Religion Dispatches
…eople who kill animals. Were Sears simply a critic and comedian shattering New Age pieties his videos would still be clever and hilarious, but Sears is a full-time life coach whose work focuses on emotional healing. When Sears notes that he too is guilty of the behaviors he lampoons, he puts himself in the far more interesting tradition of those who criticize and question the beliefs they themselves hold. I recently visited this New Age Stephen Co…
Read More
…eligion has the corner on the borrowing and incongruity of sacred stories. New Agers who use the sweat lodge are not so much “stealing Indian religion” as they are weaving a new religion out of strands of what they believe to be old religions. Various forms of the sweat ceremony were used by Indians from Canada into southern Mexico. In the south they’re called temescals and resemble a wet sauna or steam room; tribes in the American Southwest have…
Read More
…s revealed. Submissions had been anonymous up to that point, discussed and promoted by a jury selected to represent (some parts of) New York City. The excitement turns to tension, then to panic. The selected design has been produced by a Muslim, an American Muslim architect of some renown named Mohammed Khan, and the committee is flabbergasted. How can they present a design proposed by a Muslim to officially remember 9/11? But on what basis can’t…
Read More
…ion to men. Their advice? Head west, to Colorado Springs, evangelicalism’s New Jerusalem, and to New Life Church, no less, where Haas found himself at the feet of the great Ted Haggard—“the ultimate man of God,” in Haas’ words. As he tells the story, Haggard’s face brightened when the pastor discovered the young man was struggling with his sexual identity. The courtship began, furtively of course, and over the next year or so, their relationship d…
Read More
…tants. As much as I admire and respect Robinson, I fear that the legacy of New England Protestantism is far more problematic than she suspects. Yes, the New Englanders eventually fought the Southern slave masters but not until after two centuries of profiting from the business of slavery. Yes, the Yankees came to abhor slavery but they also abhorred—and persecuted—the free people of color in their midst. Yes, they spoke out against the annexation…
Read More
…mes to the bills? A friend actually gave me a good definition of the term “New Democrat” the other day: a “New Democrat” is someone who gets to corporate money faster—and gets more of it—than any Republican can do during the current Democrat-majority regime in Washington. And my friend’s definition is accurate: just take a look at where the leading House New Democrats (people like Melissa Bean of Illinois) get their money; it’s all in the public r…
Read More
…aring with Larry King (for the full hour) and on Oprah’s popular talkfest, promoting the new HBO documentary “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” produced by Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Oprah tried her best to pin Ted down and get him to admit he is a homosexual,” J. Lee Grady, the editor of Charisma magazine, reported. “Ted balked, saying that his sexuality is complicated. He explained that he had sexual experiences in the…
Read More…en “complicit in every aspect of the (white evangelical) system.” But this new administration has changed everything for George and evangelicals of color across the nation. The fact that 81 percent of white evangelicals supported a candidate who channeled white nationalism is not lost on minority believers. Nor is the unending news of travel bans, appointments of white nationalists, mass deportations and racial hate crimes. It has forced a reckoni…
Read More
…when the yin/yang are said to flow from the conflicting “Old Testament and New Testament” beliefs held by Christians, with the “Old Testament” view assumed to be focused on retribution in sharp contrast to a “New Testament” perspective centered on rehabilitation and redemption. Oops, we just threw the Jewish tradition under the bus again. So sorry. We didn’t mean it. Really. Disparagement of “OT” justice as a rough and revenge-fueled affair remain…
Read More
…n all too real variation on this theme of worldly desolation played out in New Orleans, as tens of thousands of New Orleanians fled an approaching Category 3 hurricane, leaving behind thousands of their fellow residents too immobilized by poverty or other factors to escape the hurricane’s onslaught. On August 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Mississippi and Louisiana coast, packing 125 mph winds and strong waves and producing a storm…
Read More