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Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” Depicts Death Struggle Between Hope and Despair

By Peter Laarman

…for destroying those who destroy the earth. It seems pretty clear that the spirit of radical mystic Thomas Merton hovers over this film. Merton’s name comes up twice in the screenplay, and both Schrader and his protagonist seem to resonate with the words that Merton wrote in 1962 to Ernesto Cardenal, the Nicaraguan theologian, poet, and revolutionary: The world is full of great criminals with enormous power, and they are in a death struggle with e…

Is the Satanist Behind 10 Commandments Challenge Sincere?

By Joseph Laycock

…hosts, dubious psychotherapists, “cult cops,” and Christians interested in spiritual warfare sent America into hysteria over Satanic conspiracies that resulted in innocent people being prosecuted and imprisoned. Greaves initially assumed stories of criminal Satanists must have some basis in fact. He sought out self-identified Satanists, meeting a priest of the Church of Satan and even former members of The Process Church of the Final Judgment. Whi…

This Halloween, Think of Islam as a Religion of Pieces. Reese’s Pieces.

By Haroon Moghul

…raven images. We’re not going to let that stop us. In true rugged American spirit, we must do the hard work and pull ourselves up from our bootstraps, which, if you’ll watch the safety demonstration video on the small screen in front of you, you’ll see can be found under your thobes. (No, not the wires—don’t pull on those just yet.) Here’s how American Muslims can make Halloween a little bit more frightful. For the trick-or-treater The best part o…

Who Benefits From Standardized Universal Time? And Other Questions to Ask As You Set Your Clocks Back This Weekend

By Michael Schulson

…nds,” which just happened to coincide with the master clocks in London.) A spirit of universalism animated this transition. You can’t have global time without some notion of the global. In an era that celebrates interconnectedness and global citizenship, it can be difficult for many Americans, especially on the left, to think of universalism as anything other than a rosy statement of planetary harmony. Ogle is more skeptical: “universalism was nev…

Why it (Still) Makes Little Sense to Call ISIS Islamic

By Haroon Moghul

…mad began preaching a faith with a strong social component. He worked as a spiritual and social reformer, though he operated in the categories of his time, reforming the institutions of his time given the possibilities of that time. This context is missing in most mainstream analysis of Shari’ah, such as Wood’s and Callimachi’s. Case in point: when outsiders look to the Muslim sanction of capital punishment and think—what kind of Prophet would pre…

‘Let It Be Unto Me’: Akin, Rape, and the Early Church

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…on who is the perfect image of that Father. (The ambiguously-gendered Holy Spirit hovers in the wings.) The Virgin Mary brings the maternal back into the theological picture, one might say, especially in so-called Alexandrian traditions that emphasize the union of human and divine natures in Christ in such a way that Mary may be seen not only as the mother of the human but also the “God-bearer” or “Theotokos.” However, Calvinist and other Reformat…

Netflix’s Carlton Pearson Biopic, “Come Sunday,” Reveals Christianity’s Struggle for its Soul

By Peter Laarman

…. What’s apparently not fictional is the film’s intimation that Pearson’s “spiritual father,” televangelist Oral Roberts, had a gay son who committed suicide (the family still officially denies that Ronnie Roberts was gay). Urging Pearson to come to his senses and recant his universalism, the film’s Oral Roberts (a perfectly cast Martin Sheen) mourns how Ronnie is lost to him and lost to God, but Roberts still won’t budge from his belief that sinn…

Bright-Sided Recalls Mark Twain’s Travails

By Michael A. Elliott

…from Eddy’s teaching that “there is no material world, only Thought, Mind, Spirit, Goodness, Love” to contemporary motivational coaches who preach a similar “mystical notion”: “the world is dissolved in Mind, Energy, and vibrations, all of which are potentially subject to our conscious control.” In both cases, the right kind of thinking is good for what ails you. Near the end of his career, Twain himself wrote a series of articles on Eddy and her…

Unauthorized Catholic Immigrants will Renew a Christian America, Archbishop Says

By Marie Friedmann Marquardt

…e a special duty today to be the guardians of the truth about the American spirit and our national identity.” In fact, Archbishop Gomez argues, immigrant Catholics “without proper documentation,” who share the values of “faith, family, and community” are “the key to American renewal.” Yes, Archbishop Gomez is arguing that unauthorized immigrants not only deserve the chance to adjust their status to live legally in the United States, but also hold…

Blessed With a Dark Turn of Mind: Gillian Welch’s Spiritual Strivings

By Paul Harvey

…latter day re-creators have specialized. These are songs representing the spirit of Southern men and women abused by modernity, with sparse hopes but constantly beckoned by visions of glory and transcendence. On The Harrow & the Harvest, though, the stories sometimes get more personal, even if never fully in focus. As a friend wrote to me reflecting on the CD, “For a genre defined by tellin’ it like it is or should be, I like how she doesn’t quit…