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A Peek Inside the ‘Onion’ of Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…rs, those people who had a real connection to the material and who really knew what they were doing. While the substance has diminished, the externals of the Church have greatly expanded. So, you may look at the Churches of Scientology all over the world and say, “Wow, they’re really big!” But when I went to the New York organization five years ago, during the peak of the Tom Cruise period, there was no one there. I went back two or three times a…

Rick Warren Busts a Gut Over Cultural Revolution

By Rob Shryock

…r PC society etc.” The number of supportive and sometimes racist posts outnumber those who advice caution. I can’t suspect such hideous posts are all from Saddleback membership. I’m sure quite a number are. It’s as disturbing as it is disgusting. Warren commented on Tsang’s article, “Thanks so much for teaching us! It was removed instantly.” However, Warren did not get around to posting a formal, public apology until the next day, once again,…

Now That ‘Serial’ is Over: 2014’s Best Podcasts about Religion

By Andrew Aghapour

…Intersections There is no clean divide between religion and the secular. A number of podcasts have covered contemporary intersections between religion, politics, and society. The Runner Up. This list’s second Peabody Award winner is On the Media, produced out of WNYC. OTM offers some of the sharpest media analysis and most sophisticated investigative journalism that you can find today. January’s “Secrecy at the Border” was initiated after OTM prod…

Does God Want Jeremy Lin to Win?

By Jay Michaelson

…ether in terms of kindness, or humility, or following their dreams, or any number of other positive values—just as it’s at its worst when it takes agency away. The particular myths that Tebow or Lin happen to believe in are secondary (and of course, I mean ‘myths’ in the sophisticated sense of stories that give meaning to human life, not false tales). What’s primary is that they believe, despite ample reasons not to do so, in the possibility of hu…

Prisoners In the Hands of an Angry God: A Conversation About Religion and Reform

By Andrew Aghapour and Stephanie Gaskill

…, polls can have response rates as low as eight percent. (The study behind Newsweek‘s report was based on answers from the 386 Missourians who bothered to fill out a questionnaire.) Also, the methodological failings of surveys can yield results that are skewed toward researchers’ worldviews. But still, there is good reason to expect that religion influences a person’s prison politics. Prison reform, after all, raises ethical questions about justic…

Gen Z’s Religious Affiliation Stats Are Confusing … But Only When Viewed From a Christian-Centric Perspective

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…ay they “believe in God without a doubt,” broken down by generation: Gen Z numbers drop off precipitously since the late nineties. The second showed the number who say they “believe in some higher power.” Here, Gen Z showed an equally precipitous rise, since around 2012. Thompson’s tweet betrays some exasperation with the apparently contradictory results: “Depending on how you ask the question,” he wrote, Gen Z was either “leading a stunning athei…

As Psychedelics Experience a Renaissance, Emory’s New Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality Seeks a Novel Approach

By Hollis Phelps

…l and sociocultural acceptance of the therapeutic value of psychedelics, a number of institutions have started to offer certificate programs for clinicians and chaplains in psychedelic-assisted therapies, including the California Institute of Integral Studies and Naropa University. Now, Emory University has entered the fray, with the establishment of the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality (ECPS). A partnership between Emory Spiritual H…

Mormons Prepare to March in Seven LGBT Parades this Weekend

By Joanna Brooks

…then, Mormons for Marriage founder Laura Compton writes, there have been a number of subtle but observable changes in Mormon positioning on same-sex marriage, including: – The Church Handbook of Instructions no longer includes a request that church members should lobby governments to deny same-sex marriage rights (and rites) via legislative actions. – LDS rhetoric about same-sex marriage rights is shifting to focus on the need to protect religious…

3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…not to … preventing birth.” But, as New York Times reports, under Trump a number of anti-contraception activists have been given prominent roles in the administration. They are moving not just to finalize a rule that would allow any entity to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate for any reason, which has long been on the bishops’ wish list, but have a history of attacking contraception in general. Katy Talento, who is now a White House domestic p…

The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

By Sarah Sentilles

…s belonged to. On television, the dead bodies were women’s; on the evening news, they were the bodies of people from other countries, and usually they weren’t white. Judith Butler argues in Precarious Life that whose dead bodies we are allowed to see, and whose remain hidden, tell us something about which lives are understood to be grievable, mournable; about which lives count as lives. At one point in Dragon Tattoo a cat is killed, its mutilated…