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A Startling Number Believe You Can Be Jewish Jesus Follower; Why It’s Not As Crazy As It Sounds

By Michael Schulson

…that number seems staggeringly high. A full third? Once you delve into the numbers, though, 34% doesn’t seem quite so high. Really, Pew has asked an excellent question—a question that reveals the full tangle of ambiguities and inconsistencies that surround the topic of Jewish identity. First, some background: when the researchers at Pew set out to conduct this survey, they quickly ran into a problem that’s been under discussion for at least two th…

Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

By José Cabezón

…he early afternoon, cameras in hand. It is not uncommon for tourists to outnumber monks in the debate courtyards during this time. This is obviously disruptive, making a spectacle out of a serious educational pursuit. Monastic response to the Chinese government policy of limiting monastic enrollments is at least in part the result of a clash between the secular, materialist, security-concerned worldview of the Chinese state, and the religious, tra…

Seattle ‘CultureMaker’ Nathan Marion: We Need New Abbeys in America to Foster Community, Arts

By Jesse James DeConto

…re. They’re allowing the community to use the building, which I think is a really important thing anyway. No single person really owns the building, when you think about it. Its purpose is for the good of the people. On a higher thought level, it’s not like a building should be only used by its members. So that’s been a really open process that a lot of other churches are starting to see. Have you purposely targeted churches for these arts-develop…

The Benedict Opt-Out: Why Christian Self-Isolation Won’t Work

By Kaya Oakes

…n will help parents to keep their children faithful. Given the statistical number of Nones among Millennials and Gen X and the seemingly unpreventable increase in those numbers, these children, like Emily, or the children of many homeschooling parents, will eventually encounter peers who are not religiously affiliated. Given the way technology works, they will also inevitably find a way to expose themselves to popular culture. And the question rem…

Giving Up God—Not Just a Spiritual Stunt

By Becky Garrison

…my pastoral career where the issue of ontology, or the “beingness” of God really didn’t matter much to me. I didn’t really care if God was a person per se—athough I’m very much interested in the sociology of religion and the way we have created God in our image. People like Alain de Botton and Ronald Dworkin have been influential in my thinking about so-called atheistic religion. I’d like to know more about the social phenomenon of the rise of th…

Lessons Learned this Ramadan

By Amina Wadud

…ah. But, and here’s the thing I got this year: people are different. It is really, really worth it to encourage yourself and others with whom you are comfortable to increase your ibadah or worship. I mean, just because people are worshipping Allah does not mean you are going to be on the same page. I prayed tarawih regularly at the mosque closest to my home but nothing resembling companionship ever resulted. I prayed tarawih at the community aroun…

Oprah, Terrorist Cells, and the Meaning of Life: An Interview with Paul Froese

By Andrew Aghapour

…person who is, let’s say devoting their life to assisting the poor, doing really altruistic wonderful acts. A feeling of purposefulness isn’t itself sufficient to be sure you’re engaged in something that’s inherently good. I guess ultimately we all have to be not only very self-reflective, but also reflective of the larger context in which we’re behaving. At some level, the message of my book is a call to readers to ask, “Where am I placed? Where…

A Rationalist’s Ghost Story

By Gary Jansen

…that happened over a twelve month period in my family’s life (as well as a number of flashbacks from when I was a young boy). In addition, there were a number of things I didn’t get the chance to explore for a very practical reason: I had a deadline. Working in publishing I’m very conscious about how important deadlines are. Writers need to make those deadlines and because I worked in the industry I wanted to be respectful about that. There were a…

Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak’s Search for the Meaning of Bowie—A Critical Novella

By Mark Dery

…tic parable, every portentous aside with one eye on the only audience that really matters—the fans beyond number who will one day venerate him, a radical apocalyptic prophet born sometime around 4 BCE, as a god. “I know that one day a big artist is going to get killed onstage, and I know that we’re going to go very big,” Bowie told an interviewer, in 1974. “And I keep thinking: it’s bound to be me. Go out on me first tour, get done in at me first…

Exclusion is Causing Great Harm: A Conversation With Suspended UMC Pastor Rev. Cynthia Meyer

By Joel Pitney

…than in the leadership? My congregation has been very supportive. A small number of people chose to leave. Some of them not because of their feelings around the issue of homosexuality, but they just struggled with the church being in the news. But that was a small number, and most folks have been very receptive. Many immediately began telling me about their family members, and all of their personal stories. My vulnerability in sharing let them op…