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Oprah, Terrorist Cells, and the Meaning of Life: An Interview with Paul Froese

By Andrew Aghapour

…r of the Baylor Religion Surveys. The Cubit recently reached out to him by phone to discuss purpose, religion in modernity, and the brilliance of Tony Robbins. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. In your book you argue that modernity has brought about a kind of existential confusion, and you discovered this in an interesting way: by comparing levels of happiness and purposefulness to per-capita GDP. Could you tell us more abou…

Joyless Primaries Grind On

By Joanna Brooks

…g, highly observant LDS father. My friend described a brief, tension-laden phone call between father and son, wedged into a few free minutes after a church meeting. “Now, I’m going to serve my family,” said the father, bringing the call to a close. “Because that’s what I do.” And Mitt Romney is going to serve his country. Because that’s what he does. Like it or not. That joyless put-your-shoulder-to-the-wheel tenacity is setting the tone for the G…

Pro-Gay Marriage Mormon Keeps Faith Despite Church Pressure

By Joanna Brooks

…and within days an official at LDS Church headquarters placed a concerned phone call to Melanie S.’s local clergy. Three times her bishop met with Melanie to discuss the video. Because she had affiliated with “Mormons for Marriage,” he questioned whether or not Melanie and her husband should be allowed to keep their temple recommends—certificates that allow the most worthy and devoted Mormons to participate in the faith’s sacred temple rites. Nor…

Under Water: Waiting for the Flood (of Awareness) in Louisiana

By Drew Konow

…mpet in the high school marching band, of my grandfather mixing drinks at a 1960s dinner party, of my sister’s and my first communion, and of our many relatives, long since dead, whose names I can no longer keep track of. In the dining room sits my great-grandparents’ table, having weathered countless birthday celebrations and holiday meals. And here is where my great-grandaunt’s bookshelf stands, where I store the books I can’t quite justify lett…

Religion at Decade’s End

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ary discussion of the resurgence of politicized neo-traditional religion is 1979, not 2001. It was in 1979 that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary movement seized power in Iran. It was in 1979 that Jerry Falwell formed the Moral Majority in the United States and began lobbying hard, not just for a fundamentalist return to the political arena, but for the neo-conservative agenda of then–candidate Ronald Reagan. It was in 1979 that John Pau…

The Banality of Bernie

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…about it. The parallels are subtle, but intriguing. Hitler’s secretary from 1942 to 1945, Traudl Junge, claimed never to have heard her boss mention Jews or Holocaust. Not once. Squiallari, who served Madoff with personal distinction for over twenty-five years (at an eventual annual salary of $100,000), claims to have had no knowledge of what was going on two floors below her, on the storied 17th floor. Madoff’s wealthiest and mist notable victims…

Madoff, Through a Glass, Darkly

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ture of Madoff’s three-story securities complex. The two boys worked on the 19th floor; the Ponzi scheme was handled on the 17th floor. The boys claim they hardly ever set foot on the 17th floor. Others insist that building floors are very porous membranes indeed. The money, like the guilt, flows freely. The mystery deepens in the case of a man like Bernie Madoff, because he so mysteriously found a way to have it both ways. The offices on the 19th…

It’s Barack v. the Bible, Says Barton

By Paul Harvey

…fornia, and then to what came to be called the “New Christian Right” of the 1970s and 1980s. Communism disappeared from the enemies list after 1989 (except for older Christian Right stalwart David Noebel, who keeps even that faith while leading the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade even into his retirement), but Islam, an economic “New World Order,” the “gay agenda,” the always-present secular humanists and feminists, and numerous other threats aro…

Global LGBT Recap: Culture War Claims More Victims

By Peter Montgomery

…i responded defiantly: Excellent Minister: You have never called me on the phone before. And you threatened me for a letter I addressed to Pope Francis. After today’s call I warn you that Christian-phobia is a type of religious persecution contrary to the liberty enshrined in our Constitution, which I swore to defend and obey. I reject your threats, even if I am sacrificed like John the Baptist for simply because as an Ambassador [to the Vatican]…

Accused of Anti-Semitism, Trump Aide Makes Ancestry Appeal

By Michael Schulson

…Jewish heritage of my wife of 38 years,” he wrote in an email. Later in a phone interview, he said his wife was not a practicing Jew but “ethnically Jewish” because her maternal grandmother was a Jew. Of course, it is possible to express [insert flavor of bigotry here] even if you have friends, relatives, partners, or a spouse who identify as part of [group that is the target of that bigotry]. It’s a close cousin to the “some of my best friends a…