Search for "VIPREG2024 1xbet promo code new user 2024 Guatemala"

Meditation is Very Relaxing, Says New York Times

By Jay Michaelson

…this is a kind of affectation, a tactical deployment of skepticism and I’m-new-to-this innocence. I hope so. The kosher Buddhism presented in “Buddhists’ Delight” is basically relaxation. Not so relaxed that we forget about our liberal political commitments, but relaxed enough that we don’t check our Blackberries when they buzz. Interestingly, right after I read Atlas’ essay, I went to a session at the Mind and Life conference on new clinical stud…

New York Times Columnist Peter Steinfels’ Letter To RD; With Author Response

By Mark D. Jordan

…December I looked back over two decades of writing Beliefs columns in the New York Times. One of my abiding themes, I suggested, had been that “the great world religions are complex and multilayered; they are rich in inner tensions and ambiguities that allow beliefs and practices to evolve over time as the faith is tested by new circumstances and insights. The great religions cannot be equated with the diminished and frozen fundamentalisms that t…

Transgender, Scientologist, “Cult Hero”

By Jay Michaelson

…ous or dogmatic reason. His words were valued in the same way as, say, the New Age ‘Law of Attraction’ (formerly known as New Thought): based on their supposedly demonstrable truth, not their religious authority. The devotion of Scientologists to Hubbard may have been weird, slavish, and naïve—but it wasn’t really religious. Or was it? Scientology was intentionally designed to comfort the afflicted, just like religion does. And, just like religion…

Who’s Afraid of Sacred Soccer?

By Gary Laderman

…uddhists are doing that—nor is it only spirituality vaguely conceptualized—New Agers with crystals, meditation retreats for the professional class. Instead, both old and new media have lit up the religious landscape, illuminating what is still an unconventional, and nebulous, but certainly increasingly capacious, understanding of the sacred in everyday life. Rock and roll can be religious, according to The Hold Steady; a recent Los Angeles Times a…

The Wrong Emperor: Why Ralph Reed’s New Pro-Trump Book Distorts the Bible to Cast the President as Tiberius

By Tony Keddie

Ralph Reed’s new book, For God and Country: The Christian Case for Trump (published by Simon & Schuster in March 2020), doesn’t devote much energy to defending Trump’s moral character or articulating his role as an instrument chosen by God to save Christians. Instead, the notorious conservative lobbyist, evangelical apologist, and founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition doubles down on the toxic argument that Trump is an unlikely ally in the C…

In the Story of the New Testament We Are the Romans—No Matter Who Wins the Election

By Stephen Hinerman

…e statues were less about honoring the Civil War dead than they were about promoting 20th century white supremacy). In some ways, it’s not all that different from the ideas that sold people on the first Crusade back in the 11th century. And it’s not all that different from the story we tell ourselves today, every time we enter another country for their “own good.” Sure, we went into Iraq on the basis of false information about WMDs. But in the rhe…

The Surprisingly Short History of Popular Yoga

By Andrea R. Jain and Michelle Goldberg

…drawing from Hugh Urban’s work here. He has suggested that tantra and the new age movement intersect where bodily, sexual, and material enjoyment are integrated into spiritual pursuits and that, simultaneously, this integration reflects an intersection between tantra and contemporary consumer culture. In other words, what the New Age movement shares with consumer culture can be found in tantra, the preeminent South Asian model of nondualism. In m…

The Cubit Vs. “New Age Colbert,” JP Sears

By The Editors

…el, AwakenWithJP, where he’s developed a following for his wry send-ups of New Age culture via his alter ego “Ultra Spiritual” JP Sears, a kind of Stephen Colbert for the New Age set. Dressed in a purple T-shirt and pale green headband, with a flower tucked into his chest-length red hair. Ultra Spiritual JP delivers earnest, convoluted advice on everything from vegetarianism to ayahuasca to the psychology of the selfie, all in pitch-perfect deadpa…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…p called Lutheran CORE (formerly Coalition for Reform, now Coalition for Renewal) met in assembly in September of 2009 to discuss the possibility of forming a new Lutheran church body in North America. Those discussions resulted in the announcement of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), which will include disaffected “confessional” Lutherans from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Lutheran CORE will remain as a network for dissenting Lu…

The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

By Ed Simon

…d Chasing Dreams explains that today the myth of a Celtic Church attracts “New Agers, post-modernists, liberals, feminists, [and] environmentalists.” While it’s true that many of these groups’ tales of their own origins are mythic—as with any religion, denomination, or sect—the mythic has always served a purpose: to generate usable history, helpful fiction. While Arnold J. Toynbee in the second volume of his landmark A Study of History describes a…