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Mubarak Steps Down; The Birth of a New Egyptian State

By Zaid Hassan

…n a new Egypt look like? Is it possible to start looking for signs of the truly new? Can we protect these seeds and then start to nurture and grow them in the coming months and years? Can Egypt forge an evolutionary leap when it comes to the tired old nation-state? Is there a role for Islam in the formation of a new state? As we continue to fight, to heal, to celebrate and head back to our homes, let us carry a simple question with us: What do we…

The World’s Most Influential Yoga Teacher is a Homophobic Right-Wing Activist

By Andrea Jain and Michael Schulson

…o incorporate the guru’s yogic methods into the gay-reversal program. In a New York Times interview following the announcement, Tawadkar warned, “We will definitely use law as a tool to teach them what is right and what is wrong.” Purity politics If there’s a single theme that unifies Ramdev’s work, it’s the quest for purity—pure foods, pure medicines, pure sexuality, pure politics, and a pure Indian nation. “Because of pollution in food, thought,…

LGBT Victories at Olympics, Struggles in Brazil; Catholic Bishops Organizing Anti-Marriage Equality Protests in Mexico; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…iage equality may be years away but five couples fighting for their rights Worldcrunch reports on five gay and lesbian couples who “have decided to publicly fight for their fight to get married” in a country that is “home to a diehard traditional Catholicism that some say was even too pious for Pope Francis. The couples’ attempts to marry have been rejected by city officials. Krzysztof Łoś and Grzegorz Lepianka have been together for 13 years. “Ha…

What a Forgotten 19th Century Suffragist Can Teach Us About Women’s Rights vs. The Religious Right

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…rant, anti-diversity comments came in the form of a letter he wrote to the New York Mail & Express, 19 April, 1890, and reprinted in the American Sentinel in July of that year. The Sentinel was an Adventist publication, and while they too wanted to see the coming Day of the Lord, they were against the political work of constitutional amendments, calling out Blair’s “spirit of religious despotism and intolerance” and saying he and his cohorts worke…

Is Coverage of Liberal Religion a Media Fail?

By Sarah Posner

…ious subjects with contempt. I asked one person for examples. He cited the New York Times’ excellent Laurie Goodstein. If that’s an example of “contempt” I hope this person never watches Bill Maher. But undercutting even reporters who profess to be religious appears to be a conservative pastime. Conservatives complain about mainstream coverage of their religion, but one thing you never hear, or don’t hear very much, is liberal religious people com…

Want To Know How 84% of the World Sees Itself: Study Theology

By Alana Massey

…se whose beliefs and choices shaped so much of our history, and who—in the world outside the ivory tower—still shape plenty of the world today,” offering only a perfunctory nod to the 84% of the global population that has a religious affiliation. The majority of the article is spent looking backwards, reflecting on the psyches of French monks and Byzantine mystics rather than considering that the “insight into the minds and hearts, fears and conce…

Enlightenment’s Islam: A “Necessary Fiction”

By Rob Goodman

…ed target of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York City during the attacks, is calling the mural “a desecration.” And former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin tweeted that the “Muslim Mural is UNNECESSARY provocation.” Tempers are running even higher online, where noted blogger and Islam critic Pamela Geller called the mural “a stab in the eye”…. None of the above is really fictional. All of the qu…

Forget Romance, It’s Time for Some Radical Love

By Ed Simon

…oneself, and the hope and understanding that those things are not just bigger than you, but better than you as well. Badiou, again, writes that “Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world.” The hurdles, and the stakes, have never been higher: real love can and must endure….

Trickle-Down Metaphysics and the Dawn of a Trumpian New Age

By Michael Schulson

…was just ahead of his time. Born in Barbados, Neville lived and taught in New York City, where he said that he received mystical teachings from a mysterious Ethiopian Jew named Abdullah. His theology is complicated, and I won’t try to do it justice here. But some of his key conclusions about the relationship between the mind and the world crop up again in again in American thought. It’s not just The Secret. The basic idea here—that positive think…

Mexican Marriage Marches Show Struggle Between Church and Secular State; Pro-LGBT Mormon Group Grows After ‘Apostate’ Declaration; Botswana Gives Anti-Gay US Pastor the Boot; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…in these times require special pastoral and cultural attention around the world.” (New Ways Ministry notes that the pope’s negative comments about “gender theory” and “ideological colonization” are “encouraging bishops around the globe to speak similarly when marriage equality or transgender rights are discussed.) Brian Brown of the U.S. National Organization for Marriage and the World Congress of Families attended the march, which had also drawn…