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Looking For Answers at the Oscars: A Guide to This Year’s Contenders

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ing sense of shared and sharing identities, it is also a ritualistic coming-of-age story in which young Zuckerberg becomes a man through rites of passage. These are peculiar rites to be sure, even as they mimic broad structures of separation, transition, and reincorporation found in initiation rites the world over. From Face-to-Face to Interface Reviewing the film in the New York Times, Manohla Dargis tells us, “instead of discovering his authenti…

James Foley Prayed, But He Was Not a Martyr

By Alana Massey

…ect of both personal and corporate prayer. When he speaks to his mother by phone from Libya, she asks if he has felt the prayers coming from his home as well. He tells her that he has felt them and reports, “Maybe it was others’ prayers strengthening me, keeping me afloat.” This is precisely the kind of hope that prayer can inspire that should become central to the understanding of it for those of us who do not engage in prayer. Though the old aph…

Maybe The Question Is: Should Shabbat Be The New Yoga?

By Michael Schulson

…zation are more relevant than ever. The loss of weekends and the technology-driven collapse of work-life boundaries doesn’t just plague young professionals in New York and San Francisco; it’s a way that low-wage employers wring more work out of their employees—and, in the process, sometimes make their lives hellish. Especially among young Americans, affiliation with organized religion is declining. But affiliation with specific religious or spirit…

Gay Marriage Bill Totalitarian Says Head Bishop

By Peter Montgomery

…elected governor of New York pass a law to end discrimination against same-sex couples, that would be equivalent to a totalitarian government deciding “who lives and who dies?” If so, Dolan is forfeiting his right to have his arguments taken seriously by legislators and anyone else. Dolan’s reference to “natural law” mirrors NOM’s use of “natural marriage” and the Manhattan Declaration’s invocation of “natural human reason” to buttress their reli…

Becoming Forever Lonesome: How Violence Changes Us

By Amanda Robb

…ing lot of a mall where she planned to pick up things on her daughter’s off-to-college list, when a DJ on her easy-listening radio station cut it to say there had been a shooting at the high school. The mother turned her car around and headed straight there. It was 11:30 a.m. so she knew where her daughter was: the library. She knew the very table the girl sat at. So the mother figured she would march into the school and bring the girl straight ho…

Star Trek: Politics Anti-Matters

By Nathan Schneider

…imes (often the best of its times), and of pointing a way forward. It showed the first interracial kiss on American television, and it invented the flip-phone. I hope, for our sake, that Star Trek has finally gotten out of touch….

ACLU and Thomas More Law Center Rush to Terry Jones Defense

By Lauri Lebo

…gion is going through, you mean to tell me that we can’t deal with some ass-backward country preacher spouting off about his xenophobic fears of Arab-Americans and/or Islam? Indifference, ridicule, pity — any of these would’ve been an appropriate response to this fool. Arguing him down outside the center would’ve been fine, too, for the more passionate among us. But throwing the man in jail truly risks turning a gasbag into a poster boy for the f…

White House Position
on Exemption from Contraception Coverage
“Not a Done Deal”?

By Sarah Posner

…coverage violates their religious conscience. Yesterday I reported that pro-choice groups expected Obama to side with the Bishops, as does the anti-choice group Democrats for Life. When asked for comment on Jacobson’s report that the administration believes it “owes” the Bishops, a White House spokesperson directed me to the Department of Health and Human Services, which declined to comment. I’ve otherwise been unable to confirm thus far that this…

The Many, Not the Few: An Anthem for Occupy

By Elizabeth Drescher

…he British in 1819. Though taking a toll on the British, the Xhosa were out-manned and out-gunned, and Makana the Prophet eventually surrendered himself to prevent further bloodshed. He was imprisoned on Robben Island, where he perished while leading the escape of some thirty fellow prisoners. It is said that Nelson Mandela, Robben Island’s most famous 20th-century prisoner, called for the renaming of the prison in honor of Makana. Of course, Hawa…

Meet the “New Age” Stephen Colbert

By Andrew Aghapour

…w are you going to announce it over social media if you don’t have a smart phone? And smartphones: they are helpful, but they are also limited. I’m working with some of my guides to develop what’s called a WisePhone, and it’s smarter than a smartphone. What are some of the features of the WisePhone? You won’t lose it anymore because it won’t be influenced by gravity, so it won’t fall down the cracks of your couch. It will also be able to tweet or…