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Spiritual Unplugging, Or What to Do When There is Wifi at the Ashram

By Matt Hamilton

…self-interrogation boiled, my hand extended to the right. I reached for my phone, but I found nothing. At first I laughed at my instinct, my muscle memory. The phone, with its glowing screen, gave me solace and control. But I was tied to my cushion for another hour, and in this ashram for another day, so email would have to wait. I panicked. My heart raced. Would my editor be asking for me? Would a reply from that politician’s secretary sit unansw…

Pop-Culture Angels Are More Than Just Embarrassing Kitsch

By Ed Simon

…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…

First Baptist Church, Sutherland Springs Texas

Can Government Solve The Evil Of Mass Shootings? A Response to Mollie Hemingway

By Daniel Schultz

…, what is now the nation’s fourth-worst gun massacre (the shootings in Las Vegas being number one), was “only the 14th mass murder at an American house of worship since 1963.” Only! We have to have rankings of such things now, complete with charts detailing deadly incidents at faith properties… and by denomination? The interminable debate about prayers-vs.-action was back, too. As soon as politicians started tweeting their standard lines about “th…

NYPD Lied About Islamophobic Third Jihad

By Hussein Rashid

…the contractor was. Imagine this scenario: A man walks into a building in NYC. No one knows who he is. No one asks his name. He has a package. He says eat it, you’ll like it. Everybody eats it. It’s not very likely, but this is exactly the scenario the NYPD wants us to believe. The only thing I can believe about the story is that they are lying. Mayor Bloomberg may be angry about the fact that the movie was shown, but that only means one of two t…

Sex and the (Hipster) Church—Just a Gimmick?

By Nicole Greenfield

…well-rehearsed shtick, were publicizing their book, Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy With Your Spouse, in which they challenge husbands and wives to have sex every day for a week straight. They are the latest in a line of pastors—Mark Driscoll perhaps the most well-known among them—who claim that society has taken sex too far, and that the church hasn’t taken it far enough; that culture has hijacked sex, and that God has been left out of th…

Chris Christie Apologizes. . . For Saying Something True

By Sarah Posner

…he Republican Jewish Coalition meeting this weekend in — where else? — Las Vegas. None of the speakers, including Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, or embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, is Jewish. But some made efforts to boast (awkwardly, the Times notes) their loyalty to the Jews. In Christie’s case, this effort quickly turned sour, at least in Republican “pro-Israel” eyes. Like any non-Jewish politician ad…

Ministries of Presence: A Report from Nepal

By Cathleen Falsani

…o get in, we found each other and shared a taxi to an off-the-beaten-track hotel around the corner from where he was staying with friends not far from the Swayambhunath Temple famous for its historic sacred buildings and roving bands of ill-mannered monkeys. Pastor Gautham and Rekha Rai in the living room of the home they share with 25 other family members in Kathmandu on May 8, 2015. Photo by Cathleen Falsani. Over the course of the days that fol…

How Much Did Jesus Care About Sex?

By Peter Laarman

…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…nd Wagner’s partnership was dynamic, and they even taught a controversial class together at Fuller where students “exercised” their spiritual gifts on each other. It was a cause of great consternation for Fuller’s administration, and, because of problems in the course, they asked Wimber to leave. Wagner, as a tenured professor, continued to teach the class with lay persons, which also became problematic. It was in the late 1980s, however, when Wag…

Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

By Charlotte Dalwood

…the Anglican Communion to consecrate an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson. Last year, however, Bishop Robinson inexplicably told LGBTQ+ Episcopalians, incensed that the denomination had invited noted-homophobe Max Lucado to preach from the Episcopal-run National Cathedral, that “we’ve won.” A month later, The Episcopal Church responded to a Vatican decree prohibiting Roman Catholic priests from blessing same-sex unions by tweeting “The Episcopal C…