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The March for Life: Grassroots Movement or Agitprop?

By Patricia Miller

…for Life President Jeanne Mancini told the Times: I don’t think that these numbers are the most important. The number most important for us is 58 million, which is the number of Americans that have been lost to abortion. But either they have the numbers or they don’t. And if they don’t, maybe the media should take a hard look at how it covers a predictable, lightly attended act of agitprop which claims to represent hundreds of thousands of people…

From Shofars to Hammers: The Spiritual Warriors of MAGA are ‘ReAwakening’ to Political Violence

By Mark Clatterbuck

…the dominant brand of today’s Republican Party. For good reason, a growing number of expert observers have begun sounding the alarm. I suggest it’s time we hit the panic button. The rally featured plenty of repugnant elements—from the relentless attacks on transgender youth consistent with fascist scapegoating, to the steady drumbeat of election fraud claims, to accusations that Dr. Fauci engineered Covid-19 in a Chinese lab to help a demonic caba…

The Sacred and the Dead: How an Iranian-Jewish Angeleno Discovered Her Tribe

By Saba Soomekh

…s. The concerts were a way of keeping us connected before the dawn of cell phones, the Internet, and Facebook made it so easy to keep in touch. That same group Deadhead friends from high school remain my closest and dearest friends to this day; we are aunts and uncles to each other’s children. (And yes: we all went together to the Santa Clara shows—the Dead’s last in California a week before their last concerts ever in Chicago over the July 4 week…

Is ‘Beyond Doubt’ Correct About the Decline of Religion? Yes… Sort Of.

By Lucas McCracken

…nized” or “modernizing” nations, like the United States, China, Australia, Thailand, Czech Republic, and many more are becoming less religious by the day. Plus, the authors see good reasons to believe that this trend will continue for years to come. Beyond Doubt is written like a victory speech. It delivers a comforting message to nonbelievers and anyone else worried that Christianity—particularly its evangelical iterations—will continue to domina…

Steve Jobs Reincarnated as Divine Half-Yak

By Andrew Aghapour

…According to Phra Thepyanmahamuni, the abbot of the Wat Phra Dhammakaya in Thailand, Jobs was reincarnated into a divinity “of middle rank – half a Witthayathorn, half yak.” The Thai Buddhist New Religious Movement posted a three-part essay on their website describing the life, death, and reincarnation of Jobs, claiming that he also invented the wind-mill in a previous life to predict natural disasters. The essay is illustrated with enough CGI moc…

News Flash: Buddhist-Majority Countries Just as Complicated as Muslim-Majority

By Haroon Moghul

…uslim-majority countries (both after all being populated by humans). While Thailand fights a Muslim—but not “islamist”—insurgency in its south, it is also a top non-OIC destination for Muslim tourism, pulling out all the stops to attract Muslim travelers. (Halal food, prayer spaces, targeted advertising, etc.) As an aside, the majority of Muslims live east of Afghanistan, meaning that the majority of Muslims’ primary experience of other faiths is…

White Christian Nationalism May Not Be Religious, But It Is Christian

By Murali Balaji

…Christian dominance. In a larger context, none of the nationalist and exclusivist movements—Jewish nationalism in Israel; Islamism in parts of Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia; Hindu nationalism in parts of India; Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand—that have grown in recent years are grounded in theology. They’re all connected by a shared sense of grievance and an imagined community based on assumed shared ide…

Why ‘Do You Believe in God?’ Is at the Heart of Our Religious Problem

By Michael Jerryson

…o write out explanations of Pedestrianism (as it is relevant to each individual). I learned it from another Pedestrian in Wisconsin and I met one in Thailand. At one time there was a website on it, but it was taken down….

Sex Comes For the Archbishop: Rembert Weakland’s Unflinching Memoir

By Mary E. Hunt

…nd who gave Thomas Merton’s still-warm body the last rites when he died in Thailand. Benedictine life obviously agreed with him since it allowed him a long leash and many short ties to a worldwide community of which each individual house is a unique part. Abbott Weakland knew his way around the Vatican under Pope Paul VI, when he had friends in high places and a good rapport with the pontiff. That all changed under Pope John Paul II, and the rest,…

What Penis Theft Tells Us About Belief, Culture, and Our Brains

By Vlad Chituc

…ural pathologies come part and parcel with that. Traveling from Nigeria to Thailand and from Borneo to Hong Kong, Bures investigated various “culture-bound syndromes”—mental illnesses unique to a specific society or culture—to see what they might reveal about human culture and beliefs more broadly. Though our bones don’t break any differently in the United States than in Nigeria, it seems like our minds do. I spoke with Bures to help understand wh…