Religion Dispatches
…surrecting and playing with the dead. While I have a predilection for the macabre generally, and tend to be a little too preoccupied with the dead specifically, I am not opposed to the celebratory, harmless Halloween activities associated with dressing up in outlandish costumes, knocking on strangers’ doors, and consuming lots and lots and lots of candy. Perhaps at some subterranean, unconscious societal level, as we get closer to the day of elect…
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…red him for his fiercely confident, direct, and demanding guidance at his Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune and far beyond. Iyengar’s widespread influence can be attributed to his success in constructing and disseminating what is known as “Iyengar Yoga,” an idiosyncratic rendition of modern postural yoga, a complex and contested collection of systems consisting of some combination of asana, or “posture,” synchronized with the breath…
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…law claims to offer exceptions for medical emergencies, rape, incest, and fatal fetal anomalies, these exceptions are so vaguely written they’ll be virtually impossible to access. A Planned Parenthood-led lawsuit successfully blocked the law’s implementation since Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature approved the ban over a year ago, but the state’s Supreme Court ended the reprieve in June by overturning the lower court’s injunction. In doing…
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…be stockpiling guns, teaching people how to use explosives, planning a war against the government, and initiating a final battle with the Antichrist. It appears they planned to kill local police officers with hopes this would bring others to the violent religious war. What do the Christians believe? We are witnessing what could be one of the most destructive scandals ever in the Catholic Church. A flurry of reports and allegations have been in the…
Read More…d film 8: The Mormon Proposition has left the film festival circuit and is available through on-demand cable—with some rumors of technical difficulties in the Salt Lake / Provo areas—reaction is filtering back from Mormon viewers of the film. LDS Church spokespeople have dismissed the film as blatantly false. But what I’m hearing from a number of Mormons deeply familiar with the Proposition 8 campaign is that the film gets it mostly right. [Se…
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…interpreted this document by imagining themselves as reenactors of the Canaanite conquest. In his personal diary, in fact, Columbus claimed he was divinely guided like “the people of Israel when He led them out of Egypt.” In 1513, Martin Fernandez de Encisco reasoned that “the Spanish king [who was appointed] by the pope . . . might justly wage war against [Native Americans], kill and enslave those captured in war, precisely as Joshua treated the…
Read More2014 was the year of the Satanist. In December 2013, The Satanic Temple announced plans to erect a statue of Baphomet on the grounds of the capital in Oklahoma City. This Baphomet statue was intended to challenge the constitutionality of a Ten Commandments monument erected on the capital grounds in 2012. That story has continued to develop all year. Meanwhile, members of The Satanic Temple, led by spokesperson Lucien Greaves, have been working li…
Read More…ment, Sapp claims the following: Compared to ’06, Democrats nationally saw a 14 point drop in White Protestant support, 14 point drop with White evangelicals, and a whopping 20 point decline with Catholics. But there are two major problems with this argument: first, it’s factually inaccurate — the numbers are simply wrong. While Democrats experienced significant losses compared to the last mid-term election in 2006, which was a good year for Democ…
Read More…e of us who live within the culture know: many, many LDS people live in a parallel universe when it comes to the reality of LGBT experience. Just a few weeks ago, I was visiting with a friend who has a gay adult child. We discussed the nuances of the recent events surrounding Elder Boyd K. Packer’s abrasive and controversial October conference talk which asserted that God would never have people be born with “tendencies” to same-sex attraction, an…
Read More…my last official day for completing local business before departure. I’ve balanced my checkbook and paid all of my bills except the ones that are automatically paid (which is about the same as being paid, when the checking account from which they are drawn has been balanced). I’ve taken out cash for travel with the knowledge that using ATMs abroad is always a great way to get the best rates. Yep that’s right. The U.S. always considers its own curr…
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