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What Fundamentalist Christian Fiction Can Teach Us About Our American Crisis

By Christopher Douglas

…d […] by the superior blood of Jesus,” White “released angels and the Holy Spirit and walls of fire” in order to “burn up every demonic altar” and “renounce every demonic spirit” and “every covenant made with Satan.” https://twitter.com/i/status/1171803697292238853 Like some other fundamentalist supporters, White later attributed the President’s impeachment to “demonic schemes” and “demonic stirrings and manipulations”—literally demonizing the Pre…

Purpose Driven Atheism: Secular Maharishis Seeking True Believers

By Frank Schaeffer

…t has nothing to do with science. Whether we are embracing the life of the spirit or running from it, most of us seem to affirm or reject faith too vehemently to claim that we just don’t care. The New Atheists have been so shrill in their attempts to put what they regard as religious Dims in their place that even some other atheists find them abrasive. These critics of the New Atheists might be called New New Atheists. They too have come forward t…

Is Yoga OK for Catholics or Not?: The Conversation Continues

By Kyle Garton-Gundling

…, and act in unethical, ways. (Chogyam Trungpa likewise acknowledges that “spiritual pride…is as much a problem in theistic disciplines as in Buddhism.”) The dangers posited in the Letter are explicitly spiritual, and their material outcomes are not characterized as everyday occurrences or inevitable outcomes of yoga. Jain also contends that the Letter is yogaphobic for suggesting that modern postural yoga, with its non-metaphysical emphasis on he…

Anti-Gay Evangelicalism is the Norm: A Less Rosy Take on the Evangelical “Tipping Point”

By Chrissy Stroop

…are living up to Christ’s example of radical inclusivity that I see as the spirit of the Gospel. The problem is that an awful lot of Christians, particularly in evangelical culture, continue to fetishize the letter and lose sight of the spirit. And not only that, but instead of accepting that we live in a pluralist society, too many of these evangelicals, with a huge assist from conservative Catholics, go off in the name of “religious freedom” to…

Inside the Evangelical Beliefs and Practices that Facilitate Abuse in Families like the Duggars’

By Caroline Matas

…y” that will allow her to grow her loyalty and cultivate “a meek and quiet spirit.” When Josh married Anna Keller, whose family is also deeply enmeshed in IBLP, they professed their support for this scaffolding structure of authority in their own relationship. In Josh and Anna’s wedding special for 17 Kids and Counting, Anna’s father Mike Keller describes how this system informed both families’ approach to their children’s marriage: “The way God o…

Sacred Geography: A Queer Latino Theological Response to Orlando

By Xiomara Verenice Cervantes-Gómez

…d traversed dangerous landscapes just to get there in the first place. The Spirit lived and carried through each and every one of us. We emerged from the shadows we worshipped in to survive and to be storytellers about our journeys. These are our sacred spaces. I watch the media tripping over how to describe this tragedy, anxiously going back and forth between “terrorism” and “hate crime.” (When many of us know, all too well, that it is “terrorism…

Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” Depicts Death Struggle Between Hope and Despair

By Peter Laarman

…for destroying those who destroy the earth. It seems pretty clear that the spirit of radical mystic Thomas Merton hovers over this film. Merton’s name comes up twice in the screenplay, and both Schrader and his protagonist seem to resonate with the words that Merton wrote in 1962 to Ernesto Cardenal, the Nicaraguan theologian, poet, and revolutionary: The world is full of great criminals with enormous power, and they are in a death struggle with e…

The Happening and the Gospel of Bruce Springsteen

By Diane Winston

…ving God. Says reviewer Susan Wunderlink, “Her songs put forward Christian spiritual elements like faith and prayer, but Parton has never been one to get specific about theology.” (Hmm—might there be a piece on the Bible, the Boss, and the Backwoods Barbie: sin and salvation from Nashville to New Jersey?) The folks behind Church Basement Roadshow do get specific about theology, and since they were good enough to show up at my synagogue Saturday mo…

Jesus Died For This?

By Becky Garrison

…art, I’d encourage them to embark on their own pilgrimage to see where the spirit may be speaking to them. View my book as an AA meeting, take what works for you in your quest and leave the rest. Is there anything you had to leave out? Given that various odd and sundry Monty Python motifs informed portions of my pilgrimage, I penned a chapter where I asked some of my fellow pilgrims how Monty Python informed their spiritual joruneys. The result wa…

American Nuns Under the Vatican Microscope

By Mary E. Hunt

…of US women’s religious communities at a museum in Cincinnati. “Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America” is a carefully researched, well funded, expertly mounted exhibit of the proud and stunning history of American nuns. The Vatican could save itself a lot of trouble by simply sending its staff to the Cincinnati History Museum where the exhibit is currently on display or to the Women’s Museum in Dallas, Texas, the Smithsonian in Washington…