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The War Within: Religion and Our Tangled Relationship with Our Bodies

…ew thousand words over their original word limit, but I still had to cut a number of compelling stories of people who have struggled with body shame because of internalized cultural/religious norms and narratives about weight, disability, chronic pain or illness. I also had to omit some of my analyses of examples of the culture of physical improvement. For instance, in the chapter on aging, I nixed a rather lengthy critique I’d developed of Deepak…

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A Match Made in Hell: Demons Have Become a Serious Force in US Politics — But We’ve Seen This Show Before

…lculations, one-third of evangelicals don’t vote, and when you factor this number against the number of votes needed to tip battleground states like Pennsylvania, there’s not much convincing that needs to be done to turn the election for Trump. It might seem like a small affair, until you realize that JD Vance was one of the speakers at the Courage Tour event in Pennsylvania. Predictably, demonic rhetoric underlies a lot of the Tour. From what I’v…

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Bonnaroo Dispatches: Stages

…oday. No one is going to judge you.” Recent studies suggest that while the number of young Americans who consider themselves religious or spiritual remains roughly constant, their spiritual practices are changing. They are more likely than their parents to consider themselves unaffiliated with any particular practice, or the version of the religion they practice boils down to injunctions to a vague sense of morality, fairness, and happiness, what

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Bonnaroo 3: With a Buzz in Our Ears

…roup of Birmingham college students who had been persuaded by one of their number that this was worth the wait. It was. It is hard to describe the experience of standing in the second row of a rock concert, untold numbers at your back, without sounding trite. In a world in which it is possible to conduct nearly all communication via one machine or another, to travel from one climate-controlled setting to the next without exchanging so much as a mo…

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Religious Leaders Need ‘Empty the Pews’ Which Chronicles the Darker Side of the ‘Nones’ Phenomenon

…arc which likely reveals something about what happens when a person is liberated from the rigid nature of a religion with an extremely limited world view. These often begin with the person remembering the breaking-point moment, then explain how the individual was brought up in a family with strict religious beliefs, followed by a description of the person’s post-faith life. This is certainly not to say that these stories aren’t important or moving…

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Faith-Based Bailout Part 3

…for this administration. They are many of the same people who have demonstrated no concern for the future or the long term, and no sense that they understand the reality or the enormity of the numbers they throw around with such casual abandon. Such leaders cannot, simply cannot, save us. They cannot restore the public trust, which is the only sure way to a slower (but surer) recovery. And such a recovery will be slow. Undoing this kind of damage…

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Hobby Lobby: Key to a More Liberal and Less Religious America?

…nt, compared to 37% of Gen Xers and 50% of the Silent Generation. Though a number of studies have found that young people were leaving the church because they saw them as intolerant places, it’s unlikely that the conservative religious actors behind the anti-gay rights law that just passed in Mississippi and the Hobby Lobby case realize that their actions are part of—and perhaps a causal source—of this growing disenchantment. While the consequence…

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Is Abortion No Longer Significant for Evangelicals — or Has it Just Become Like Water?

…%). When Coney Barrett was nominated in September of 2020, Trump’s polling numbers among white evangelicals had dipped to a low of 55% in August 2020. However, once her nomination was made public that number rose to the normal average of 71%. Coney Barrett’s record on reproductive rights was a central issue in her confirmation hearings, as Anna North points out at Vox: Barrett, a Catholic and member of the religious group People of Praise, has als…

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How a Ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Embolden White Nationalists

…or even federal—protections aimed at combatting discrimination against any number of marginalized populations. “The cultural and political prominence of religious freedom as an American ideal draws people to it,” Wenger said. “The reason people appeal to it for all sorts of purposes is because it’s so culturally, politically, and legally powerful.” Indeed, as Wenger’s book documents in deep historical detail, the bedrock American principle has alr…

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Mormonism’s “9/11 Mosque Moment”

…olleague Hussein Rashid pointed out in this must-read piece), Mormons, the number two most disliked religion in America, have no business contributing to public rage against the number one most disliked religion in America.   Nor in trafficking in falsehoods like “Islam is an ideology, not a religion,” a line I’ve been hearing from a few Mormons in recent days.   Islam is in fact a religion for which Mormon leaders from the time of George A. Smith…

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