Religion Dispatches
…uddhists are doing that—nor is it only spirituality vaguely conceptualized—New Agers with crystals, meditation retreats for the professional class. Instead, both old and new media have lit up the religious landscape, illuminating what is still an unconventional, and nebulous, but certainly increasingly capacious, understanding of the sacred in everyday life. Rock and roll can be religious, according to The Hold Steady; a recent Los Angeles Times a…
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…el, AwakenWithJP, where he’s developed a following for his wry send-ups of New Age culture via his alter ego “Ultra Spiritual” JP Sears, a kind of Stephen Colbert for the New Age set. Dressed in a purple T-shirt and pale green headband, with a flower tucked into his chest-length red hair. Ultra Spiritual JP delivers earnest, convoluted advice on everything from vegetarianism to ayahuasca to the psychology of the selfie, all in pitch-perfect deadpa…
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…part. Don’t ever give in to—dare I say it—opening your heart. The presumed New York Times reader is similar, I think: basically secular, basically liberal, and basically intellectual. S/he probably drinks a lot of coffee, spends a good deal of money on food and clothing, and is, in essence, a good person. But anything New Agey or touchy-feely—in fact, anything more demanding than whining about neuroses on the couch of a ritzy psychotherapist—well,…
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…an ideological understanding of the Gospel that the Gospel is like a penal code.” The hardliners on divorce were backed by an open letter to the synod signed by 48 conservatives, including prominent Catholics like natural law scholar Robert George and former US ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, but also conservative protestants like Rick Warren and signees from the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council, which suggests that…
Read More…ab.” Isle of Man: Marriage equality now in effect As of Friday, July 22, a new law allows same-sex couples to legally marry or choose a civil partnership. The Guardian’s Helen Pidd reports: Church of England ministers do not have to marry gay couples under the new law. The island’s bishop, who sits in the Manx parliament’s upper chamber, was one of a handful of representatives to oppose equal marriage… [Chief Minister Allan] Bell was one of a numb…
Read More…, when a federal judge in Wisconsin found the relevant portions of the tax code to be unconstitutional, but the three judges on the appellate panel did not tip their hand, although they showed few outward signs that they agreed. The regulation at issue is more than sixty years old, enacted in the 1950s to ensure that ministers at churches who could not afford to provide them with housing could nevertheless benefit from the same tax breaks as minis…
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…fic antisemites and racists that we start to shut down when presented with new ones. QAnon, for example, has become so deeply ingrained in far-right discourse—and, more disturbingly, in conventional Republican rhetoric—that we tend to just move past it. Not because the damage is healed: as Jesselynn Cook details in her new book, The Quiet Damage, QAnon has ripped apart families and left lasting scars. And not because, post-Q, the beliefs have gone…
Read More…ooklet’s content isn’t religious: This may be the first nonreligious moral code based wholly on common sense. It was written by L. Ron Hubbard as an individual work and it not part of any religious doctrine. Any reprinting or individual distribution of it does not infer connection with or sponsorship of any religious organization. It is therefore admissible for government departments and employees to distribute it as a nonreligious activity. (Repr…
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…attacked by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show. “It’s like being gummed by a newt. It doesn’t actually hurt but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.” Which pretty much sums up my response to David Klinghoffer’s post, “Dear Lauri Lebo, Please Help Me Understand Your Conspiracy Theory,” in which he impugns both my intelligence and my understanding of the controversies I write about. But then it occurred to me that next month marks the five-ye…
Read More…nia pastor instrumental in the California Proposition 8 fight who now runs Newt Gingrich’s Renewing American Leadership, and Harry Jackson, who relentlessly opposed D.C.’s gay marriage law; religious right historian David Barton; Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; Rod Parsley, who, like John Hagee, is apparently making a comeback after being rejected by McCain in 2008; Jerry Boykin, the…
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