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The Fragility of Our Reality: A Conversation with the Brain Behind PBS Miniseries on Neuroscience

By Michael Schulson

…narguable. When you walk down any standard neurology ward, and you look at patient after patient—at people who have had a stroke or a tumor or a traumatic brain injury—what you see is that they’ve changed. They can change entirely: their decision-making, their risk aversion, their personality, their capacity to name animals or see colors or understand music. That clarifies the whole picture about the relationship that we have with our brains. Phil…

“We Blew it” on Climate Change, But May Survive Anyway: An RD Discussion with the First Transhumanist Candidate

By Andrew Aghapour

…n my articles but there’s no way that we would ever say they couldn’t be a part of the party. We want to be as open and transparent as possible, so I may moan and complain in my stories, but it’s an open-arm party—so they’re welcome if that’s the way they want to do it. This is a secular-minded party, and so if you’re going to try to convince me that the blood and the body of Jesus needs to be eaten in order to be forgiven of sins, that doesn’t wo…

United Methodists Elect 1st Gay Bishop; Canadian Anglicans OK Same-Sex Marriage

By Peter Montgomery

…t the Jamaican Supreme Court allowed nine conservative Christian groups to participate in a lawsuit challenging the country’s anti-sodomy law, but blocked the LGBT-friendly Public Defender from taking part. More from a press release from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network: “This is truly a David and Goliath situation, requiring me to respond to not only the government’s, but also the religious groups’ arguments,” says Mr. Tomlinson. The legal cha…

“Americans Hate Muslims, Too” (And Other Impediments to U.S. Advocacy for Religious Freedom Abroad)

By Chad Bauman

…rprised to find that around a dozen other travelers—mostly Europeans and Japanese—sat patiently in chairs, waiting to find out whether there might be room for them as well. I wondered how we had managed to get a room while all these other people waited. As if sensing my question, and after checking us in, the Hindu proprietor took us aside and quietly told us that he had detected our American accents on the phone, and had given us the room instead…

Refusing Religion, Claiming the Future: A Roundtable Discussion on “The Nones Are Alright”

By Peter Laarman

…ncidence that the social movements that have most lit a fire of passionate participation in the last few years have been leaderless. Occupy and Black Lives Matter both exist because people made them happen out of a sense of urgency. Institutions move slowly in comparison, but if any religious tradition were able to pick up on some of the energy and prophetic sensibility in those many-voiced choruses, it might actually be compelling. Can this happe…

Trump, Islamophobia, and the Philly Pig’s Head Incident

By David Krueger

…undreds of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, humanists, and others who participate in an interfaith peace walk. This week, several local groups sponsored an interfaith prayer vigil to stand in solidarity with Muslims and particularly Syrian refugees who have been unfairly associated with actions of an extremist minority. Despite the frightening rhetoric spewed by leading presidential candidates, Americans all across the nation are taking a sta…

Reporting from Paris: A Prayer for Polluters

By Donna Schaper

…many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things we don’t know how to decide. The Synod amended our so-called radical proposal and unanimously passed 2017 as the final date. We were gobsmacked, bemused, amused by the fact that our people were readier to go cold turkey than we were. Something like that is happening around COP21. The people who know what it will take to do anything, much…

A Portrait of Islamophobia?

By Mariam Durrani

…l Ryan clarifying how Trump’s ban on Muslims is “not what the [Republican] Party stands for.” While it is the Republican Party’s responsibility to extend this critique into unequivocal opposition to Trump’s bid for presidency, the ban on Muslim rhetoric only feeds into the Islamophobic words and acts we see all over the country. From the death threat calls and messages to Islamic community centers and mosques, to a string of violent acts of hate—i…

Oprah, Terrorist Cells, and the Meaning of Life: An Interview with Paul Froese

By Andrew Aghapour

…he Meaning of Life Paul Froese Oxford University Press (January 6, 2016) I participate in this tradition. Every January, I hold my life out in front of me and think about which elements I want to swap out or in. This mode of thinking progresses towards the abstract. Concrete resolutions give way to the big goals: Happiness, Purpose, and Meaningful Relationships. Once a year, Oprah makes sense to me. This process confused me until I read Paul Froes…

Gay, Christian, Pagan, Artist: How Matt Morris Defies the Borders of Spiritual Identity

By Jesse James DeConto

…I really was having those sorts of conversations. As an Episcopalian I was participating in the liturgy. I was living into the liturgical calendar. I was in Sunday School, with certain stories about Jesus and about Scripture. The discussions about what it means to be a Christian or about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, which are common in certain traditions, and where that engagement with Christian identity is so much on the surface and s…