Religion Dispatches
…across lines that divide us to work for justice and the common good. This new face of religion is certainly important for people who care about religion. But politically progressive people should care about this new religious movement—primarily because it is genuinely progressive. Every major movement for social change in this country has had religious leaders in the leadership. By trying to avoid religion and deeply held values—either because of…
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…s a result, the long-term health and strength of Prosperity Gospel and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) rests on the elevation and promotion of these practices above all others. The deviations, then, are just as important in understanding how Pentecostalism is being reshaped and redefined. The Prosperity Gospel has had several names throughout its history, including the “Health and Wealth Gospel” and, as noted above, “Word of Faith,” whose ante…
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…eir home churches and satellite churches around the country and the world. New Apostolic Reformation The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), on the other hand, has been able to operate somewhat out of the general public’s purview, save for the work of writers at Talk To Action, who have chronicled the changes and escalations in the movement. The NAR roots are also firmly within the boundaries of the historic Pentecostal movement. Foundational to NAR…
Read More…In leaving, there are social consequences and challenges in navigating the new world—a new meaning system—one that’s quite different from the religious one. Research shows that individuals who leave Christian fundamentalism experience a situational crisis in leaving the religion—a unique meaning-making framework focused on the sacred and divine—and undergo a meaning-making process to achieve a positive resolution in leaving the religion. The meani…
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…eligion has the corner on the borrowing and incongruity of sacred stories. New Agers who use the sweat lodge are not so much “stealing Indian religion” as they are weaving a new religion out of strands of what they believe to be old religions. Various forms of the sweat ceremony were used by Indians from Canada into southern Mexico. In the south they’re called temescals and resemble a wet sauna or steam room; tribes in the American Southwest have…
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…iberation. A first step TGL on its own, sadly, is unlikely to inspire. The new ‘New Age’ The roots of Goop lie in utopian dreams of other ways of being; the same set of impulses that drove the idea of universal human rights, jobs for all, communes, racially-integrated worlds, and both spiritual and this-worldly democracy. During the 60s and 70s, the intertwined movements for Black power, gay liberation and women’s liberation rose to prominence, ga…
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…eople who kill animals. Were Sears simply a critic and comedian shattering New Age pieties his videos would still be clever and hilarious, but Sears is a full-time life coach whose work focuses on emotional healing. When Sears notes that he too is guilty of the behaviors he lampoons, he puts himself in the far more interesting tradition of those who criticize and question the beliefs they themselves hold. I recently visited this New Age Stephen Co…
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…The Unlikely Disciple, then, comes to seem like the expression of a brave new world and, in it, a new way of writing about religion in this country. It’s not the first book of the kind, but it struck me as the first to fall so comfortably into the time and place. We no longer need (since we are all “we” now) to muckrake and expose the other. Now, the necessary work is understanding, compromise, and shared humanity. These cozy themes have always w…
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…n all too real variation on this theme of worldly desolation played out in New Orleans, as tens of thousands of New Orleanians fled an approaching Category 3 hurricane, leaving behind thousands of their fellow residents too immobilized by poverty or other factors to escape the hurricane’s onslaught. On August 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Mississippi and Louisiana coast, packing 125 mph winds and strong waves and producing a storm…
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…ion to men. Their advice? Head west, to Colorado Springs, evangelicalism’s New Jerusalem, and to New Life Church, no less, where Haas found himself at the feet of the great Ted Haggard—“the ultimate man of God,” in Haas’ words. As he tells the story, Haggard’s face brightened when the pastor discovered the young man was struggling with his sexual identity. The courtship began, furtively of course, and over the next year or so, their relationship d…
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