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Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided Explores the Dark Side of Positive Thinking

By Michelle Goldberg

…od was no longer hostile or indifferent; he was a ubiquitous, all-powerful Spirit or Mind, and since ‘man’ was really Spirit too, man was coterminous with God… The trick, for humans, was to access the boundless power of Spirit and thus exercise control over the physical world.” From there, Ehrenreich shows how positive thinking evolved into a creed of capitalist motivation, largely by way of Norman Vincent Peale. She writes of the truly terrifying…

Make Way For The Homo Superior: How I Lost One Leper Messiah, and Gained Another, Part 6

By Mark Dery

…tes the influence of Orphic thought on Plato, who often expressed profound spiritual ideas through sexual images [and who] saw a close relationship between erotic and religious impulses because for him love began in worship, but at the same time seeking a closer union with divinity. Plato, who believed that love regained the soul’s purity through the contemplation of beauty, uttered these remarkable lines in the Phaedrus: “Such as one, as soon as…

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Legacy of Eugenics and Racism Can’t Be Ignored

By John P. Slattery

…enter the final stages of the Pneumatosphere and become one with God. The Spirit of the Earth, Teilhard writes, can only be found once we humans employ evolution to our spiritual advantage and find God in and outside of the world. Teilhard connected evolution and Christianity together in remarkably original ways, weaving together ideas from philosophy, theology, paleontology, biology, and physics in order to create entire systems of history, the…

Immigration As A Progressive Game Changer—Without Evangelical Support

By Sarah Posner

…His central tenet of theo-politics: to “repudiate the spirit of Herod, the spirit of Sodom and Gomorrah, the spirit of Jezebel.” Rodriguez, like the Catholic bishops, opposes immigration reform with LGBT equality. But a bloc of House Democrats are opposed to letting that critical piece of justice fall away from comprehensive immigration reform. As Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), a supporter of immigration reform with LGBT equality, told me a few weeks ag…

Don’t Let Bigoted Campaigns Sour You to the Revolutionary Idea of Religious Freedom

By Frederick Clarkson

…ious identity neither advantages nor disadvantages us as citizens. In that spirit, a remarkable group of national organizations are promoting a model Religious Freedom Day proclamation or resolution for state and local executives and legislators. It seeks to be true to the facts of history and the intentions of the Statute, while remaining unburdened by the many contemporary issues related to religious freedom. Those promoting the model resolution…

To Let It Go and So To Find A Way: U2, (A)Live with Grief and Grace

By Cathleen Falsani

…ht have been written by the Psalmist himself. The band played one of their spiritual anthems, “Bad,” with its call and response: If I could, through myself, set your spirit free I’d lead your heart away, see you break, break away Into the light and to the day. To let it go and so to find away. To let it go and so find away. I’m wide awake. I’m wide awake, wide awake. I’m not sleeping. U2’s encore that night was a tribute to Mr. Sheehan, a display…

Sacred&Profane: The Sacred Pelvis

By Gary Laderman

…but the King is undeniably a cultural force that bears economic as well as spiritual fruit, saving and satisfying, entertaining and enlightening the masses with more than charisma or savvy marketing. The cult of Elvis knows no bounds, has no hard and fast boundaries that distinguish it as only an industry, or entertainment; it is worthy of church, but the spirit of Elvis cannot be institutionalized. From Graceland to cyberspace, the ghost of Elvis…

Pope Warns of “Christianophobia”

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…as often as he has done about such things. And he seemed to intensify his spirited concern by rehearsing a vision from Hildegaard of Bingen, one in which the Church appeared to her as sullied, diseased, and literally torn apart. The blame for the Church’s state lay with none other than her priests. In that vision, Benedict concludes, the Church “is stained with dust, and this is how we have seen it. Her garment is torn–by the sins of priests.” Bu…

Václav Havel: Democracy as Spiritual Discipline

By Peter Montgomery

…und to the ears of a political scientist – humane, moral, intellectual and spiritual, and cultural. […] Building an intellectual and spiritual state — a state based on ideas — does not mean building an ideological state. Indeed, an ideological state cannot be intellectual or spiritual. A state based on ideas is precisely the opposite: it is meant to extricate human beings from the straitjacket of ideological interpretations, and to rehabilitate th…

Pride Month & Prejudice; ‘Worrisome Time’ For LGBT People; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ocial conservative leader The CBC reports on a gathering of indigenous two-spirit and LGBT youth that was held in Regina in May: “The talking circle was facilitated by two-spirit elder Marjorie Beaucage, who described the circle as a kind of peer support for young Indigenous people who need to talk about their gender identity. Vice reviews the positions of Andrew Scheer, who was elected to lead the Conservative Party: It’s no secret in Ottawa that…