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

By Sarah M. Pike

…and soul. Every year since 2001, when San Francisco Bay area artist David Best constructed the first large-scale temple out of leftover pieces from a dinosaur puzzle factory, the temples have been a focal point for collective ritualizing at Burning Man. Dismounting my bicycle, I approached this year’s Temple of Transitions. Part medieval cathedral, part 24-hour desert sanctuary, the temple was epic in scale with stained glass windows on its upper…

Pope Francis v. Kim Davis: A Vatican Game of Thrones

By Anthea Butler

…ived for his welcoming tone in America, the truth is more complicated. The best explication of what most likely happened has come from Charles Pierce in Esquire, who verified (correctly) that Archbishop Carlo Vigano, the nuncio, is the person who hastily arranged the meeting between the Pope and Kim Davis. Archbishop Vigano is a Pope Benedict XVI supporter involved in the Vatileaks scandal. Vigano has lied about his own brother, with whom he is in…

6 Overlooked Takeaways From a Reviewer of Controversial Texas Textbooks

By David R. Brockman

…students in a myth of Christian exceptionalism and fear of Islam. Even the best publishers can fall victim to that pressure. It’s up to all of us to keep a close watch on what goes into public school textbooks. For scholars, that means ensuring that textbook content reflects the best available scholarly consensus. For parents and other citizens, it means identifying the decision-makers responsible for adopting textbooks (this will vary from state…

Afghan Idol: Can a Talent Competition Save a Nation?

By Becky Garrison

…saying how awful Setara is. A lot Afghans, like Setara’s father, want the best for their daughters but they’re not given a chance to speak. It’s a very difficult balance for those men; that they want the best for their daughters and yet they know that if their daughter goes on stage, her life is going to be in danger. Do you let her or do you make her stay at home? How would you respond to those who state that these clerics’ objections to Afghan…

Robert Bellah’s Powerful Legacy: A Mixed Blessing for Religious Studies?

By Ivan Strenski

…cal perspective anathema? Why did our data seem limited to American or, at best, North Atlantic, cultural material? Was there really nothing to be learned from rigorous cross-cultural comparison? At other points, however, I think Bellah’s pastoral and prophetic urges undid some of the great good he had done. Perhaps, it was Bellah’s heart-felt concern to make the university a place infused with high moral, even religious, purpose that played him f…

#Occupy: A Deeper Form of Protest?

By Jay Michaelson

…test Which leads me to the third and final #Occupy circular-ism, which can best be defined as spiritual. There’s an intuitive, cultural, emotive sense that another checklist of items would just perpetuate the wrong way of thinking, the wrong way of being. We don’t need another line, the protests seem to be saying. The kind of change we want is deeper. So, sorry, incrementalists like Jay Michaelson, we’re not going to get practical or endorse a pol…

RDBook: Huckabee ♥’s Nobody

By Kyle Mantyla

…hat John McCain leaned over during the debate to tell him that “that’s the best answer I’ve ever heard and exactly what I believe.” Betrayed by the Religious Right To anybody who paid any attention to Huckabee during the GOP primary, his disdain for the media was obvious, as was his loathing of Romney, so much of the book’s animus comes across as old news and surprisingly petty. What is astonishing is the outright contempt with which Huckabee trea…

Op-Ed: Damning Daschle

By Frank L. Cocozzelli

…or people to grasp what they are paying for and who provides them with the best care. Additionally, the Fed Health could set standards for quality and coverage, promoting best practices and identifying the trade-offs on services. It would use information on the comparative clinical and cost effectiveness of different treatment options to set standards for Federal programs. The Congressional Budget Office recently credited this idea with the potent…

Why I Will Not Submit to Arrest, Or, the Problem With Moral Mondays

By Amy Laura Hall

…ne, politically and religiously charismatic hero is simply not true to the best of Southern populism. At our best, people in the South have agitated for change in break rooms, classrooms, prison yards and such, pausing for rallies rather than mistaking rallies for the real thing. While well-orchestrated arrests of large groups, at the instruction of a religious leader, may have the power of nostalgia, egalitarian democracy requires other models. I…