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From The Virgin Mary to a Housewife in Queens: Inside The Seer of Bayside

By Joseph Laycock

…ry to be both scholarly and accessible. I hope that anyone interested in Marian apparitions or Catholic culture would find this book enjoyable. As far as a larger scholarly conversation, I hope this book will help steer the study of American religious history away from what has been called a “two-tier” model of religion. Historians like Robert Orsi have argued that scholars have implicitly made a distinction between “true religion” and various sub…

Pope Decries ‘Ideological Colonization’ of Family; Islamic State Executes Gays and Others; Gay Couple Gets Long-Delayed Wedding in Mexico; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…m the Washington Blade: A local judge officiated what the San Diego Union-Tribune described as the “impromptu wedding” of Victor Fernando Urias Amparo and Victor Manuel Aguirre Espinoza that took place outside Mexicali City Hall during an LGBT rights protest. Aguirre told the Washington Blade that Mexicali Mayor Jaime Díaz Ochoa’s assistant came up to him and Urias and told them that he would like to allow them to marry “at that moment.” The two m…

US Names Int’l Envoy for LGBT Rights; Marriage revolution spreads in Mexico; Scott Lively Warns World of Anti-Christ; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…civil war to punish Russia for opposing the “core value” of America, the priority of his State Department? Or (more importantly to the “gays”) to prevent the Russians from leading a pro-family counter-revolution in the world? Lively also warned this week that if the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality, as many expect, this June, it will trigger “some larger act of God’s punishment on the entire world,” including the arrival of…

Meet the “New Age” Stephen Colbert

By Andrew Aghapour

…scending, bourgeois elements of New Age culture; it’s all about looking spiritual by wearing hundred-dollar Lululemon pants and talking endlessly about intuition and energy. And it’s about inconsistencies, like this one from episode 3 “On How to Become a Vegetarian”: As a spiritual seeker you don’t believe in death, [since] it’s only an illusion… But as a vegetarian you need to strategically forget this belief at times so you can get more emotiona…

Does the Science Show that Spirituality Will Benefit Your Child?

By Michael Schulson

…l sciences as robust and protective against the most serious forms of suffering and risk as a personal spirituality. There’s the term “spirituality,” as we use in ordinary conversation, which is fairly vague. But for research, you need to have the term locked down. How does our day-to-day use of “spirituality” differ from the definition you use in the lab? Spirituality comes for many people within their religious tradition, and for many other peop…

Dear Lindsay Lohan, I’m Sorry

By Haroon Moghul

…at, and I apologize for being part of such a mean gesture. In fact I had a phone conversation with a prominent American imam last night—in Islam, we say subhanallah at such coincidences—and he mentioned in passing how offended many white American Muslims were by this very kind of gesture. On reflection, I can see why. I don’t find racial insensitivity humorous directed at me. The least I can do is not support it. And the least I can do is the leas…

The Glorious, Ethnically-Challenged, Sisterhood of Spy

By Haroon Moghul

…ible to racially profile. Terrifying. As an assassin named Lia, Nargis Fakhri brings a gorgeous dangerousness to her role in Spy, this weekend’s top box office hit. Pretty much only that, though. You’d think a Hollywood action-comedy could make more use of her, but she’s half-Czech and half-Pakistani, which pretty much means she’s at the bad end of both worlds. Deny it all you want to, Eastern Europeanness is all but mandatory for Bond villains, r…

Terror In South Carolina

By Sarah Posner

…era South Africa and Rhodesia and sitting on a car with a license plate bearing the words “Confederate States of America.” He reportedly said, after sitting for an hour next to Pinckney and other worshippers at Emanuel, and after shooting them, and after a worshipper attempted to talk him out of reloading his gun, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” There couldn’t be clearer evidence of not…

The Sacred and the Dead: Ten Writers on the End of an American Adventure

By The Editors

…ptic, we hope you’ll join us as we mark the conclusion of this singular American pilgrimage. ________ #1 : It’s (Not) Just a Box of Rain by Cathleen Falsani Inside the sound, swaying and dancing and spinning with abandon, many of the Dead’s fans discovered something more transcendent than a blissed-out, good time. They found belonging. #2 : “Friend of the Devil” is a Love Song by Pitman B. Potter When the song’s narrator hopes he can “get some sle…

Can You Make a Comedy About UFO Cult Mass Suicide?

By Joseph Laycock

…at least five dollars could be defined as a vagrant. So members always carried five dollars and money for a phone call. Benjamin Zeller, author of Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion, has also noted that Heaven’s Gate members engaged in a lot of self-deprecating humor because they were aware that mainstream society perceived them as crazy. This research led Jones to conclude that a comedy about Heaven’s Gate might not be as inappropriate as it…