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Virgins and Vampire Worship: The Religion of Twilight

By Linda Kay Klein

…an fiction (the most famous of which became Fifty Shades of Grey), and buy buy buy branded Twilight merchandise between the release of the books and movies to keep the magic of the series alive. They “Twi-bond,” supporting one another in times of need (TwilightMoms, an online group of moms who read Twilight, ritually send one another cards and gifts when others in their lives forget to), and they study “Cullenism,” the value system of the Cullens,…

Advice from a Disaster Pastor: Open Your Wallet, Not Your Closet

By Carlos Wilton

…ry. In a consumer culture, that’s not a skill that comes easily. There’s a classic scene from one of the Marx Brothers comedies in which Chico and Harpo are running a slick little scam. They’ve used a fishing pole to hook a dollar bill. Chico uses the money to buy something. The seller then pockets the bill. As soon as he starts to walk off, Harpo deftly pulls back on his pole, retrieving the money and delivering it to Chico: who then turns around…

On Pi Day, Puzzling Over the Most Famous Transcendental Number

By Ilana E. Strauss

…Physicsworld.com user asks, “What could be more mystical than an imaginary number interacting with real numbers to produce nothing?” Where infinity merges with the earth When you dig into pi, you encounter questions that are as much theological as mathematical: is there a pattern to the universe? Or is it fundamentally random? And how do we reckon with the infinite? Some people have always insisted that there must be a pattern behind pi. If only h…

Contraception Isn’t Meat

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…d have to say this: Imagine you live in a country where the default way to buy food is buying it from your employer. You get a job, and your employer negotiates with companies who in turn have agreements with grocery stores and growers, shipping companies and meat processing plants, and so on. The end result of all this is that you get a card, which you present when you buy groceries at one of the stores where an agreement has been negotiated on b…

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…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…s 1,000 visitors are invited to meet him. I apparently missed the seminary class that taught pastors not to get “sidetracked in controversy.” Instead, my classes taught me that it was theologian Karl Barth that counseled pastors to use both the Bible and the newspaper in their preaching, but Osteen will have none of that. Anything that might get in the way of a happy story, or a story about how God wants you to be happy and be the best “you” you c…

Bobby Jindal Hypes His Christian Cred at Liberty U.

By Murali Balaji

…from their audience. Just think of rappers (many of whom come from middle-class backgrounds) exaggerating their street cred in order to win over suburban kids who buy their music. But there’s another take that resonates deeply with Hindu-Americans like me: Jindal’s conversion as an attempt to escape bullying and the constant scrutiny of what it’s like to be an Other in America. Like Jindal’s parents, who came to the United States after the repeal…

Back to School at The First Public School In the Country To Require a World Religions Course

By Joseph Laycock

…take a “course” designed by the district to prepare them for teaching the class. There is no credential for this class so we are all “social studies teachers.” I’d like to see religious studies become a separate credential for teachers but that’s unlikely. Most religion scholars are teaching in the university. Do you think this curriculum could be implemented in other school districts? I know it could and it should. I had hoped it would happen wi…

South Park Meets the Sacraments at Class for New Catholics

By Zachary Leja

…of shopping, computers and TV. But even Father Shea uses tech in his RCIA class. Damien thinks the use of the videos might be the older Jesuit trying to cater to the younger college audience—a good guess, given Father Shea’s assessment of millennial culture. One of the clips Father Shea plays during class is an animated video on baptism. The poorly drawn cartoon characters wobble around the screen, acting out how the sacrament would have looked c…