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Experimental Theater Meets Experimental Faith: The Wooster Group’s “Early Shaker Spirituals”

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…of original company members still performing after 39 years, as one of the best actresses in New York, and wondered at her decision not to work with other companies. It certainly doesn’t seem to bother her any. In Early Shaker Spirituals (which ends its successful run on June 15th) Valk steps further away from the spotlight by acting as director. Like the Sabbathday Lake Shaker site, which is both a religious community, museum, and shop, The Woost…

Sneak Preview

By The Editors

…We’re working hard to create a better, faster, more nimble site. If there’s a feature you’d really like to see, or a glitch that needs attention, drop us a line at info@religiondispatches.org and we’ll put it on the list. –The Eds …

Conservative Christians Disgusted With Palin’s Religious Talk

By Sarah Posner

…ism rather than means of God’s grace. In fact, that’s exactly what the web site of Wasilla Bible Church says. But I would hope that even these traditions wouldn’t take it so lightly as to joke about it in the context of waterboarding. Or even if it is considered OK to joke about waterboarding being baptism by these folks, I’d hope they recognize how blasphemous it sounds to the ears of Christians who retain the historic and high view of the sacram…

LDS Church Asserts Trademark of “Mormon”

By Holly Welker

…is: How is the church harmed by Mormon Match’s use of the word Mormon? The site isn’t claiming any official connection to the church; it’s catering to Mormons and addressing Mormon concerns rather than asserting that it’s endorsed by the leaders of the LDS church. How does providing a service to Mormons hurt the Mormon church? Especially since that service—helping faithful Mormons meet and marry other faithful Mormons—is in line with the church’s…

Money, Technology, and the Silence of Churches: A Conversation with Susan Thistlethwaite

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…onflicts and differences. I visited the women’s tent in Zuccotti Park (the site of Occupy New York), and the women were getting hassled, and some were even raped. Just because you say you’re the 99% that doesn’t go away. You can’t let the idea of “99%” and the very necessary economic solidarity obscure all these other contradictions. In your last book, Dreaming of Eden: American Religion and Politics in a Wired World, you go in-depth about how tec…

Olympics Opening Ceremony as Satanic Ritual

By Joseph Laycock

…ay for an invasion of evil—the New Zealand Herald reported today on the website of conspiracy theorist David Icke, which outlines the plot. Glastonbury Tor, where the games are located, is actually a “vortex,” a site where the earth’s subtle energy can be tapped. The Olympic Bell was designed to harness this energy and release it as a “Satanic frequency” aimed at the audience. Icke’s followers were encouraged to channel heart energy during the cer…

Is Change Possible? Shifting the Ex-Gay Question

By Lynne Gerber

…letter at the time it was sent (reproductions of the letter on numerous websites, including Throckmorton’s, do not include his signature, while the letter currently on the Exodus site does). In March 2010, a year after the initial conference, the organization issued a formal public statement opposing the criminalization of homosexuality in Uganda. In contrast to the open letter, this statement was signed by over 50 people in the Exodus network, in…

LDS Church and the Birth Control Controversy

By Joanna Brooks

…birth control options, and affordable contraception is dispensed at the on-site pharmacy. Deseret Mutual Benefit Association (DMBA), however, a nonprofit corporation that provides health and other benefits to employees of the LDS Church and its affiliates (including Brigham Young University), lists among its exclusions “family planning, including contraception, birth control devices, and/or sterilization procedures,” unless the patient meets narro…

All Candy, No Jesus: Halloween in America

By Mary Valle

…It got me thinking about the odd cultural bird that is Halloween—America’s number two holiday in terms of money spent—a holiday with deep “pagan” or “old religion” roots and the site of two Catholic feast days commemorating our dead friends and allies: All Souls’ Day on November 1, and All Saints’ Day on November 2. As a bonus, October 31 marks the kickoff of the Reformation, when Luther posted his theses on the door of the Castle Church of Witten…

St. Paul’s Cathedral Leadership Gutted as Occupy London Controversy Grows

By Theo Hobson

…point, but the land is principally owned by the cathedral. This choice of site introduced a religious dimension. The protest was asking the Church whether it sided with the hippie ethic of Jesus or the powers of this world. The cathedral was faced with an unenviable dilemma—as Dan Shultz noted in these pages, we should not be too quick to cast the Dean and Chapter as Pharisees, for the right to protest should not trump all other considerations ab…