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From ‘Management Gurus’ to ‘Corporate Chaplains’: A Review of Spirituality Inc.

By Brittany Shoot

…ously-based management philosophies of companies like fast food chain Chick-Fil-A, arts and crafts giant Hobby Lobby, and home services provider ServiceMaster (even their name a pun on “serving the master”). Chick-Fil-A, for example, operates in a similar fashion to McDonald’s except it provides Sundays off for employees nationwide, and in their children’s meals, a customer is more likely to find a Veggie Tales toy than a promotion for the latest…

The Moral Bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Asceticism

By Vlad Chituc

…nehart claims to have spent $1,450 on a rig that leaves him completely self-sufficient. But Rhinehart isn’t self-sufficient in the same way Thoreau was. Thoreau planted his own food, made his own clothes, and built his own house. Rhinehart outsources. He doesn’t have a car because he takes Uber. He doesn’t go grocery shopping because he buys his “staple food online like a civilized person.” He doesn’t go to the liquor store, because a company call…

Prophets of the Environmental Apocalypse

By Peter Laarman

…ember that Garner Ted’s manner regarding this malarkey was so calmly matter-of-fact. To me that authoritative tone of his was the clincher. I mention this merely to illustrate how compelling and seductive apocalyptic thinking can be clearly a point of commonality between our religious and our non-religious apocalypticists. Both are talking about very grand and hair-raising events that are spinning out of control. Some other commonalities: • Each v…

70th National Prayer Breakfast Made ‘Cosmetic’ Changes, But Biden Delivered the Same Old Tone-Deaf ‘Unity’ Message

By Chrissy Stroop

…opening to a speech that could only be made by an immensely privileged, out-of-touch individual. Biden went on to hit many notes that are alienating to secular Americans and much of the Democratic base, sacralizing American political life and calling for “unity” and “comity” with those who want to deprive the marginalized of their rights. Gushing over the NPB itself, Biden stated that he was “honored to continue the tradition started by President…

Pop-Eye: Meat The Wrestler

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…nding clients for lap dances, but still must make money to support her nine-year-old child. (Slyly, A.O. Scott’s New York Times review ends with a note on its “R” rating since, “It has fake bloodshed and real nudity”: This difference is crucial.) Cassidy and Randy each work double lives, between their bodies as commodities and their bodies that have to pay the rent and support their children. Somewhere in all the meat are identities, struggling fo…

Doubt v. Predator: A Vatican II Parable

By Gabriel Mckee

…r children from harm—justify her means. On the surface Doubt is a torn-from-the-headlines story about the abuse scandals that have rocked the Church over the last decade. At its heart, however, Shanley’s story is a parable of Vatican II. It’s critical here to point out that Doubt is set in 1964, in the midst of the Second Vatican Council; in that context the story reflects the Church’s growing pains. Sister Aloysius is the old church, authoritaria…

Trump’s Easter Egg Roll: Inauthentic Christianity in a Bunny Suit

By Karen E. Park

…r the children of atheist lesbian couples are simply not welcome here. The cheap paperback Easter stories read by Sanders and Conway—no doubt ordered the day before from Amazon Prime—had nothing to do with teaching, or welcoming, or even celebrating a Christian holiday (inappropriate as that itself would have been at a White House event). As this administration did with its craven and phony defense of “Merry Christmas” as if it were an endangered…

Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Avatar and the Myth of Originality

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…film is rearranged into the Latino-oriented Tortilla Soup, and the African-American-centered Soul Food. On another scale, the television series Lost could easily be renamed “The Lord of the X-Files,” as it is a reinvention of William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, mixed with X-Files intrigue (and frustration), a bit of Gilligan’s Island, and populated by a character list of Who’s Who in Philosophy: John Locke, Desmond “David” Hume, Rouss…

Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies

By Jay Michaelson

…more ambivalent about him) and therefore he can’t be seen getting in knock-down, drag-out fights with his sons. Good people don’t do that. And of course, Jesus can’t be tempted by sins of the flesh—even though the Bible itself suggests that he might’ve been. I don’t think it’s because Aronofsky’s Noah has a mixture of admirable and flawed elements that he raises fundamentalist suspicions. It’s because he has a mixture of any kind at all. Progress…

Lindsey Graham’s Lying “Eye-ranians”

By Haroon Moghul

…e Steve Jobs was part Syrian, and Syria is part Iranian, which means your iPhone auto-correct is lying to you. Come to think of it, how do we know Lindsey Graham is not lying to us? How do we know Lindsey Graham’s not an Iranian? What if he’s the Manchurian—or should I say Mazandaranian!—candidate, and not our crypto-Muslim communist atheist Kenyan Hawaiian President Obama? But rest assured, my fellow Americans. I know Lindsey Graham is not an Ira…