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Maybe The Question Is: Should Shabbat Be The New Yoga?

By Michael Schulson

…nner experience.” The Schusterman Family Foundation has TableMakers, which offers a Pinterest-happy toolkit, and some subsidies, for people trying to plan big, elaborate Shabbat events. There’s also Arq. Its founder, Danya Shults, describes the startup as “a lifestyle brand and media company inspired by Jewish culture and open to all.” The company evolved, in part, out of Pop-Up Shabbat—a kind of mobile, ritual-infused restaurant—that Shults ran i…

Sorry, National Review: “Religious Freedom” Bills Do Permit Bigotry

By Sunnivie Brydum

…d other religious-freedom protections,” it seems only fair to issue a point-by-point response to the specious claims made in the National Review. It is deeply ironic to claim, in the piece’s opening argument, that Lang is deliberately mischaracterizing these legislative and executive efforts, when Desanctis goes on to misrepresent almost every legislative and executive action she discusses. I can’t speak to any “malicious” intent of the author, bu…

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

…program are very limited.” Wales: Archbishop Says Church Not Ready for Same-Sex Marriage, Offers ‘Informal’ Prayers Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan told the Church in Wales governing body that the church is not ready to authorize marrying same-sex couples, reports Nick Duffy at Pink News, but he released prayers that can be used same-sex couples in informal ceremonies which “do not constitute a service of blessing”. “We, as bishops, feel that thi…

Gen X, Gadgets, and God

By Elizabeth Drescher

…that. Besides, all of these platforms invite engagement outside of the face-to-face community. They extend the community into the day-to-day lives of believers, so they’re important for ongoing connection, but they’re not necessarily going to invite people in. (Indeed, I’m aware of a number of churches whose social networking site pages are closed to outsiders. Hmmm?) A modestly tech-savvy minister will eventually come to the conclusion that engag…

Facebook Doesn’t Kill Churches, Churches Kill Churches

By Elizabeth Drescher

…y because their Facebook activity was closely correlated to meaningful face-to-face relationality. This echoes other findings about the more narrow scope of active Facebook affiliations, despite the number of “friends” a person’s profile page might boast. With regard to churches, Beck reads the data as suggesting that Facebook and other social media are replacing what he believes is the “main draw of the traditional church: social connection and a…

The Surprisingly Short History of Popular Yoga

By Andrea R. Jain and Michelle Goldberg

…ng yoga are impoverished or otherwise disenfranchised people, such as inner-city at-risk youth or incarcerated people trapped in dilapidated jails and prisons.” Devi’s conception of reincarnation as something that both explains the world’s injustices and promises to redress them in the next life feeds into this quiescence, since it makes justice in this life less urgent. In her schema, cultivating change in oneself was far more important than cult…

A Catholic Turnabout on Abortion or More Sympathy for the Bishops?

By Daniel C. Maguire

…h a framework for women to access therapeutic abortions. In 2006, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights made Mexico pay $40,000 to a 13-year-old rape victim who had been forced to give birth, plus a stipend for her son’s education. Few ethicists in any of the world’s religion would argue that abortions performed or contemplated in these cases are immoral. Recognizing complexity is the beginning of wisdom on abortion or any other moral issu…

The Sacred and the Dead: Ten Writers on the End of an American Adventure

By The Editors

…ren Haynes Lately I’ve noticed that many of the people I’ve known best face-to-face seem awfully hard to find. Our connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss….

Richard Dawkins’ Atheist Academy of Unguided Truth

By Paul Wallace

…se called “Biblical Archaeology,” in which the points of compliance and non-compliance between the biblical record and archaeology were pointed out; wide-ranging and fully scientific introductions to biological and cosmic evolution; and a Christian history course in which none of the horrors committed by the church, so thoroughly trumpeted by Dawkins and others, were skipped over or airbrushed. Then there was the king daddy of them all: Father Cav…

How To Control Your Ungodly Urges… On a Budget!

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…r example) responded with the unprecedented, totally creative, really-takes-an-intelligent-person-to-come-up-with-it tactic of calling Fluke, and her friends, sluts who can’t control themselves. (Patricia Heaton, the star from Everybody Loves Raymond who once won an award from Feminists [!!] for Life, tweeted a whole series of insulting tips for “G-Town Gal,” which were SO FUNNY!) Ha ha! Oh, stop, my sides hurt! Obviously I’m being sarcastic. Name…