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Zen and the Art of Zombie Killing: A Buddhist Anti-Tech Manifesto

By Max Zahn

…tly in a waiting room or on a train, he now reaches immediately for a smartphone. As dependence grows, personal agency diminishes. Seen in this light compulsions demand, above all else, restraint. After all, an attentive and wise consumer can still indulge an internal trigger, albeit mindfully. “Agency needs to happen adjacent to one’s meditation,” explained Eido Frances Carney, the abbess at the Olympia Zen Center. “If I notice myself absorbed in…

Hopping on the Meditation Brandwagon: “Heartfulness” Makes Landfall in Los Angeles

By Anita Little

…. Heck, the Heartfulness organization even received an official mayoral welcoming from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Despite its self-described foundation in ancient cultures, Heartfulness-the-brand seems very much a 21st-century operation. There’s a toll-free number for people to call where if you press three, you’ll be connected to a Heartfulness associate in North America. The organization offers a livestream of conferences on their web site…

Unpacking the Giglio Imbroglio

By Sarah Posner

…, drawn the curtain back on at least one religious activist it has felt so compelled to appeal to, in part to win votes (although that didn’t appear to be either helpful or necessary), and in part to appear welcoming even to Obama’s conservative critics (a trait some people laud and others see as a character flaw). We know, though, that when someone is praised for their religiously-motivated work in an area one might agree with them on (combatting…

Old Testament ‘Bad,’ New Testament ‘Good’: A Dangerous (and Mistaken) Assumption

By Peter Laarman

…e division between “Old Testament” harshness and “New Testament” sweetness come from? In my view, it comes from the widespread but mistaken idea held by Christians (including cultural Christians), that it’s okay to follow St. Paul in drawing a sharp line between the old and oppressive Jewish insistence on “law” and the new Christian era of “grace.” (It goes without saying that the perception of a sharp dividing line is strongly reinforced by the v…

Failure to Grasp the Distinct Character and History of Eastern Christianity is Compromising Our Understanding of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

By Katherine Kelaidis

…that, in the case of Orthodoxy, this often results in non-Western convert communities, such as in sub-Saharan Africa and South Korea, being completely ignored). This conflation ignores the very real history of conquest and occupation that occurred between Western and Eastern Christendom, in which the West has almost always been the aggressor, that stands as one of the foundations of modern Eastern Christian identity. For example, the 1204 Sack of…

Savoring the Haterade: Why Jews Love Dara Horn’s ‘People Love Dead Jews’

By Shaul Magid

…how people love dead Jews. It sounds kind of ghoulish, but it’s true. The comments on the reviews on Amazon are off the charts, almost in a macabre way; it made me feel strangely uncomfortable reading them. It’s as if they’re all saying, in myriad ways, “you see, we were right, everyone hates the Jews.” Jews seem to love to have that inherited anxiety confirmed. In some way, and herein lies the problem, it is presently the most successful answer…

Evangelicals in Moral Panic Over Exvangelicals

By Chrissy Stroop

…ng that there is much hypocrisy in evangelicalism worth criticizing before coming to the nonsense conclusion that “We are losing a generation—not because they are secularists, but because they believe we are.” In late April, I responded to Moore’s newsletter comments about exvangelicals in an open letter, asking him to talk to, rather than merely about, exvies. As I addressed the points he raised, I shared some of my own experience, including some…

Alabama’s Yoga Ban Is Part of the Christian Right’s War on Pluralism

By Manisha Sunil

…in public schools. In reality, public schools, particularly those in low-income, BIPOC communities, are actually suffering due to a lack of funding—funding that religious conservatives are also trying to funnel into religious, private institutions. Religious conservatives are more than eager to teach the Bible in public schools using public funds. But the moment people from different backgrounds have the temerity to educate others about their cult…

Even Calling the Debate a ‘Shitshow’ Normalizes the Threat to Democracy

By John Stoehr

…facts. It cannot, and will not, reach people who project onto the world a compulsive fetish for dominance or who are indifferent to the social contract of our common understanding. People who believe lies are not going to change their minds when corrected. They’ll just find other lies to believe in; other lies for the fact-checkers to chase. Reporters are trapped in an abusive relationship proportional to their unwillingness to confront their abu…

The Myth of the ‘Lone Wolf’ Shooter Blinds Us to the Reality of White Supremacy

By Ivan Strenski

…these digital associations may be, they nonetheless effectively form real communities—common minds for the like-minded. Online sites must, thus, be taken seriously as the new venues where digital Klans gather, preparing for the next ride—even if they perform the actual ride alone. Where critics need to focus instead is on sharpening the sense in which these online wolf packs can be said to be criminal communities like the Gambino or Lucchese crim…