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YOU Are Spiritual But Not Religious: The Secret Spiritual History of the Choose Your Own Adventure Books

By Daniel Silliman

…e those classics, the story is built on a key idea of the American mode of spirituality known as “spiritual but not religious.” The Choose Your Own Adventure series that Edward Packard and R.A. Montgomery created in the late 1970s is sometimes connected to wishy-washy modern practices of believing. The series title itself was even used as a put-down by Andrew Sullivan in a post on those who mix-and-match or take-and-leave and treat religious ideas…

It’s The Apocalypse, Stupid: Understanding Christian Opposition to Obamacare, Civil Rights, New Deal and More

By Daniel Silliman

…se who preached a radical populist apocalypticism that harkened back to the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. And yet the apocalyptic never leaves. It’s still there, that’s where the polls come back. It’s now assumed by hundreds of millions of Americans that the rapture is a real thing and that Jesus is coming back. It’s a genius theology, because it allows people to look at very diverse, very troubling, very dark contemporary events and put them in a cont…

I Was Nearly Seduced by David Brooks’ Reasonable Analysis

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…makes it sounds like someone took too deep a breath before blowing, or the air inside suddenly got too warm. This bubble burst because people—the economic types, the alleged experts, the wonks—failed to call things by their right names and failed to tell the truth. Houses are homes, not investments. You shouldn’t buy one you don’t intend to live in for a good long time, because there is no telling what someone will be willing to pay for it a year…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…eone who did “Indian sweats” and presto and voilà, Ray is taking people on spiritual retreats at 10K a head and then people start dying. So, experts have to be brought in to figure out what happened. No Indians mind you, just experts. And the truth is, we don’t want to be experts. Why? Because we know there is no such thing as Indians, redskins, warriors, braves, chiefs, or savages. Those are sports teams and ah, therein lies the rub. Ray sold thi…

Pope Francis Dithering About Women, Skittish About Cops

By Mary E. Hunt

…matters and not on others. Presumably he set it up that way to get a full airing of the historical materials. Disagreements among theologians are the coin of the realm. How many papal commissions were unanimous about anything? Even some that had a majority favoring change, as in the case of Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical that outlawed the use of most forms of effective contraception, the reigning pontiff simply ignored the consensus and went…

Supreme Court Conservatives Allow Execution of Muslim Prisoner Despite Religious Freedom Violation

By Andrew L. Seidel

…on government property. The cross was rededicated as a war memorial to all service members in 1985, but it is a cross. It’s the symbol of one religion. In other words, if it’s a memorial, it’s a memorial to Christian soldiers only. It ignores the service of Jews, Hindus, Muslims, humanists, agnostics, and atheists. About one-quarter of our military are not religious at all, let alone Christian. If the Court decides in favor of the cross, the messa…

Religion at the Moral March

By Peter Montgomery

…pel at Shaw University, near the staging area for the march, for a Shabbat service sponsored by Temple Beth Or. The service, led by Rabbis Lucy Dinner and Ari Margolis, included a special blessing for people who had participated in civil disobedience during last year’s Moral Mondays protests. It also included references to scriptural exhortations not to oppress the stranger, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Dinner’s message was a call for t…

UK Atheist Church Invasion

By Becky Garrison

…bly London we are going to try to go weekly in 2014, and we are adding the services that you get at church. Pastoral care will first come in the form of small groups, with more serious problems being passed on to relevant service providers. However, we want to take care of the whole person. Since launching the first Sunday Assembly in New York City () on June 30, 2013, this group experienced some growing pains with some the board of directors choo…

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

By Sarah Posner

…uths Shut” Martha Swindle, who worked as the elder Wildmon’s secretary from 1991 until 1999, when he fired her, said that he was perceived by donors to be a “great conservative leader,” and that, “while I was there, the majority of funding came from $10 and $15 donations, people who believed in what AFA stood for.” Swindle, too, believed in that vision, until Wildmon started “snooping” through her desk drawers and even her trash, she believes, ult…

Occupy Judaism: A “Turning Point” in American Judaism

By Sarah Posner

…n of Jewish officialdom.” Daniel Sieradski, the organizer of the Kol Nidre service, says the movement is “tapping into something that people haven’t had access to other than through marginal Jewish social justice organizations that don’t get attention or support they deserve because people are too busy sending 18 year-olds to Israel to be indoctrinated with hedge fund managers’ money.” Sieradski is referring to Birthright, which, according to Kier…