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Sex and the (Hipster) Church—Just a Gimmick?

By Nicole Greenfield

…at Gramercy Theater, a mid-sized performance venue on East 23rd Street in New York City. But the nine-piece band circled around, half of its members hidden behind bedside candles and lamps, and played as if it weren’t even there. “Your grace abounds to me, your grace abounds to me,” they sang. “Jesus, in you I find all that I need.” The capacity-crowd of worshippers joined in, arms in the air, and then they prayed. They prayed for marriages, for…

“This is a Homosexual Bar, Jesus”: Malcolm Boyd, 1924-2015

By Peter Laarman

…, with substantial and respectful obituaries published in the LA Times and New York Times. And now I’m thinking what a remarkable and brave thing it was for such a well-known church leader to out himself 1976, just at the point that Jerry Falwell was about to launch the Moral Majority and Anita Bryant was preparing to unleash her virulently homophobic “Save Our Children” campaign against Dade County’s anti-discrimination ordinance. You can say, an…

Yoga Guru or CEO? Saving the Brand When Scandal Strikes

By Andrea R. Jain

…nusara yoga, is mired in scandal. In 2010, Friend told the New York Times’ Mimi Swartz that he believed his brand of yoga was successful because it was simply of higher quality: “…people can choose—either they are going to go to a fast-food joint or a fine restaurant.” But recent scandals threaten any vision of Anusara as the “fine restaurant” of the yoga world. The accusations, (re-posted in early February from an anonymous site by blogger Yoga…

The “Nones” Are Here… And Have Been for Over 100 Years

By Emily Mace

…n of “deed rather than creed.” The Sunday morning meetings of the original New York Society for Ethical Culture included music and a spoken address. Membership drew from the upper echelons of New York society, including many prominent Jewish leaders. Adler’s reason for holding such ritualistically bare services are surprisingly relevant, perhaps, to today’s religious “nones.” Said Adler: “You may have holier moods on a Tuesday than on a Sunday; yo…

Communion or Disunion?

By Mary E. Hunt

…e, that took place on July 3, 1986, at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York City. Marge Tuite was an Alinsky-trained organizer (or did she train Saul Alinsky?) before the term was attached to a certain U.S. president. She worked for the ecumenical group Church Women United, and offered a lot of solidarity in Nicaragua. She died suddenly after innings with the Vatican over signing an ad in the New York Times on abortion. Some said she died…

Gay, Black, and Quaker: History Catches Up with Bayard Rustin

By Leigh Eason

…who in his adult years belonged to the Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting in New York City, certainly gave evidence of those testimonies, though not always in a traditional way. Simplicity, or plainness, is perhaps the most difficult of the Quaker testimonies to define. In his communication, Rustin was a paragon of plainness; he was plain-speaking and direct. Like other contemporary Quakers with means, however, if simplicity is defined to center on…

Jesus, Carpet Bomb My Heart: An Undercover Muslim in Detroit

By Haroon Moghul

…understand Islam. Lou Engle’s world is alien from my New England roots and New York life. I’d attended churches before, but nothing like this. We need to know where this fear and hate come from, what its intentions are, and who it appeals to. But as the day approached, Engle’s connections to a network of right-wing activists and political Christians came into focus. From the involvement of US Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin (who has helpfully compare…

Bishops Release Religious Liberty Manifesto Vowing Disobedience to “Unjust Laws”

By Sarah Posner

…ple of the Bishops’ court-snubbing is the Bronx Household of Faith case in New York, which they call “a simple case of discrimination against religious believers.” The Bishops say that the City of New York “enacted a rule that barred the Bronx Household of Faith and sixty other churches from renting public schools on weekends for worship services even though non-religious groups could rent the same schools for scores of other uses.” What they negl…

Kristof’s Evangelicals

By Sarah Posner

…ing for their forays overseas. When the snooty liberals Kristof meets at New York cocktail parties disparage evangelicals, it’s because of the Falwells and their descendants (see, e.g., most of the GOP presidential field). It’s true, not all evangelicals are nasty blowhards, and they don’t deserve to be lumped together with the others. But Kristof blindly defends the “nice” evangelicals, quoting Jim Wallis, for example, who faces deep skepticism…

The Surprising Catholic Roots of the War on Xmas

By Patricia Miller

…nstream society. His first faux controversy was a protest over a VHI ad on New York City buses that showed the performer Madonna next to the Madonna, which he called “a form of blasphemy.” The “controversy” earned Donohue widespread media attention—the ads were removed—and more ginned-up instances of “anti-Catholicism” followed, like a protest against the 1995 movie “Priest” that caused the Knights of Columbus to dump 50,000 shares of Disney stock…