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Pop-Culture Angels Are More Than Just Embarrassing Kitsch

By Ed Simon

…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…

Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is: A For-Profit Meditation Studio Opens in New York

By Michael Schulson

…a cynic might point out, it looks an awful lot like a privatized temple—a sangha with a profit motive; dharma for dollars. The company does not phrase its mission in quite those terms. “MNDFL exists to enable humans to feel good,” the website explains. In its DNA, the company is one half executive, one half spiritual. Burrows is a film executive-turned-life coach-turned-“spiritual tourist,” while Rinzler is a longtime meditation teacher in the Sh…

Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…publicly proclaim their places of worship as truly welcoming and affirming sanctuaries for people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. I cannot count the number of times I have heard well-meaning, good-hearted people respond to this appeal, saying, “Things are a lot better for gay people today than they were several years (or decades) ago. In time, our society (or churches) will come around on this issue.” To these friends and oth…

How Much Did Jesus Care About Sex?

By Peter Laarman

…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…rs, it doesn’t show that the religious right is dead because it has lost a number of figureheads from the 1970s; it shows just how successful it has been in creating a diverse bench of “anointed” leaders. When a presidential candidate reaches out to them, it shows how Doug Wead’s 1985 advice to George H.W. Bush has become a standard blueprint for winning the GOP nomination and even the presidency. His one thousand targets, though, have multiplied….

Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

By Charlotte Dalwood

…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…

A Moral Galaxy: War and Suffering in “Star Wars: The Old Republic”

By Robert M. Geraci and Nat Recine

…dential elections—or in the case of this year, papal visits. Beyond George Lucas’ classic trilogy, the Star Wars galaxy also includes books, comics, games, and, of course, toys. While these ancillary products derive their material from the films, they don’t always share the simple morality of the original stories. In the Star Wars films, good and evil occupy a clean binary—there just two sides of the Force: Dark and Light. But in games morality ca…

See Me, Feel Me: Remembering Ken Russell, 1927-2011

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…dergoing some critical and creative transformations. This is the time when Lucas, Spielberg, and Scorsese each made their names with provocative new film styles that have set the stage for everything in the following three decades. There would be no Matrix or Avatar without Star Wars; no Terminator or Tron without Close Encounters; no Fight Club without Mean Streets. Though a generation older than that directorial triumvirate, Russell’s first impo…

Bullies Flourishing with Christian Support

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…hysical education class, his mother and stepfather said. • Billy (William) Lucas, 15, a student at Greensburg Community High School in Greensburg, IN, was found dead in a barn at his grandmother’s home Thursday evening — he had hanged himself. Friends say that he had been tormented for years. “He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him…

Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…ability of cell phones to be used for impure activities, some Jewish cell-phone users have requested so-called “kosher” phones. The idea is to offer conservative Jews a phone that is free of “corrupting influences” of the sort that are already avoided by ultra-orthodox Jews through a ban on television and some radio. Reuters reported in February 2008 that Bezeq Israel Telecom launched a new “kosher” landline phone service, which will block calls…