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

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…rush to assure folks of the “good news” that God wants you to be “God’s best,” Osteen misses a very important point. Perhaps on his next long flight he can pull out his Bible and take a gander at Luke 16:19-31—the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Daily, the rich man ignored poor Lazarus, but when Lazarus died he was taken to “heaven” or a place of eternal comfort. The rich man’s fate in Hades was terrible, however, as he begged Abraham to “send…

NPR “Ex-Gay” Report Neither “Fair” Nor “Balanced”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…NPR piece does have moments of clarity, to call it balanced is a bit of a stretch. First, the reporter never tells us exactly who Rich Wyler is — the founder of an “ex-gay” ministry, People Can Change, whose practices, writes Warren Throckmorton, are even marginalized among the “ex-gay” industry. By omitting this deeply relevant fact, the NPR story glosses over the true story here: those who become “ex-gay” are usually those who are making a livi…

Rage Against the New Age Machine: Three Days at the Osho International Meditation Resort

By Diane Winston

…cated near Mumbai and Westerner-friendly. In fact, both had developed an East-West hybridity that extended from Americans in key leadership roles to a spiritual eclecticism with room for Jesus, New Age and Zen. So after flying 20-plus hours from Los Angeles to Mumbai and driving another eight hours to Pune, I’d dropped half of the students at the rural Ananda retreat and alighted at Osho with the rest. The Osho International Meditation Resort is a…

Constitutional Attorney Changes into Drag During Talk on Cancelation of West Texas A&M Drag Show

By Chrissy Stroop

…the event, Seidel noted that “Texas is evolving into a Christian nationalist state, a lone star theocracy.” He told RD that Americans United believes strongly in taking the fight to red states that some might be tempted to write off as hopeless. Ever sharp with the facts at his fingertips, Seidel also noted that over 5 million Texans voted for Biden in 2020, insisting that there are no truly red or blue states, and that marginalized folks in GOP-…

Niqab and Short Shorts

By Hussein Rashid

…t service in showing the inherent contradictions of the law, rather than just stating them. Perhaps one of my favorite parts of the video is when the female police officer, who will be required to ticket them in the near future, asks to take a picture of them. Sarkozy’s ban may have inadvertently created the sense of “Frenchness” in a way he didn’t anticipate. These women have crossed the religious and cultural divide to add to the motto “liberty,…

V-Day: An Arrow in the Heart

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…tin god, Saturn). True Christians, these Purists argued, only celebrated Easter. Still later, the whole domestic and private edifice of trees and turkeys and elaborate gift-giving (in part imagined as a reaction against the public drinking and wassailing) were a creation of the 19th century. And the evolution of that alternative tradition has many Christians on guard these days, trying to “keep the Christ in Christmas.” Christ, it is feared may ha…

Anti-Gay Tour Organizer Comes Out for Gay Marriage, Renounces Hate

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ple whom I made a profession out of opposing became real people for me almost instantly. For the first time I had empathy for them and remember asking myself what I was doing. Marinelli’s story of conversion is eye-opening, and shows just how even those most virulently opposed to marriage equality can have their minds changed when gay and lesbian people come out and simply show themselves to be the real human beings that they are. The counter-prot…

Oedipus Complexity: Is it Enough to Fire Men Accused of Sexual Misconduct?

By Benjamin Dueholm

…y Weinstein’s pattern of predation went public. But the consequences contrast still more sharply. A leave of absence was not an option for Oedipus. Nothing short of exile from his political community would be sufficient. As I have watched the flood stories of misconduct, I have tried to note the consequences that follow. The accusations have varied widely in their particulars. Weinstein himself seems to have operated an open and thorough system of…

A Brief History of Olympic Flames

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…connection is new, and it has a subtly religious texture quite probably lost on most of us, especially the most aggressively secular heirs to the French Revolution. For the Olympics are deeply and abidingly religious. They always have been. First, then, to the historical facts. The Olympic Games were an essential part of a religious festival sponsored every four years at the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia. These Games lasted for more than a millenn…

Suspicion of the Modern Age: The Pope Regresses

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…has posed as a post-Modern thinker in the past. He is not; he is as anti-Modern as any of the other “enemies of reason” he first lambasted in Regensburg….