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His Holiness, Inc.: The Dalai Lama as a Spiritual Mega-Brand

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ance made it easily through the robust security screening. “He’s kind of a rock star,” Kraus said. “I’m really fortunate to get to see someone like this at my own school.” As for his early take on Buddhist teachings and business, Krause was confident that, “having the Dalai Lama talk about being ethical and compassion will be important to my future” in some as yet unspecified way. Somewhat lost in all of this, of course, is the idea that “compassi…

Noah’s All-White Ark, and Other Odd Directorial Choices

By Wil Gafney

…parts, the Watchers, fall from heaven to earth, become encased in soil and rock and become walking, talking piles of rock with glowing, explosive inner cores. – The Watchers supply the bulk of the manual labor to build the ark. – Noah’s sons are not all adult, married men when they enter the ark (Gen 7:7). The lack of wives for the boy on the cusp of manhood and the much younger boy-child are plot devices. – When Noah gets drunk and is discovered…

The Promise of Immortality in a Tech-Enhanced Heaven

By Lisa Webster

…ot forget that Elton made his leap to superstardom during the glitter/glam rock movement of the mid-‘70s, which was all about artifice and campiness and which was a challenge to the prevailing (boring) blue denim authenticity of your Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, and that sort of thing. You can, perhaps, trace a line from the synthetic or artificial in culture to the notion that our entire lives have succumbed to the artificial — Jean Baudrillard…

Nadia Bolz-Weber on Becoming ‘God’s Bitch’

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…be looking behind the curtain to see if it’s the Wizard of Oz or a scared little man. We don’t have to be as cynical about it because it has its own integrity; it doesn’t demand a particular emotional experience from us; it doesn’t demand that we intellectually assent to it—it works upon us like water on a rock. I think people are drawn to that. My congregation is a place where difficult truths are spoken out loud about ourselves and about the wo…

Pope’s ‘Joy of Love’ Brings Little Joy To LGBT Catholics; Gay Atheist Malaysian Granted Refugee Status In Canada; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s right in front of us, difference is on our iPads, in our laptops, in our phones. We hold a whole world of difference every time we open a phone. And the response to in the world around is at best insult, and so often violence, a reality which is the living experience of many you here. Welby also addressed a January gathering of Primates, which voted to suspend the Episcopal Church from questions on doctrine or policy for three years because of i…

The Active Principle of Islam, or, Activating Islamic Principles

By Amina Wadud

…r life for all the oppressed and exploited people of the world. I see very little from our current political leaders that would give me such confidence. What little I do see is marginalized by those who are wielding the greatest power. One reason for my lack of confidence is simply that the agendas expressed by Muslim political and intellectual elites are primarily top-down operations. They seem more focused on the role of legalized authority to a…

Touched by a Michael Landon: America’s Jewish Angel

By Peter Manseau

…and the place of ancient knowledge in the modern world. In the fireplace A little fire burns The schoolhouse is hot As the teacher teaches little children The Hebrew alphabet Look, my children, remember, my dears What you learn here… “Oyfn Pripetchik” is among the most enduring folk tunes of Eastern European Jewish culture. Written late in the 19th century by the Russian Jewish lawyer Mark Warshafsky, the song was made famous by the father of Yidd…

Israel’s Immigration Debate: “Where is the Jewish Spirit?”

By Mati Wagner

…rocess their discriminatory work permits. These “guest” workers, who today number between 250,000 and 400,000 (half of whom are illegal) did not only toil. They fell in love and established families and had children, probably more than 2,000 children, who were sent to state-run schools like Tel Aviv’s Bialik-Rogozin to learn with young Israelis their age to read, to write and to add and subtract—in Hebrew. They also were taught about the miraculou…

On Eve of Sudan Split Clashes Continue

By Ashley Makar

…his chance to finish an education has passed; he’s got to support his two little brothers, and he feels he must do something to help the Southern Sudanese people rebuild their country after independence. He hopes to volunteer as a translator with one of the international organizations in Juba during the day, and he hopes to run a little business for people coming home from work, to help them forget what happens at their jobs; he’ll project films…

Can a Greek Monastery Be Ground Zero of Global Financial Meltdown?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ts, and those sales are untaxed too. It was always a recipe for disaster: little in the way of reliable state income; staggering amounts of money borrowed on the cheap to make up the margins; and books consistently cooked to hide the scale of the national debt. (There are more sympathetic ways to tell parts of this story, about which Lewis has little to say. Greece was singularly ravaged by the Second World War; the German occupation was especia…