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The Best the Largest Progressive Jewish Org Could Come Up With?

By Jay Michaelson

…’s Jewishness seems like a weird way to do that. I do, however, like their new video (though I worry about some of its implications): As a strong answer to a question I recently posed in The Forward – why should American Jews care about social justice? – the clip succinctly highlights a century of Jewish social justice concern. It’s compelling viewing. At the same time, both the clip and Bend The Arc’s new website situate this narrative in a Jewis…

When God and Gender Mix: New Book Examines the Southern Holiness Movement

By Colin Chapell

…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…

Renovating Marriage, One Gay Couple at a Time

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ose marriage equality on religious grounds. For them, I point to a growing number of religious leaders who also understand that gays and lesbians can do a lot to “redefine” marriage in beneficial ways. Rev. Ed Bacon, who leads the 4,000 member All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif., told Oprah Winfrey this past weekend that marriage would be “enriched” by same-sex couples. I’ve never had a straight couple come to me and say, ‘My marriage is in trou…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…oked. There are ghosts and graves in the yards of my neighborhood, and the number of skeletons—reclining on lawn chairs, sprouting up from the ground, beckoning from the shadows—has transformed the suburban landscape into a set for a George Romero film. In addition, and beyond bland suburbia, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, vampires, and other playful dead inhabit stores and sell products, entertain across the television dial, and instill a dreadfull…

Pop Culture Yogi B. K. S. Iyengar Dead at 95

By Andrea R. Jain

…in her quest to “conquer” the body. Iyengar established authority for his new system of Yoga by claiming ties to the yoga tradition presented in the South Asian text popularly recognized as the “classical” source, the Yoga Sutras, usually attributed to Patanjali, as well as to later hatha yoga developments. Iyengar even responded to recent debates about yoga’s identity and transmission by introducing an invocation to Patanjali at the beginning o…

Will Iowa’s Abortion Ban Respect Religious Freedom?

By Christine Ryan

…ed being guided by religious obligations to oneself. A seminary student in New York explained that her abortion was inspired by her belief that “if it is not the right time or the right circumstance to have a baby, a pregnant person has the inherent spiritual authority not to call that particular future into being. Religious freedom law protects religious practices regardless of whether they’re mandatory in any religious tradition or derive from f…

Mormon Rejection of Trump Embarrassing for Evangelicals?

By Neil J. Young

…oters were repelled by his “alien” faith. In a recent article for Religion News Service, the popular Mormon blogger Jana Reiss suggested a few more reasons why Trump has a Mormon problem, including his demeaning treatment of women and his inauthentic claim to faith. The Mormon rejection of Trump also serves to further magnify Trump’s strange success among evangelical voters. While the evangelical magazine Christianity Today recently pointed out th…

American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…ncis effect” that will draw Catholic church dropouts back, or even attract new converts. I have my doubts that a newly resurgent Catholic Church will result from the Pope’s influence. There is just too much institutional inertia in how the Church is organized and a charismatic Pope, however inspiring his message may be, is unlikely to change that. Will there be a larger “Francis effect” that results in bringing religion into the public conversatio…

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…nces to heaven as well as history and theology. I spoke to the head of The New Yorker’s cartoon department about cloud-and-angel cartoons; to David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, who wrote that great song “Heaven” (“a place where nothing ever happens”); to Albert Brooks, who wrote and directed Defending Your Life. I included references to Marc Chagall, The Simpsons, folk songs, slave spirituals, Monty Python, Michelangelo, Hamlet, Homer, popula…

An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

By Anne Eggebroten

…rch history,” declares the National Catholic Reporter in an editorial. The New York Times, which broke the story of abuse at the deaf school in Wisconsin, quotes a priest in Berlin as saying the crisis is “the worst in 100 years or more.” They Act Like They Don’t Believe in God It’s not that the faithful are leaving the Church—for the most part, they aren’t. It’s that the hierarchy itself is cracking. “What I would like to see is actually Christia…