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Spiritual Unplugging, Or What to Do When There is Wifi at the Ashram

By Matt Hamilton

…yes, by which I mean dishonest, delusional, disingenuous. But I kept those reservations at bay. I meditated at dawn for 90 minutes. I heeded the silence imposed during breakfast. I dutifully attended lectures on meditation and ayurvedic healing. And during yoga, I stretched and breathed in step with the yogi. The schedule gave me structure, and the structure let me silence all my religious qualms. “I’m here to get away,” I’d remind myself as I sat…

What’s the Matter With Jewish Studies? Sexism, Harassment, and Neoliberalism For Starters

By Gilah Kletenik and Rafael Rachel Neis

…ate past. While we have no quarrels with these courses of inquiry, we have reservations about an academic culture that seems disproportionately invested in the study of the contemporary moment. This is not only because too often this unquestioningly reproduces the prejudices, biases, and constraints of the moment, but also because it has repercussions for adjacent subfields. In the context of the ongoing corporatization of higher education, resour…

Obama Shifts US Narrative Away from “Christian Nation”

By Michael J. Altman

…y utilized this narrative to push American Indians off their land and into Reservations, because God’s providence had destined this land to (White) Americans. Even the Bush administrations goal of “spreading democracy” smacks of the same sacred narrative that America has a Providential place in the world and its history. Obama shifts the sacred narrative. The President moves the foundational narrative from one of religion (not Christian or Jewish…

Gay Chutzpah: An LGBT Synagogue Thrives

By Susan Henking

…est Side magazine and were less surprised. The only one who expressed some reservations was a prominent congregant whom I described as a political leader while he considered himself more of a spiritual leader. But he told me he read the book twice and found no other wrong descriptions. I think he was surprised I had so much to tell about the synagogue’s dynamics and its membership. I continue to meet with close friends on my visits to NY as well a…

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

By Chris Stedman

…e interfaith movement. Despite Galef and Speckhardt’s serious concerns and reservations, they have been actively involved in intentionally interfaith efforts, and I suspect their participation has informed their conclusions about the idea. However, those speaking out against atheist involvement in the interfaith movement are, at the moment, a bit more numerous (just a couple of examples, with several others to follow). As far as I can tell based o…

International Protest of Anti-Gay Persecution in Chechnya Grows; more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…pting of LGBT people, but still less than 24% of Koreans said they had “no reservations about homosexuality,” according to a 2014 survey conducted by the Asian Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank. Korea has a large Christian population, and vocal Protestant groups have for years blocked the inclusion of sexual minorities in a proposed anti-discrimination bill by pressuring politicians to vote against it. Jang, the army chief of staff who al…

Unmasking the Intention Behind the “Unmasking” of Obama

By Nicky Loomis

…y for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian.” When Obama appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” he tried to address the rumors about his being Muslim, sarcastically mentioning what he called “My Muslim faith.” Within hours, that segment of the interview was posted on YouTube und…

American Jewish Leaders Get Gaza Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…past with Gaza, dividing over whether to back Operation Cast Lead in 2008. Reservations about Israel’s use of force in Gaza have continued. In 2009, Yoffie called American Jewish critics of Cast Lead “morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve.” Yoffie’s words supporting what the Israeli military has named Operation Pillar of Cloud horrify me. The current president of the URJ, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, tr…

Colonialism and the Crisis Inside the Crisis of Catholic Sexual Abuse

By Kathleen Holscher

…, which together extend their ecclesial jurisdiction over 6 federal Indian reservations in South Dakota. By 2010, more than 65 Catholic priests and religious formerly employed at Indian boarding schools within those dioceses had been named in lawsuits targeting sexual abuse—a number that suggests a far higher per-capita rate of offending clergy than even in New Mexico. In New Mexico, the victims of abuse were mainly Nuevomexicano and Indigenous ki…

Material(ist) Girl: A Philosopher Argues Against the Soul

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nto this long conversation about reincarnation and I presented him with my reservations about such a thing. Something is left, namely the body, and as that disintegrates small creatures make use of the bits and pieces and in that sense it’s reincarnated, but there isn’t anything else, some nonphysical thing that has feelings and thoughts and memories and personality that goes into the little critters or into a person. What gets transferred from pa…