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Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…res were quick to point out that I could not really understand their life-world if I dismissed the existence of subtle energy. By contrast, fellow scholars expressed concerns that I might lose my objectivity or “go native.” Robert Orsi also describes this dilemma in his study of lived Catholicism. The other chapter that was cut concerned related communities. “Therians” have their own community for individuals who feel they have a connection to a p…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…sity in Egypt where President Obama went to reach out first to the Muslim world.” He added that Al-Azhar is the “Harvard of the Sunni world” and that “they have put their imprimatur on a book, which is a codification of Sharia across all the various Sunni legal schools.” (There is, as previously explained, no “codification” of shari’ah, and Al-Azhar isn’t considered the “Harvard” of anywhere.) McCarthy, author of the books The Grand Jihad: How Isl…

UPDATED: Religion Has Been Framed; Covering the Aga Khan’s Visit

By Hussein Rashid

…said in an interview, “There are a lot of non-Isma’ili Muslims around the world who wish they had a leader that is as organized and as visionary.” One way of explaining this lopsided coverage is to think about how religion is covered in general. Hannah Farber, working off of Terry Mattingly, points out that reporters play a mediating role in explaining internal words to an external audience. Even in the event that a message is crafted to an extern…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…o “blasphemous content.” The IHEU reports being contacted by an increasing number of secularist groups organizing on Facebook, including groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Sudan. In all of this, the United States is an anomaly since it rejects even laws against religious hate speech, which were found in 36 of 45 European states in 2011. It’s the best place in the wo…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…ar that has debased civic discourse and rendered our nation ungovernable. Worldwide, religious sentiments have been mobilized to torture and murder. I understand that religion itself is not to blame; followers can distort religious teachings and politicians can cloak ethnic hostilities and turf wars in religious language. Yet even so—people believe that they are acting in God’s name. Second: Gallup speculated that the growing sense of religion’s d…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…rimarily child’s play, and a secular, fun-filled, consumer-oriented, neighborly celebration where the dead were no longer “really” present and potentially dangerous to the living, but rather part of a “pretend” world imagined for the sake of the children, who are naïve about the reality of death and the powers of the dead. Given this complicated and grave history, Halloween is exactly the right time of year to bring the dead to mind and consider t…

The Real Goal of Pro-Life Movement Support for Scott Brown: Kill Health Care Reform

By Sarah Posner

…the woman in consultation with her doctor, I believe we need to reduce the number of abortions in America. I believe government has the responsibility to regulate in this area and I support parental consent and notification requirements and I oppose partial birth abortion. I also believe there are people of good will on both sides of the issue and we ought to work together to support and promote adoption as an alternative to abortion. Apart from t…

The 17th Century Roots of Roy Moore’s Refusal to Concede the Election

By Karen E. Park

…clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment and any number of Supreme Court cases. He was removed again last year for refusing to uphold federal law on same sex marriage, on the grounds that it was in violation of God’s law as found in the Old Testament. Like Winthrop, Moore believes that the Old Testament should order American society, whether Exodus or Leviticus. The ancient Israelites in these societies either adhered, or…

Travolta Airlifts Scientology, Supplies, to Haiti

By Becky Garrison

…pastoral care.” Their counseling services included promoting their hotline number on Fox News under the title “National Mental Health Assistance.” In 2002, Tom Cruise and executives from Scientology’s FASE (Foundation for the Advancement in Science and Education) launched “Downtown Medical” (also called “New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project”). This facility offered FDNY firefighters and other recovery workers the opportunity to partake i…

Sacred&Profane: Wilco Worship and the “Churn” in American Religion

By Gary Laderman

…f this world for a higher ground. But the sacred does not only offer otherworldly escape from this world. Music can be religious in every sense of the word, a meaningful alternative to traditional religion that generates moral perspectives, special communities, and life-altering transformations in tune with divine energies. Music is much more than what you hear. It inhabits and alters the body, but at the same time has the potential to create dise…