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Dispatches From the Rhodian Shore: A (Tough) Love Letter to Religious Studies

By Todd LeVasseur

…cology approach to religious studies, they’re still outliers, massively outnumbered by the majority of programs that do not teach such courses (or possibly offer a token elective course on religion and nature/ecology) or train scholars to teach and research such content. The above data points, all published in the last two months, strongly suggest that Glacken’s analysis was spot on: we are geographic, and thus geologic, agents to the point of now…

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

By Michelle Lelwica

…and analyses of popular cultural examples, I would have liked to discuss a number of other issues that are triggers for body shame because they involve physical experiences in which we have no (or limited) control. Menstruation, skin tone and complexion, and body hair are just a few examples of topics the book doesn’t delve into because the scope of issues it does cover (i.e., disability, weight, chronic pain and illness, and aging) is already imp…

What Irish Marriage Vote Means for Catholic Church; The Lonely Fight for Equality in Belize; Progress and Backlash in Tunisia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nd beyond the criminal code: Homosexuals are still technically an explicit class of prohibited immigrants, along with prostitutes, “any idiot,” the insane and “any person who is deaf and dumb.” ….In Belize, church leaders are granted deference in the press and by lawmakers on social issues. But in large part, the ecclesiastical focus has always been on the spiritual rather than the political realm. So Orozco was blindsided by the announcement, soo…

No Conspiracy Theories Needed: Abortion Foes Cry Racism

By Kathryn Joyce

…n part by denouncing her as a bigot and a racist who wanted “to reduce the number of children [born] to the nation’s poorest economic groups, which tend to be persons of color and other minorities.” The Pro-Life Action League made a similar criticism this week against the Guttmacher Institute, claiming that the Institute’s call for publicly-funded birth control “takes aim at the poor by recommending more government spending on programs to reduce t…

Like Azusa Street Baptized into Bureaucracy: Mexico’s Flourishing LLDM Church Loses its Apostle

By Michael Schulson

…on. The 2010 Mexican census reported only around 200,000 members, but that number may well be low (the Mormon church in Mexico has argued that the religious count was inaccurate). Independent scholarly estimates for LLDM’s worldwide population range as high as seven million. Still: LLDM is big. And it’s not easy to classify the church that has emerged. In terms of theology and ritual, its flavor is firmly pentecostal and charismatic: Church member…

A Jewish Perspective on Reparations

By Moriel Rothman-Zecher

…g, then one can see their fruits in Germany today. Last month, following a number of horrid, hateful slogans chanted at Jews (in the context of otherwise legitimate protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza), and a number of violent incidents, there was a large public vigil in Berlin to protest anti-Semitism. Among the attendees were German President Joachim Guack, members of Germany’s parliament, leaders of both of the country’s major churches, an…

RD10Q: The Fight Against Feminism

By Kathryn Joyce

…ing their children to do the same, they could win the culture wars through numbers alone. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? My main concern about these convictions is not so much the plans for Christian dominion that Quiverfull authors and homeschooling ministries discuss, but rather that in the service of these ideas, many women are subjecting themselves to an often punishing lifestyle. Quiverfull is not just about the…

New Poll: Evangelicals Backing Trump

By Daniel Schultz

…urrently, 78% of white evangelicals support Donald Trump (identical to the number that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012). John McCain? 74%. George W. Bush 2000 and 2004? 68 and 78%, respectively. And despite the whopper of zombie lies told by Ted Cruz, no, 54 million evangelical voters did not stay home in 2012, rather than vote for Romney. In fact, white evangelicals have made up around one-quarter of the electorate ever since 2000. According to Pew…

Why We Won’t Let Jonestown (Or 9/11 or Sandy Hook) Die

By Kelsey Osgood

…mblazoned in our cultural consciousness. On November 18, 1978, the largest number of American civilian lives was lost due to a single non-natural disaster—a sad distinction Jonestown would hold until September 11, 2001. In Stories from Jonestown, the most recent addition to the Jonestown library, Leigh Fondakowski has compiled the numerous interviews that she conducted in order to write her play, The People’s Temple, which ran at the Berkeley Rep…

Growing Up Cult: A Memoir of Life with Sri Chinmoy

By Brittany Shoot

…xperiments), she began to question the idea of devotion to a guru. After a number of attempts to leave, she broke free of the group at age twenty-five. I recently caught up with Tamm to talk about Sri Chinmoy’s death, her use of the word “cult,” and what her spiritual life looks like today. ** Did it make a difference to his followers that Sri Chinmoy was from India? Did it give him extra authority? In the late 1960s, there was a trend to look to…