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Is Yoga OK for Catholics or Not?: The Conversation Continues

…, and act in unethical, ways. (Chogyam Trungpa likewise acknowledges that “spiritual pride…is as much a problem in theistic disciplines as in Buddhism.”) The dangers posited in the Letter are explicitly spiritual, and their material outcomes are not characterized as everyday occurrences or inevitable outcomes of yoga. Jain also contends that the Letter is yogaphobic for suggesting that modern postural yoga, with its non-metaphysical emphasis on he…

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Jesus Died For This?

…he pilgrimage I began in Jesus Died for This? to explore where this global spirit I keep encountering in my travels might be at work in the world. In light of the recent “Ground Zero-mosque” debates, I’m seeking out groups and indviduals who work with Muslims to answer the question posed by the rich, young ruler to Jesus: “Who is My Neighbor?” (See Luke 10:25-37.) Along those lines, I want to keep revisiting my ancestor Roger Williams’ legacy, as…

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American Nuns Under the Vatican Microscope

…erticalist Vatican. Many of the women had served in Latin America, as per a 1960s Vatican request that each US community send 10% of their people South. That experience, both direct and via other community members, served as one form of motivation (like anti-racism work, the women’s movements, and other social changes) for women religious to put less emphasis on conformity to rules and strict obedience and more on communal efforts to love well and…

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“My Scientology Movie” Pokes the Hornet’s Nest

…get anyone from the church to talk to him, he decides to investigate “the spirit of Scientology” by hiring actors to re-enact moments from church history, most notably the violent tirades of its current leader, David Miscavige. To make his fake movie, Theroux elicits the help of Marty Rathbun, a former high-ranking official in the Church of Scientology. Rathbun, for good reason, gets a lot of screen time. He’s an articulate, charismatic presence,…

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Elizabeth Warren,  American Evangelist

…of Something Much Greater ( this isn’t my choice, it’s my calling ) A new spirit is loose in the land – the spirit of rebellion and liberation and deliverance from our common bondage In Organized Money we face a Satan who is wily and unrelenting and who must be resisted at each and every turn Acting together in resistance actually changes reality, creates community, and helps break the chains of oppression Together we can forge a righteous army c…

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Claiming Yoga for India

…er essentializing definition of yoga as “a means of uniting the individual spirit with the universal spirit of God” and links yoga to a specific canonical text, the Yoga Sutras. +++ The debates described above involve attempts to define yoga in ways that limit it to within certain bounded categories of identity, belief, or behavior, such as “exercise,” “religion,” “Indian,” or “Hindu.” But yoga identities have not been static or one-dimensional. I…

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The Biblical Circus of William Stringfellow

…de when I told him the other evening whose shadow had been following me. In 1970, the priest-poet Berrigan was arrested by the FBI while hiding at Eschaton, the property in Rhode Island where Stringfellow lived with his partner, Anthony Towne. “Did you know this fellow is interested in William Stringfellow?” he kept asking people about me as the night went on, as if he also had seen the ghost. William Stringfellow wrote Christian theology and prac…

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What Good Is It for Union to Gain the World, But Forfeit Its Soul?

…the poor. Both passages are damning for those who think themselves either spiritually or materially rich, but fail to recognize their theological poverty. They implore readers to rethink what it means to be rich and suggest true wealth can only be obtained through a process of self-reflection—and more importantly, self-critique. Is today’s liberalism—and its manifestation in schools like Union—rich in rhetoric but poor in empathy? Are liberals no…

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What a Forgotten 19th Century Suffragist Can Teach Us About Women’s Rights vs. The Religious Right

…ments came in the form of a letter he wrote to the New York Mail & Express, 19 April, 1890, and reprinted in the American Sentinel in July of that year. The Sentinel was an Adventist publication, and while they too wanted to see the coming Day of the Lord, they were against the political work of constitutional amendments, calling out Blair’s “spirit of religious despotism and intolerance” and saying he and his cohorts worked with “mediaeval method…

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Where are the Blessed Peacemakers?

…at which protects the center of human thought and reason—and “sword of the Spirit” are not of course acts of aggression, but words. Hence, likewise, the sword of justice wielded in the Revelation of John (Rev. 19:11-15)—the New Testament book most often cited in violent, apocalyptic Christian fantasies—extends from the mouth of the white-robed representation of the risen Christ. He slays the forces of cosmic evil not with physical aggression, but…

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