Religion Dispatches
…wo things really, really well. First of all, it has turned the stationary biking class—a.k.a. spinning—into a fashionable, upper-crust, New-Agey-communal experience. SoulCycle classes involve candles, loud music, in-sync cycling, and exhortative therapy-speak from instructors, many of whom sideline as models. The spiritual dimensions are sometimes explicit—note the “Soul” and the dharmachakra-esque logo. The phenomenon has been described as a chur…
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…nces are terrible to imagine: Contemplate for just a moment the dystopian vision of a generation of human beings believing in their hearts that they are nothing more than bestial accidents fending for themselves in a world where morality is a fiction, and you begin to grasp the true stakes. When I’m giving a Bio 101 lecture on the evolutionary divergence between clams and snails, it does not occur to me that so much is on the line. But for Axe—a m…
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…ts in the recent protests, let me touch briefly on each of these now. Part II Monastic populations are today only a fraction—in many instances less than ten percent—of what they once were. Monks and nuns oppose this literal decimation of their ranks for a variety of reasons, but principally because they believe that a certain critical mass is necessary for their institutions to thrive. While most monks undoubtedly do not wish to return to the huge…
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…ritage, and how likely it is that, after some 3,500 years, an unbroken tradition will end in a fizzle of cheeseburgers and blondes. There’s hand-wringing. There’s counter-handwringing. There’s intelligent critique. And, among other reactions to the Pew Forum’s recent survey of American Jewry, there are moments of polite incredulity. To wit: 34% of American Jews think that “a person can be Jewish if they believe that Jesus was the messiah.” In othe…
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…error group apparently also wanted to renegotiate Germany’s post-World War II settlement. The suspects are connected to conspiracy theories of the QAnon-kind—once again proving that right-wing radicalization is a global phenomenon with little respect for borders. Two other suspects were arrested in Kitzbühel, Austria, and Perugia, Italy. The groups’ alleged ringleader is a man named Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss (Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuß zu Köstritz…
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…t, one by one, about a dozen people watch, pray, and lay on hands. As she finishes each one, Bourland, a cheerful, chatty, 49-year-old real estate broker and grandmother, wipes the feet dry and kisses them. At the heart of this women’s conference is the concept of “spiritual warfare,” the idea that God has anointed his “generals” to defeat Satan and bring the world to Christ. During this pre-conference prayer session, the group prays for a “mega-b…
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…ations, 2002) C. Peter Wagner states: A process that began after World War II has now resulted in a newfound recognition of the gifts and offices of apostle and prophet in our churches today. The movement called the New Apostolic Reformation has been bringing about a most radical change in the way of doing church since the Protestant reformation. It is currently the most rapidly-growing segment of Christianity in every continent of the world. Evid…
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…ks it is already too late to keep the climate’s temperature from going significantly above 2 degrees Celsius (about 4 degrees Fahrenheit), COP21 is the place for you to be. The outside is fascinating, the inside oblique. It reminds me of every United Church of Christ General Synod I have ever attended: all the action is on the border between the inside and the outside. We will probably save the rich and not the poor, the centers but not the periph…
Read More…th-most LGBT-unfriendly, it prides itself on fostering dialogue. In that spirit, nine academic departments at Providence co-sponsored a lecture by John Corvino, a pro-gay-marriage philosopher whose website is called “The Gay Moralist.” Corvino’s lecture, “The Meaning of (Gay) Marriage” was to be given on Thursday, September 26th, and would be followed by a critical response from Providence theology professor Dr. Dana Dillon. What happened next ha…
Read More…unsey, an Indiana prosperity preacher I watched in a Decatur, Georgia television studio in 2007, pleading for audience members and viewers to give their money to the Trinity Broadcasting Network. As it turns out, the story is about Munsey’s church, Family Christian Center, which claims to have a weekly attendance of 15,000, making it one of the largest churches in the country. According to an investigation by the NWITimes.com, a paper covering nor…
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