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Our Lady of Good Hope and Excellent Behavior: Why this Apparition and Why Now?

By Lisa Bitel

…s are much easier now, at least for the middle class that can afford plane tickets to Medjugorje and Civitavecchia. Pilgrims learn from major apparition sites exactly how to watch for the Virgin and what to do when someone spots her. And it’s much easier for the news of an apparition to reach reporters, now that visionaries and their witnesses use video cameras and the World Wide Web. President Obama made the news last week when he made a pilgrima…

Orthodox TV Channel Offers Gays One-Way Ticket Out of Russia; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…at’ to Polish identity.” Russia: Orthodox TV channel offers to buy one-way tickets to help gay people leave country Tsargrad TV, a channel affiliated with right-wing Russian Orthodox activists and modeled after Fox News, offered to pay for a one-way ticket overseas for gay people who want to emigrate. The channel was funded by Konstantin Maofeev, a billionaire known as “God’s oligarch” who dreams of Vladimir Putin becoming a Tsar. More from the BB…

“Equality is Not a Feeling”

By Joanna Brooks

…nts walked to elm-lined Temple Square, the heart of historic Mormonism and site of the Church’s General Conference. As men and boys streamed into the Tabernacle to take their seats for the evening meeting, women waited outside to ask for permission to enter. (For video, click here.) One by one, the women stepped forward to speak with LDS Church representative Doug Peterson. Kate Kelly approached first. “I understand that all men, even men who…

Rage Against the New Age Machine: Three Days at the Osho International Meditation Resort

By Diane Winston

…s came to Osho to satisfy their spiritual needs. Most wanted to find their best self. My need, I realized as I yelled at the registrar, was to channel my worst. I was already angry—why did my brother die, why must I work so hard, why wasn’t my husband sorrier to see me go—and primed to snap. Now something about Osho—its spiritual preciousness, regimented excess, brazen capitalism—threw me over the edge. I couldn’t just register, I had fill out for…

Google’s Benevolent Interfaith Big Tent

By Lucia Hulsether

…the story, she returns home, opens Google India, and tracks down the phone number for the sweet shop her grandfather mentioned. Within seconds, she has called the store on her smart phone, and Yusuf’s grandson—who answers—has likewise opened Google to research visas for a reunion too long denied. We can understand the implications of this storyline by putting it into conversation with its longer historical context. The logic of the plot—that Googl…

Spiritual McCarthyism and the Catholic Vote

By Bill Berkowitz

…ouncil. Now we find that there is no listing for the group on the Obama website. As of this writing, the status of Obama’s Catholic National Advisory Council is unclear. (Phone calls to Obama headquarters were not returned.) However, the dust-up between the always vociferous Donohue and the Obama campaign was reminiscent of the battles that took place during the 2004 presidential campaign when a group of conservative Catholics and neoconservatives…

Gay Marriage Supporters Rally People of Faith for Washington’s November Vote

By Nicole Neroulias

…ch of Christian denominations working with us now.” Discussions during the phone bank covered the Golden Rule, whether the Leviticus view of homosexuality as an abomination also extended to eating shrimp, and how civil marriage licenses are distinct from religious weddings. Most of the calls lasted mere seconds, with people not home or not interested. After an hour working the phones, Scott Holley, 33, cheerfully noted that he had become “unfazed…

How Muslim Civic Activism Helped Pass California’s Prop 47

By Nick Street

…r pledge cards and enlist volunteers to canvass potential voters and staff phone banks. He said that the positive responses to his phone pitch for Prop 47 were an unexpected surprise. “It’s been amazing to see how many people were supporting this,” Hakim said. “There are more people that think about justice than I realized!” The momentum for collaborative Muslim faith-based activism around Prop 47 began to build earlier this year, when Jawaid and…

The Pope in My Pocket; We Are All Dilettantes Now

By Michael A. Elliott

…or sell for under two dollars). And unlike the internet, the space of the iPhone feels not just private, but personal. Yes, the iPhone might be my means of connection with the world—it is, after all, a phone—but it is also my own little password-locked garden that I carry with me wherever I go. Moreover, I can remake the landscape with a few flicks of my fingers whenever I choose. As a result, the territory necessarily mixes the sacred and the pro…

How To Talk To “Nones” and Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…tant regional manager of an insurance company—he actually says this—be the best assistant regional manager of an insurance company you can be. Work on something called your “craft.” (Even the insurance agent has a craft.) Also, pay attention to the details of life. Use the fine china. Unplug and play with your kids. Take a “Sabbath” from email. And you, too, will learn how to be here. Rob Bell, for most of us, will be best known as the guy who dec…