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Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

No other end-of-year list can hope to offer such profound juxtapositions: a groundbreaking female Mennonite pastor alongside an “immortalist”; the transcendent wisdom of a civil rights leader alongside one of the most hate-filled religious figures in contemporary memory. But here it is, a connect-the-dots portrait of a powerfully complicated American religious landscape, circa 2014. Vincent Gordon Harding Historian and theologian Vincent Gordon H…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…waste American money to buy their expensive oil when we could have our own cheap oil?” “Why is he trying to make rich people poor?” “How is it right to punish rich people for working hard and realizing the American Dream?” It was late on a Friday night and I was tired, so I half-heartedly responded by explaining that there are other factors to consider in every charged question she’d been armed with. But I wondered, “Why the hell was the Salvation…

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…houris, dark-eyed women. We all know that Mohammad Atta, who flew American Airlines flight 11 into the Twin Towers on 9/11, was inspired by this promise. But among progressives, the sex promised to the righteous in the Qur’an isn’t sex as we know it, but something mysterious and sublime for which sex is a poetic stand-in. Second, what happens to our bodies in heaven? This is my favorite part of the heaven conversation. For if you believe in heaven…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…h buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?) The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, punching a massive hole that has filled up with…

The Sex Scandal Following Whole Foods’ Guru

By Michael Schulson

…ned with authentic caring.” Examples include Whole Foods Market, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and, somewhat mysteriously, Amazon.com, which is known for using underpaid temp-style labor in its warehouses and allegedly mistreating employees at its home offices. You don’t have to be a Marxist to question whether these institutions are “fulfilling every major value of the great spiritual traditions.” At the very least, that sentiment might seem ali…

World Congress of Families Draws Anti-LGBT Activists to Budapest; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…n review the status of LGBT people in Cambodia, which “has seen increasing numbers of gays emerging into public life as the country continues to rapidly normalize after three decades of war.” Cambodians have traditionally shunned the gay community, and LGBT practices are often viewed as being against nature and a threat to rebuilding the social order in the aftermath of three decades of war, which obliterated the country’s social fabric. Overcomin…

Make Aeronautic Jobs, Not Jihad

By Haroon Moghul

…tions ravenous for rights, dignity, and prosperity. In short, thank the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, for a big order signed on the occasion of President Obama’s visit (230 planes at $21.7 billion!). And thank one of the world’s fastest-growing airlines, Emirates from Dubai, for the other (50 jets at $18 billion). So here’s to cooperation of the civilizations. Here’s to throwing facts in the face of faux analysis. While Victoria Jackso…

What Makes a Human Bomb Tick?

By Gordon Haber

On Christmas Day, 2009, as a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam prepared to land in Detroit, passengers smelled smoke and heard a series of bangs or popping noises. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old man from a prominent Nigerian family, was attempting to ignite an explosive device sewn into his underwear. He succeeded only in igniting himself—after his arrest, he had to be treated for second-degree burns on his hands and crotch. Inst…

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ramadan

By Haroon Moghul

…department. Ramadan + deportation: Bonus points on Pakistan International Airlines. Which, like fasting breath (when you don’t eat for a long time, your breath starts to kick), nobody wants to get near. See also safe distance. Namauzea: Namaz is the Persian word for ‘prayer,’ and is traditionally used by all the peoples who were introduced to Islam by Persians or Persophones, which is kind of like a talking cat. (Think Bravo’s Shahs of Sunset wit…