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Can the “Spiritual Left” Make the Change They Wish to See?

By Arielle Levites

…ough emotional self-development. Spiritual practitioners argue that we can best change the world through changing ourselves. If we properly govern our own emotional responses, lowering negative emotion while cultivating positive emotion we make our country a better place, one interpersonal interaction at a time. And so, when Yoga Journal asked 10 yogis to offer reflections on the presidential election results, it’s not surprising that they emphasi…

Are You Doing Your Part in the Baby War?

By Katherine Stewart

…dy. “We had originally planned not to have kids, but now we have to do our best to repopulate the city with Christians.” The religious right consistently promotes policies that defund any kind of government efforts to improve the conditions of working families. They support politicians and policies that strip poor, working and middle class families of social support. Everything from food stamps to public education to health care are on the choppin…

Maybe Trump Should Pray About His Problems With Religious Voters?

By Daniel Schultz

…appening. America’s Problem Child isn’t winning Jews, he’s doing his level best to piss off every Hispanic in the Sunshine State, and there just aren’t enough working-class whites to save him. He’s in real trouble. Actually, saying Trump’s in real trouble is wildly understating the case, but the RD editors expect a minimal dignity, so I really can’t put things as bluntly as I should. Here’s why (item two): Trump is stinking up the joint with Catho…

Partisanship Is The New Civil Religion

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ugh three weeks, and not just for the economy. Despite the new President’s best efforts to change the culture and the tone of Washington, DC, an economic stimulus package (680 pages long) was passed in the US House of Representatives without a single Republican vote. It was a staggering symbolic defeat. And then, an initially more hopeful process to create a leaner bill (431 pages long) in the Senate stalled, despite back-room dealing among Senate…

Media Fail to Acknowledge That 2024 Hopeful Ron DeSantis is as Catholic as Biden

By Chrissy Stroop

…share those beliefs. Nor should they shape anyone’s ability to access the best healthcare they need in a given situation, to adopt children, or to marry. This isn’t merely theoretical to me. Although I cannot get pregnant, being queer is enough to deter me from seeking healthcare in a Catholic or Protestant hospital when at all possible, since I can’t trust doctors beholden to Christian dogma to care for me appropriately. Catholic hospitals, whos…

Let’s Get Lost: Mapping Religion in the 21st Century

By Spencer Dew

…r, neither an omniscient narrator nor Emersonian Invisible Eyeball, is, at best, a recorder in a room, for a limited amount of time and recording on only one wavelength. We have the sounds of cooking, but not the smell or the taste of that fried fish. While offering us what we would otherwise not hear, this project also highlights limitations that are always on us. Such mapping exemplifies what anthropologist John L. Jackson, Jr. calls “thin descr…

NOM Claims Victimhood for the Holidays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ir intolerance of me. For those family members, ignoring them is often the best thing to do. Leave the room when they start in on you. (I told my therapist I thought this was rude, but she reminded me that if I told a family member that I didn’t want to have this conversation and they persisted, it was really the obnoxious family member who was rude and I had every right to walk away after that.) Perhaps the best thing to do this holiday season—if…

Progressive & Religious

By Robert P. Jones

…that “religion poisons everything” on the other. I firmly believe that the best solution to bad religion is good religion. Given the ugly and divisive side of religion that has been so prominent in American politics, I understand the appeal of these neo-atheist books. They’ve been at the top of the best-seller lists (in the category of religion no less!) because they have tapped into a backlash. However, they make the mistake of rejecting all reli…

Fake, Evil, Spiritual, Commodified; What’s the Truth About Popular Yoga?

By Andrea R. Jain

…eaders, it is not properly communicating its main arguments. I suppose the best way to convey what I mean is to point to Selling Yoga’s epigraph by Aldous Huxley: “Orthodoxy is the diehard of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget.” Orthodoxy’s rejection of critical thinking, especially with regard to its own historical contingency, is problematic for many reasons but primarily because it has violent consequences for living peo…

What is Community?

By Amina Wadud

…off last year after my accident.) You know what they say about saving the best for last?! So it is appropriate, I think, that in my reading I came across several discussions about the ummah which gave me additional food for thought. The word ummah comes from the same root as the word for mother, umm, in Arabic. So, with such a root, you should get the picture already. It’s about intimate connections. But it is never used for family nor even for e…