongmen—a camouflage uniform and Ray Ban sunglasses—the Americans erupted into cheering and frenzied applause...  

From Douglas Wilder, the first black governor of a Southern state, came the observation that “We cannot and should not expect [African governments] to undergo a metamorphosis in seconds . . . our job is not to interfere.” Benjamin Chavis (now Chavis Muhammad), then-director of the NAACP, warned against attempting “to superimpose a Western standard of democracy.” And Jesse Jackson heaped accolades on the ruthless Nigerian dictator Ibrahim Babangida, calling him “one of the great leader-servants of the modern world in our time.”

Jesse Jackson in Ivory Coast

Defending Pope Francis: Amoris laetitia debate Dr. Pence and Fr. Echert at AOTM

Certainly one of the most vibrant men's groups in Minnesota is the Argument of the Month Club. It is based at St. Augustine parish in South St. Paul, under the guidance of Father John Echert.

Recently, David Pence engaged Father in a rousing debate over the contents of Amoris laetitia -- the Pope's lengthy reflections regarding the Synods on the Family, held in 2014 and 2015.

Fr. Echert is not a fan of the document, but Doc Pence gave him a stream of reasons not to be too dismissive. Browse some of the video; it's entertaining as well as illuminating.

                 

The Holy Father with some of the African cardinals at the Synod

UPDATE: This book review by Pence, from last year, lays out some of the ways that Francis is such a unique occupant of the Chair of St. Peter.