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

By Michael Schulson

…ion centers would be able to match. For yoga practitioners, the story here might sound familiar. A spiritual practice, fresh from the exotic Orient, becomes popular among American elites, and adapts itself to the world of for-profit fitness instruction. You might say that MNDFL is aiming to yogify mindfulness-oriented meditation. Yes, it’s the mind you’re stretching, not the muscles. But in both cases, a ritual practice has been repackaged as a se…

Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

By Arri Eisen

…ng in this most religious of countries: either I believe what my religious minister, family, and community say or I believe these facts my teacher is telling me. What if we changed things? What if we taught about science as a process, and taught both its power and limitations? What if we taught in science class that there are other valuable non-scientific ways of looking at the world? Some are not scientifically testable, and so are outside the re…

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

By Jay Michaelson

…were murdered over the centuries. Diluting the meaning of the term ‘antisemitism’ is, itself, antisemitic. Second, as I described in a recent post, there is indeed a structural similarity between some of the Occupy movement’s concerns and historical antisemitism. Occupy is, indeed, protesting against the malefactors of great wealth and their international cabals of political-financial interest. Add the word “Jewish” in there, and you’ve got world…

Mitt Romney’s Prosperity Gospel

By Peter Laarman

…for a time that he was having the better evening because of his way with a microphone and his remarkable capacity to modulate his voice (not to mention outing himself as LDS pastor and bishop). But it was Billy Graham’s endorsement, splashed into our faces via an expensive full-page Sunday New York Times ad, that triggered my flat-out recognition: the 94-year-old daddy of all televangelists is laying his bony patriarchal hands upon a fellow preach…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…e head of the church’s own National Committee for a Human Life Amendment admitted that the “overwhelming majority” of Catholics were apathetic about the issue. Orthodox Catholics fretted about the rise of “cafeteria” Catholics who picked and chose from doctrine, particularly around issues related to sex, but most continued to identify as Catholics, raise their children as Catholics and take part in the life of the church. Some formed reform groups…

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

…ortunately served time in jail for publishing her birth-control pamphlet Family Limitation). Readers can probably anticipate where this history lesson is going. Since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the right to abortion guaranteed in Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, red states have been rushing to criminalize most, if not all, access to abortion. At least 14 states have banned (or are in the process of banning) mifepristone,…

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

By Sarah M. Pike

…best friend who suffered from a heart attack brought about by years of bulimia; a letter to a brother who committed suicide; a goodbye to a 24-year-old who was struck by lightning while camping; photos of two teenagers who died together in a scuba diving accident; and thousands of tributes to grandparents. The temple was full of memorials brought from home and assembled on site. Thousands of messages were written on every inch of the temple walls,…

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

By Marion Grau

…y is how it felt to have “No Future” because the US and Russia had overwhelming arsenals of atomic warheads pointed at each other. From my point of view, the world seems safer now in some ways, and so much less safe in others. Still, it is we who must make some decisions about how we deal with such a heightened level of anxiety. Authoritarian forces in governments all over the world can stoke our anxiety in order to justify more control. They can…

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

By Austin Dacey

…I hear the end of this violation. And neither should you, for it is the abomination that brings desolation. The final reckoning will not register which airline company boasted the most freshly painted fleet or ranked last in customer satisfaction. But there are some sacred goods of such high ideal as we instead are called to satisfy, goods that are not to be consumed but rather to consume. After all the fleets are returned to dust, these will rema…

Invited by Allah

By Amina Wadud

…y invitation from Allah. When I saw that I put in my requisition, I must admit. But I also admit, I’m a bit skeptical of considering this literally. Mainly because there are three million people who make it (and two million back when I was denied in 1981). I can’t say any of the factors would have just disappeared, had I thought to ask Allah first. But this year as I posted comments about waiting I did get a few reminders about this in the more op…