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Protesting Yoga in Schools, But Welcoming Bible Study

By Katherine Stewart

…n in Hinduism? That is the question that emerged from reporting in the New York Times, Fox News, and the Guardian on the threat of a lawsuit by a group of public school parents in Encinitas, California over a yoga class in a public elementary school. But the most compelling aspect of the controversy has nothing to do with the religious nature of yoga, or with the fears of parents. Rather, the case raises serious questions about the separation of c…

Men Without Guns: A Tribute to Larry McMurtry

By Amy Laura Hall

…yth of the West that McMurtry wrote at a slant. Dwight Garner notes in his New York Times obituary that McMurtry offered “unromantic depictions of a long mythologized region.” “Now a Triumphant CBS-TV Event” my copy of Lonesome Dove announces. I’m not hating. But I love McMurtry for his smaller, sparer stories. “Prose,” he wrote, “must accord with the land.” “A viny, tangled prose would never do for a place so open; a place, to use Ross Calvin’s p…

The Hyperreal Kimmy Schmidt

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…actly, beyond explaining how the traumatized optimist Kimmy Schmidt got to New York with nothing more than a backpack full of cash and a middle school education? Well, a good place to start might be the equally ridiculously named fake religion from the elder Tina Fey/Robert Carlock creation, 30 Rock. Kenneth Parcell, you may recall, belonged to the Eighth Day Resurrected Covenant of the Holy Trinity. As we learn in the episode “Fighting Irish,” th…

Recent Debates Highlight Democrats’ Antisemitism Blind Spot—But It’s Not What You Think

By Nylah Burton

…ael. American Jews have a home—America—and it’s worrisome for the Mayor of New York City (which is home to the largest Jewish population of any city, including in Israel) to claim that Jews aren’t safe there. And yet, De Blasio’s comments have not and likely will not be rebuked by the Democratic Party for invoking antisemitic tropes. For Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, the reason why is two-fold, telling Religion Dispatches that “I think most Democrats do…

Nuns on the Bus: 2700 Miles, Nine States, and a Rock Star DC Welcome

By Mary E. Hunt

…, in a tepid letter from their president, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan from New York, indicated some displeasure. (Mr. Ryan’s theological advisor is probably out of a job by now, or should be.) Another factor was the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s mandate issued against the Leadership Conference of women religious. NETWORK was mentioned explicitly as part of the Vatican-perceived problem, related to the support some nuns had provided…

The Myth of the Maya Apocalypse

By Evan Pondel

…world, when the gods ruled, followed by the days since the creation of our world. The gods’ world lasted 5,125 years and 133 days, a period of time known among scholars as 13 b’ak’tun, ending in August of 3114 BC. Scholars assumed that there must be a fixed cycle and speculated that after the same period of 13 baktun [or 5,125 years and 133 days]—December 21, 2012—the cycle would end again, and a misinterpretation began spreading that our world w…

Confession Fail: iPhone App Controversy Muddies the Sacramental Waters

By Elizabeth Drescher

…I have seen as a failure of mainline Catholic and Protestant pilgrims into new digital territories to grasp the social nature of new media residing on our phones and tablets and so on—devices that connect us and the information we engage to others in our lives. As Sherry Turkle has argued, we are increasingly mapping the social function of technologies—the real human-to-human characteristics that they approximate by never truly replicate for us—on…

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Still Sound

By Lauri Lebo

…ting the nuts on a particular island from year to year. Now imagine that a new volcanic island erupts in the Galápagos chain. Suddenly an expanse of new, un-colonized land is available; new food sources will grow there. How will this new land affect finch diversification? That’s the kind of question being addressed here. But in the rush to deadline, the media all too often misses the point. And instead of an writing about an exploration of the dif…

New Patriarch, Same Patriarchy: Despite Glowing Praise For New SBC President, There’s Just One Problem

By Caroline Matas

…ght Georgia pastor Mike Stone, by fewer than 600 of over 13,000 votes in a runoff election that many believed would be a turning point for a denomination looking to clarify its role in a deeply polarized nation. The SBC also has its own internal polarization to contend with, with leaders inside the denomination disagreeing on everything from how to approach (or even acknowledge) systemic racism in the US to how (or whether) to address an ongoing c…

Mormon-Baiting Pastor’s New Fame Should Help Him Sell His New Book

By Joanna Brooks

…his new book? Jeffress’ Twilight’s Last Gleaming (featuring a one-page foreword by Mike Huckabee) is due out in January. It predicts the end-times demise of the United States but counsels Christians on how they can make “America’s last days your best days” by being the “light” and “salt” of the world. Advance publicity for the book describes Jeffress as a media personality, listing a number of appearances he made in the wake of controversy that fo…