Religion Dispatches
…-shirt that said, “You can run, but you can’t hide.” I wore that for the next sixteen hours as I ran away from the collapsing buildings with my toddler, trying to find my 4- and 6-year-old daughters who’d been evacuated from the U.N. School. But what’s strange is, even then, when we finally came back to our apartment still dusted in the white powder of collapsed buildings, when our air was so acrid it made our eyes water, I didn’t feel like I was…
Read More
…edia. The movement is small, but its existence makes sense within the context of new Mormon groups that emerged within the last decade, and it’s likely to continue growing. Davis and his community harnessed a desire for enchantment that many no longer find in the LDS Church, and the conspiracies provide a comforting response to a chaotic world. In a time of heightened skepticism toward various establishments, he spoke to a craving for independence…
Read More
…f films, human identities interface with technology, are lost, confused, mixed up between surface and depth, public and private, between who we are by ourselves and who we are in relation to others. Against the modern myth that we are all individuals, these movies tell us that who we are is determined by social, political, familial, and technological forces, most of which are well beyond our individual control. Yet, with a variable sense of ident…
Read More
…he holidays, the New York Times ran a punishing profile of Marc Gafni, an ex-rabbi who reinvented himself as a New Age spiritual leader. A founder of the Center for Integral Wisdom and organizer of the Success 3.0 Summit, Gafni has built a New Age brand around two trademark concepts—Unique Self and Outrageous Love—which, like much of “Integral Theory,” seems to draw from psychotherapy, Eastern and Western religious traditions, and philosophy. Or a…
Read More
…cultures and with different beliefs (New World Notes). The opportunity to explore new religious “territory” is aptly seen in the case of the Muslim woman who attended synagogue in Second Life because she had been curious about Judaism but felt too self-conscious to attend a real-life temple service. The woman chose to wear her hijab in Second Life while attending the virtual synagogue, presumably so closely identifying with her avatar that she wan…
Read More
…confusing, especially to those who follow UAP lore. Placed within the context of the exponential growth of civilian-owned technologies, the change in policy isn’t quite as surprising. Social media, cell phones, video, and drone technologies make the sighting and the capture of images of UAPs ubiquitous and unregulated. If, as the report suggests, there’s an element of potential threat to national security concerning UAP sightings, it would be impo…
Read More
…on their followers’ dime. She follows the money from televangelists and tax-exempt churches to some of the stranger and more mystical corners of evangelicaldom, and back again. * * * When the right-wing documentary film, Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family (Family First Foundation), premiered at the Heritage Foundation, its Mormon creators and evangelical- and Catholic-right backers declared the film’s premise—that a slow apocalyp…
Read More
…In addition, this was a bogus licensing process in which our clients were expected to make extensive building renovations and do it in two weeks’ time,” said Northup. But proponents of the new regulations claim that the safety standards for Kansas abortion clinics have been too lax, and that the changes were motivated by a concern for patient safety. David Gittrich is the State Development Director for Kansans For Life, a non-sectarian organizat…
Read More
…iage Equality Bill Opposed by Evangelical Lawmakers Equality activists are promoting new marriage equality legislation, which is backed by deputies from different parties, though one of the lawyers supporting the bill acknowledged that it might be blocked by evangelical lawmakers who have to date prevented other attempts. Tunisia: Court Jails Students on Sodomy Charge Last week a court sentenced six male students to three years in jail after ssubj…
Read More
…t of Cosmic Pizza in DC. It’s an extension of the way that we talk about Fox News, too. We’re like, “Oh no, my dad has been brainwashed by Fox News.” No, your dad is an adult human who made a choice to turn on rabidly biased news, and it has become a habit. It’s a way that he is in the world. And he made choices based on that choice. So there’s an accountability piece there. What would it actually mean for media to have that kind of accountability…
Read More