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Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

By Sarah M. Pike

…ight seem to participants, it has a historical context and an identifiable place on the contemporary American religious landscape. In his book The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscape, journalist Erik Davis places Burning Man alongside other Golden State phenomena. Burning Man arose from the ashes of Haight-Ashbury and what Davis calls California’s “great polytheistic fusion of transplanted religions, nature mysticis…

How To Talk To “Nones” and Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…been saying all along: everybody has spiritual questions, and they need a place to bring them. A place that doesn’t judge them, or expect allegiance like an institution would. After lunch, Bell signed copies of the book. The long line moved slowly, because Bell spent time with everyone, autographing, chatting, posing for photographs. Like Oprah. And as with Oprah, there was something cozy about this process. Bell would chalk this feeling up to th…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…n selfish, slow to help the poor and needy around me, hesitant to give from my own abundance. If Joel Osteen is honest, he would see that while he is indeed living man’s best—and is a role model for worldly success—his ministry is woefully lacking when measured against “God’s best.”…

2023 CPAC Lived Down to Expectations, But Don’t Buy the Narrative: The GOP is Not as Divided as You Might Think

By Annika Brockschmidt

…Trump wing of the Republican Party. The speakers who turned up tried their best to rile up the audience—with varying levels of success. Jair Bolsonaro, the disgraced former President of Brazil who fled his country for fear of being arrested due to his role in the insurrection, received an enthusiastic reception as he waxed on about “God and fatherland,” lauded Trump, and dished up his own version of the “Big Lie.” What was notable was the anti-Ukr…

Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

…n 1981 and Larson was sent to a treatment center for four months, but then placed back in ministry. He was sent to therapy three more times before being removed from ministry in 1988. Larson was never defrocked. A Wichita Eagle investigation in 2000 found 17 men who had been abused by Larson. Five of his victims committed suicide. He was in prison from 2001 to 2006. Douglas McArthur McCain At 33 years old, Douglas McArthur McCain became the first…

Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

By Arri Eisen

…stem cells, homosexuality, and genomic research. The battle rhetoric would fade and, more than likely, movies like Expelled wouldn’t be made in the first place. We’d be less about selling books and tickets and more about moving forward….

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…waste American money to buy their expensive oil when we could have our own cheap oil?” “Why is he trying to make rich people poor?” “How is it right to punish rich people for working hard and realizing the American Dream?” It was late on a Friday night and I was tired, so I half-heartedly responded by explaining that there are other factors to consider in every charged question she’d been armed with. But I wondered, “Why the hell was the Salvation…

Google’s Benevolent Interfaith Big Tent

By Lucia Hulsether

…exclusive grip. According to Lofton, Oprah—who tells her audience what to buy, what to wear, what to read, and what to eat to achieve Your Best Life Now—is one effective guide, paving a way through the onslaught of consumer choices. The difference, of course, is that Google does not directly proffer a salve of consumption; it forms a multicultural public through its online search platform, one that is so prophetically omniscient that it can antic…

Swift-Boat Veterans of American Jewry Charge Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street

By Jay Michaelson

…es ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American Jewish community to neo-conservatism, hawkish policies on Israel, and the belief that “Barack Hussein Obama” is a Muslim. That said, there actually are two interesting forms of antisemitism going on here. First is the antisemitism of ECI itself. To tug at…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…your help,” Chapman tells us. “Help me get the word out. If enough people buy tickets to The Ledge, Hollywood will have to pay attention.” I scribble in my notebook thinking of the war against family values we’ve had with Hollywood forever in the church. Is Hollywood our ally now? Oh, damn and damn. Who is we’ve and who is our, and why do I use those words so effortlessly? I sigh and look up, only to see a few policemen are in the room. Bomb thre…