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Walk the Walk: Honoring Common Ground on Abortion

By Frances Kissling

…is we, after all, who extended promises of trust-building guidelines and a spirit of inclusion to cautious voices on all sides, asking them to take the risks necessary to talk and to listen. When we don’t live up to that same spirit, all we manage to do is affirm every cynical instinct, every pessimistic expectation that is so pervasive in the politics of abortion and that keeps us from achieving anything together. And our responsibility to uphold…

An Immoderate Proposal: Sam Rodriguez, “Centrist” Evangelical, to Give Benediction at RNC

By Sarah Posner

…eform.” He prayed that Americans would “come together and rise against the spirit of Herod, a culture of death and moral relativism.” His zeal for the “common ground” agenda on abortion and same-sex marriage appeared to vanish. He formed a strategic partnership with Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. He joined religious right leaders in protesting the opening of a Planned Parenthood facility in Houston, Texas, charging that the “spirit of Herod”…

How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish, and Unhappy

By David Webster

…s” is, at the very least, problematic. As I suggest in the book, mind-body-spirit spirituality is in danger of making us stupid, selfish, and unhappy. Stupid—because its open-ended, inclusive and non-judgemental attitude to truth-claims actually becomes an obstacle to the combative, argumentative process whereby we discern sense from nonsense. To treat all claims as equivalent, as valid perspectives on an unsayable ultimate reality, is not to real…

Is Pope Francis Yogaphobic?

By Andrea R. Jain

…angels” by distorting the words of Francis: Pope Francis said ‘do not seek spiritual answers in yoga classes’. Yoga is certainly a risk. There’s the spiritual health risk. When you take up those practices from other cultures, which are outside our Christian domain, you don’t know what you are opening yourself up to. The bad spirit can be communicated in a variety of ways. I’m not saying everyone gets it, or that it happens every time, and people m…

God Wants You to Work Harder, and to Stop Complaining

By James Dennis LoRusso

…uture where businesses benevolently guide us toward peace, prosperity, and spiritual vitality; managers become therapeutic purveyors of spiritual wisdom and for-profit firms act as the ultimate arbiters of the social order. Still, when the former COO of Wal-Mart, Don Soderquist, states in his keynote address at the Conference, “Wal-Mart believes that it has a responsibility to God to take care of the planet,” behind this view lies a commitment to…

The British (Bible) Invasion: KJV 400-Year Anniversary Rolls On

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…tant Reformation and its vernacular translation of the scriptures is a new spirit unleashed by both. The spirit of these two movements—Reformation and translation—was radically egalitarian and individualistic. The contention was that all people were capable of close reading, and the commitment was to individual Christians’ rights to make up their own minds about what the scripture said. These political commitments hinged in turn, on the recognitio…

‘Always Pray to the Father’: Mormon Leader Calls Desire for Knowledge of Heavenly Mother ‘Arrogant and Unproductive’

By Holly Welker

…1830 was thoroughly grounded in what Latter-day Saints call “gifts of the Spirit,” gifts such as wisdom, knowledge, and prophecy that Joseph exercised himself as he strove to understand what he believed God required of him. Any knowledge anyone acquires about Heavenly Mother today must also come through gifts of the Spirit. Crucially, the Church has always taught that the gift of revelation is available to everyone, just as it was available to 14…

Glenn’s at it Again, and Again

By Joanna Brooks

…pace right there between Washington and Lincoln with the Reflecting Pool—a spiritual space in our nation—the Spirit of the Lord is going to be unleashed like I think you’ve never felt it before. In the world of Mormonism, we call this rhetorical move “bearing one’s testimony.” When one bears testimony, one attests to the truth of a spiritual principle. The phrase “the Spirit is so strong” is a conventional Mormon phrase to describe one’s perceptio…

Religious Right: God Should Kill Health Care Reform to Save America from Herod

By Sarah Posner

…come in His name to intercede for that very gift of life. Father, the same spirit of Herod who 2000 years ago attempted to exterminate the life of the Messiah today lives even America. The legislation that incorporates death and infanticide all under the capopy of reform. Today we ask for your spirit to convict the Senate and Congress, mobilize and activate the church to stand for righteousness and justice. We, black and white, brown and yellow, r…

The Christian Roots of the New Age: The Aquarian Gospel

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…l be the first to tell the news” (7: 12-14). In short, there was already a spiritual underground in Roman Palestine, and both Jesus and John received their first spiritual instruction from their mothers, who had received it in turn from Elihu and Salome. Elihu honored all the gods and received wisdom from every spiritual source: from Brahmanism, from Judaism, from Zarathustra, from ancient Egypt. (If this seems like a walking tour through Hegel’s…