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From ‘Management Gurus’ to ‘Corporate Chaplains’: A Review of Spirituality Inc.

…kes mention of the way Xerox Corporation, for example, embraced the Native American vision quest tradition as its own. While he also spends some time explaining how terms like “management guru” borrow from the Indian spiritual tradition, it seems odd to not explore this word choice in the context of an analytical religious text. No doubt many take for granted the use of words like “guru” in North American vernacular, but to gloss over these cultur…

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The Marxist Roots of American Exceptionalism

…ferent from, rather than superior to, other countries, the long history of American beliefs in U.S. superiority could easily be retroactively attached to the concept. Part of the Marxist baggage that follows “American exceptionalism” is its teleology. Marxism posits a history of progress towards a goal. There will be a revolution and it will lead to equality. Similarly, today’s conservatives deploying American exceptionalism have a goal in mind—th…

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How a Stars and Stripes Hijab on ‘Rupaul’s Drag Race’ Reveals America’s Troubling Relationship to Gender, Ethnicity and ‘That’ Religion

…e) often face anti-Muslim hostility, which is related—but not reducible—to American white supremacy.¹ American whiteness is fragile, contested, and—especially for folks associated with Islam—contingent on good behavior. On episode 7, Jackie Cox wept while outing herself as the child of an immigrant from a Muslim-majority country and claiming “this part of [her] heritage that [she] hid for so long.” We were prepared to leave our analysis of Ms. Cox…

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Five Must-Reads on the “Nones”: A Tipping Point in American Religion and Spirituality

…the religiously unaffiliated, changes in religiosity, and the evolution of American secularity. Courtney Bender, The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Bender extends the work of Albanese, offering an ethnographic exploration of self-identified metaphysical practitioners as their apparently eclectic, unique, and personal spiritualities resist, engage, resource, and i…

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Tattoos, Cremation, Personal Spirituality: The Jewish World in Transformation

…the impact that the concept of personal spirituality has had on organized American Judaism. Americans today feel much freer to explore ceremonial and ritual practices that intrigue them regardless of what their community thinks of those particular ideas. This has allowed Jews to move in a number of different directions, including seemingly contradictory ones. I found some of these contradictory impulses fascinating. For example, there have been a…

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Puritan Narcissus: The Myth of American Exceptionalism

…r. Most of our politicians trade on the illusion that the globalization of American (and American-style) consumerism is synonymous with democratization and social stability. In fact, stabilizing the supply of energy to the transnational economic grid has meant our investing billions to support politically destabilizing alliances and undemocratic regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere. Islam, like Christianity, contains seeds of violence and radi…

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The Forgotten History of Black Calvinism and the Haunting of American Folk Music

…eaders will be able to see the emergence of the Bible Belt and the fate of American Calvinism in new and different ways. What alternative title would you give the book? I originally wanted to go with American Primitives full stop. No subtitle. I thought it was clean and it distilled the argument down to two words. Other folks found it cryptic and preposterous. I eventually agreed with them. Kinda. How do you feel about the cover? I love it. The de…

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Forget Right or Wrong

…researchers share the unsurprising finding that “young adults engage in a number of religious practices less often than do older Americans.” What they may mean to say is traditional religious practices: weekly attendance at religious services, weekly scripture reading, daily prayer, and weekly meditation. (My guess is as good as yours on the greater expected frequency of prayer in the survey.) The Pew survey design is problematic—and this is wher…

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It Is Time For American Orthodox Christians to Protest Russia’s Persecution of LGBT

…ns have become too progressive. Of course, these are the most innocuous of American converts. American Orthodoxy has also managed to become the go-to religion of the alt-right, courtesy of being sufficiently medieval without being Roman Catholic. The combination of these historical realities has created an environment in which—even though there exists a progressive plurality among self-identified American Orthodox Christians—public statements that…

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Former Employees: Racism & Abuse in Leading Religious Right Org.

…to Allah as “Satan.” According to him, Groening received a subscription to American Renaissance magazine at the office. American Renaissance is published by white nationalist Jared Taylor, and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the magazine and Web site “regularly feature proponents of eugenics and blatant anti-black racists.” Taylor’s New Century Foundation, which runs the magazine, “also sponsors American Renaissance conferences ever…

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