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Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…

What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail

By Steven K. Green

…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…

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

By Sarah M. Pike

…an 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 mysticism, tools of transport, and creepy cults.” But nineteenth-century camp meetings and spiritualist conventions…

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

By Elizabeth Drescher

…getting up at 5 a.m. to sit in the security screening line in the Northern Cali version of a cold morning, hours before the event’s 10 a.m. start. But for others, accessing fully developed wisdom teachings was not exactly the point. Attendees like Brooke Deterline, CEO of an organizational consulting firm focused on ethical practice and workplace performance, came already chock-full of dharmic learning. For Deterline, presence and inspiration were…

Tim LaHaye’s World: We’re Living In It

By Jason C. Bivins

…nes grad, LaHaye ultimately emerged from the finishing school of far-right Cali politics in the early 1960s, populated by rocket scientists, Goldwater anti-feds, Birchers, and conspiracy wonks. In a land of almost alien brightness, LaHaye was a kind of first responder to a series of Supreme Court decisions—most obviously Engel v. Vitale and Abington School District v. Schempp, although Randall Balmer and others have insisted that the lingering dis…

Iftar: Breaking Fast

By Amina Wadud

…ne. No one else in my household is fasting. My extended family out here in Cali is not fasting because my daughter is nursing. And I am still a relative stranger, having moved to my present location from Indonesia only a few months ago. Thus, I go to be with people. Not to be in retreat from them. I’m clear on this and I thought I should be clear with you. This makes last night just the cream on the cake; or is that cream of the crop? Icing on the…

Invited by Allah

By Amina Wadud

…there are no quotas, and that what had been a factor —no matter what technicalities were used from the embassy in Cairo—the real matter was that Egypt is not only very conveniently located vis-à-vis the Arabian Peninsula, it is also a very highly populated Muslim country and too many people request visas for hajj. Like Indonesia, one has to plan two or three years in advance. No walking up to the embassy three weeks before. So, mostly I was nervou…

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

By Austin Dacey

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

By Marion Grau

…alse—swept through the terminals, sending passengers, law-enforcement, and airline workers scrambling for cover and eventually onto the tarmac. The responding authorities found neither shooters nor evidence of any shots fired. The most likely explanation offered for the panic was that the cheering of Olympics fans for Usain Bolt’s performance in the 100 meters sounded like gunfire. In an episode titled “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” from…

Gingrich Downplays Adelson Money, Stokes Fear of “Second Holocaust” at Florida Church

By Sarah Posner

…ughter Bella was hospitalized.) Organizers said they had distributed 1,800 tickets, and the pews in the church were nearly full, with several hundred, if not nearly a thousand people in attendance. Gingrich was the only candidate to appear; Staver, the “forum’s” moderator took pains to point out that they had invited the other candidates. Santorum and Ron Paul had commitments outside of Florida. Mitt Romney, the candidate Staver and other leaders…