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

By José Cabezón

…etocentric worldview of monks. By restricting the monastic population to a number just large enough to run monasteries and to provide “costumed natives” for the tourist industry, Chinese government policymakers are privileging values like political stability, the physical preservation of monastic institutions as historical/cultural “relics,” and the tangible economic gains derived from treating these institutions as tourist venues. When they objec…

Healed of the Sin of Religion: At Church with Sara Miles

By Lisa Webster

…u’re desiring? Part of you might be desiring rules, and a schematic way to manage things. But part of you is desiring more God, has glimpsed more, had an experience of more that it’s trying to recreate. And that’s the job of people who run churches—to try to listen to that desire, and feed it. Every Friday you give away free groceries to anyone who comes—no requirements. You talk about the resistance to simply giving food away. Well, we feed every…

The Traitor Chaplain Who Gave Government Prayer to America — A 4th of July Corrective

By Andrew L. Seidel

…r even suppressed. Duché betrayed American independence. When we hear these unconstitutional legislative prayers before government bodies all over this country we should remember their legacy is one of treason and betrayal. They are, at heart, un-American. Happy Fourth of July, America. This article is adapted from The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American which examines and debunks the historical disinformation that forms the ba…

Christians of Color Are Rejecting “Colonial Christianity” and Reclaiming Ancestral Spiritualities

By Deborah Jian Lee

…State University, describes the hybridized practices adopted by some Asian Americans. He sees how Vietnamese Americans create home shrines that blend the traditional—a single photo of an ancestor beside assorted fruits—with a touch of “Americanization,” such as adding significant ornaments or a photo montage that personalizes the shrine. Meanwhile, second generation Korean American churches practice a distinct form of simultaneous spoken prayer, w…

Malta Adopts Marriage Equality Over Objections of Catholics and Evangelicals; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…his nation’s imprisonment and killing of gay and bisexual men; an unknown number have been murdered. Kadyrov was furious at the questioning by reporter David Scott: “Why does he come here? What’s the point of these questions?” Kadyrov finally answered,”We don’t have those kinds of people here… If there are there take them to Canada… Take them far from us so we don’t have them at home… To purify our blood, if there are any here, take them.” When p…

The Sacred and the Dead: Three Ways to American Beauty

By Aaron K. Kerr

…s duplicity. The letters (signs) can be read two ways: they represent both American Beauty and American Reality. In western thought, beauty and reality are of a piece since the good, the true, and the beautiful inform and form each other. But beauty can deceive, money talks, and power attracts. The Dead understand and critique this duplicity. In order to understand it they conjure American figures who exemplify this contradiction, a sort of courag…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…onstitution.” Based on the “explanatory memorandum” document identifying a number of American Muslim organizations as allies in its author’s aspirations, prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation trial publicly labeled over 200 American Muslim organizations “unindicted co-conspirators,” a highly controversial move derided at the time by legal experts as contrary to Justice Department policy and in violation of the groups’ constitutional rights. Even…

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…ays they believe in Heaven: When asked, “Do you believe in heaven?” 80% of Americans answer yes. But almost no one has a clear idea of what it is they believe. I hope my book gives people a sense of what Western religious traditions and regular people say heaven is (and isn’t) and how those ideas have changed through history. I hope that my book will provoke readers to develop for themselves a clearer and more thought-out idea of heaven, whatever…

More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nt agreement with an LGBT advocacy group in a lawsuit filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation in a press release it posted to its website said the government’s decision to end opposition to nuptials for gays and lesbians in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights case is part of a broader agreement that includes the introduction of a same-sex marriage bill in the Chilea…

The Sacred and the Dead: The Trouble with Sugar Magnolia

By Kaya Oakes

…rough years of conversations, we made it, song by song, through the entire American Beauty album. Steve passed away in June of this year. That was 15 years after our “Ripple” conversation, and today, there are hundreds of Dead songs on my phone and dozens of live recordings in playlists, even a nod when I see a Deadhead sticker on a car. I am a relapsed Catholic, and thanks to my friend, I am also a repentant Deadhead. Dear Jesus, let me confess:…