Religion Dispatches
…nd while all sorts of class dynamics can shape denominational membership, extraordinarily few spiritual communities place a fixed cost barrier to entry. SoulCycle isn’t a church. But it certainly wants to look like a happy universalistic spiritualized family—albeit one with a healthy profit margin. Accordingly, it’s not cheap. A package of 50 classes in the Hamptons (which includes early class signups) runs for $4,000. New York magazine interviewe…
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…eation. In any kind of relationship, we have to grapple with the disparity between our expectations and realities. Children may only just now be learning, as Turkle suggests, “that it’s safer to talk to a computer than another human.” But if Old Yeller and many, many people’s child- and adulthoods are any indication, humans have known for a long time that it’s sometimes nicer to talk to a non-human entity, whom we sort-of-imagine is able to compre…
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…national spiritual leader. That is why the Grateful Dead is not just a band, but also a new American religious community. And “Truckin’” is not just a song, but also sacred text extolling the value and virtue of a new American pilgrimage, a journey that is at once physical, spiritual, and musical….
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…ago when they lacked it.” Ultimately, she believed, the growing antagonism between the sexes “will continue until man grants women equality as a human being.” She also urged men to attend to their wives’ sexual pleasure: “an emotionally mature and loving husband is the best person to help his wife to overcome her frigidity, provided he himself hasn’t caused it by being a clumsy, crude, and uninspiring lover.” None of this had very much to do with…
Read More…or transphobic attacks on almost a daily basis with 326 homicides of homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals last year. While President Dilma Rousseff has promised to support moves to criminalize anti-gay attacks, she says her government faces opposition from evangelical Christian and right wing politicians, some of whose supporters organized a counterparade on Sunday. China: Couples marry in West Hollywood Frontiers magazine reported this week on…
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…hing and sharing stories and playing their music. The audience was right next to them. The people in an audience are part of the experience because they’re drawn into that. We have live painters and slam poets as well so it kind of mixes it up, and in those moments, as someone who’s somewhat of an introvert myself, I love to just be there and to see that happening and to experience it with others. I don’t know that a lot of people in Seattle espec…
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…ntity rejects the goodness of creation. But think about people born intersex, or about those who are sexually mutilated in some way. As Jonathan Merritt has pointed out (including to Russell Moore!), intersex individuals belie the notion that gender is a strict binary. Apparently God creates them male and female and something in-between and also sometimes a bit of both. I can’t imagine that most Christians would shun a person born with sexual orga…
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…hat transpires in those live moments surpasses the kinesthetic, energetic exchange between bodies in a room where music is being performed by musicians on actual instruments. There is a real sense of metaphysical maneuvering amidst the crowd when, as each of U2’s members have described it on various occasions, “the Spirit is in the room.” “Have you ever been experienced?” A tribute to U2’s longtime tour manager, Dennis Sheehan, who had died earlie…
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…cently incarcerated) Dinesh D’Souza, a pair of rabbis, and Dennis Prager, explains exactly how improbable the survival of the Jewish people would be without divine intervention—which tends to happen in conjunction with blood moons. The whole enterprise builds toward the obvious question: what will happen to the Jews this time around? Regarding the answer, FBM does not hedge: it’s marauding Muslim hordes. Throughout the film, it’s Muslims—swarthy,…
Read More…r, Iran’s refusal to accept recommendations to fully decriminalise ‘same-sex sexual relations, remove the death penalty and flogging for offences relating to consensual same-sex relations between adults’ on the one hand, and making illegal torture due to sexual orientation with some reservations on the other, raise serious concerns regarding Iran’s will to implement the recommendations,” she added. “Unfortunately, no mechanisms are in place to mon…
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