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Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…udget animation, South Park manages to do more with less. The 2003 episode about Joseph Smith (“All About Mormons”) is funnier, smarter, and spikier than The Book of Mormon—and you can watch it online for free. Satire, like blasphemy, is not supposed to be crowd-pleasing entertainment. It is supposed to be discomfiting. Instead of inspiring religious debate, The Book of Mormon has mainly inspired a lot of self-admiration from pop culture mavens, p…

Lying about Santa: The Irrelevance of Proof to the Holiday Spirit

By Nathan Schneider

…ta’s existence. “This is a question that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about,” he began. And, just to know what he was working with: “How many people here have studied philosophy at all?” Just as I was about to raise my hand, self-satisfied yet discreet, all the power went out. From behind us, we heard but didn’t see the ringing of bells and a sonorous voice: “Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!” Hook was befuddled. “I have this thing, it’s like a pr…

Irony Repeats Itself: Reconsidering Reinhold Niebuhr in the Trump Era

By Gary Dorrien

…olitically and to the right theologically. In the early going he was clear about his politics and vague about his theology; by the end of the decade he had settled on his theology and begun to waver about his politics. When Niebuhr delivered the Gifford Lectures in 1940, he was still a state Socialist. Equating socialization with nationalization, he wanted state planners to replicate the pricing decisions of markets and government planners to orga…

The Surprisingly Short History of Popular Yoga

By Andrea R. Jain and Michelle Goldberg

…ractice are “real.” If there’s no scriptural record of warrior poses, what about headstand or lotus? How about the breathing exercises? I get it—a lot of people turn to yoga, as opposed to, say, Pilates, because they want to partake of a deep tradition, and finding out that that tradition isn’t very long can be disillusioning. But most people also understand that every religious and cultural practice undergoes a huge amount of adaptation and reinv…

Is Christianity Simply About God Entering the Uterus of a Jewish Virgin?

By Eric Reitan

…timate Reality that transcends them. That, put simply, is what religion is about. It’s not about believing that talking snakes or flying horses are real—even if, sometimes, the adherents to a religion insist they are. Even among those who believe that religious stories are historical facts and not just myths, there is also an affirmation that the story is more about theology than about history. The story is remembered because it means something. I…

Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…e and their vision, but part of what’s needed is something that’s not just about the rabbi’s voice, but also about making room for all of the voices in the congregation.” When congregants “feel heard” by the rabbi, said Weintraub, “when they feel like there are channels of expression and recognition for them, they have a lot more room for anything the rabbi has to say.” Discussions about Israel, “should be taking place within synagogues, JCCs [Jew…

Useless and Useful: A True Sage Reviews The Tao of Happiness

By Alan Levinovitz

…hy I now have to go back and explain why the things that I would have said about Lin—about his take on scholars, and about his useless platitudes—are really the products of an unenlightened mind. My indignation at Lin’s suggestion that academia limits one’s understanding? Completely hypocritical. Academics critique the limits of their own methods all the time. Here it is from the venerable translator Burton Watson, in the foreword to a collection…

Baring Their Testimonies: Mormon Women Get Naked for the Camera

By Holly Welker

…an’t.” I don’t think that modesty and vanity are all good or all bad. It’s about where your comfort level is. I think you should dress to feel good about yourself. So, whether that’s more modest or less modest, you need to feel good. And of course vanity plays into that; I don’t think anyone is without vanity. But I think that this project is about pushing both of those aside and showing the reality of a female body. It’s a very vulnerable, br…

John McCain: No God But Country

By Kathryn Lofton

…gious devotion. For some observers, the fact that McCain doesn’t talk much about his faith, about his Christianity, is a denominational inevitability. “McCain, actually, is being very authentic by keeping it inside,” writes voter Eric Gorski in a letter to the New York Times, “He doesn’t wear religion on his sleeve because he comes from a generation and upbringing—Episcopalian—that tends not to.” Such a socially determinist explanation might apply…

RDGenerations: Religion in the Academy

By Lucia Hulsether

…of what we hope will be an ongoing feature, Lucia and her father Mark talk about what it’s like to study and teach religion in the Bible belt, about referring to God as “She,” and about the theory that Obama may be the antichrist—we are so glad they have agreed to share their correspondence with us. –The Eds LH: Hey Dad, I think I’m about to declare my Religious Studies major. I “verbally” declared it to the department a long time ago—but it…