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From The Virgin Mary to a Housewife in Queens: Inside The Seer of Bayside

By Joseph Laycock

…throughout the world, so we have to imagine where the boundary is that separates “normal” Catholic belief and practice from deviant belief and practice. Most people take these definitional boundaries for granted. But the truth is that these boundaries are socially constructed and have always been contested. What we imagine as normative is actually the result of a conflict in which one party seized the power to define what normal is. I see the sto…

As Long As There’s Fear, We Aren’t Ready for Atheism: A Conversation with Theologian and Ex-Priest Daniel Maguire

By Alana Massey

…s authors’ limited understanding of religious texts. Armed with a rigorous academic background in religion and the attendant understanding of the gravity of the God-loss, Maguire’s theological and pastoral training sets him apart from fellow atheists. By recognizing the poetic and ethical value of biblical stories in a more nuanced way than those scholars who offer only perfunctory nods to the Bible’s poetry, Maguire’s book offers a gentler welcom…

The Environmental Politics of Vodou, New Orleans Style

By Joseph Laycock

…a Vodou priestess gathered in New Orleans to discuss new models of water management in Southern Louisiana. The symposium, which coincided with the seventh annual Anba Dlo Halloween festival, is important for a city under the constant threat of flooding. (Anba Dlo is a Haitian creole term meaning “beneath the waters.”) But the symposium was also important moment for Afro-Caribbean religions in America. Festival organizer Sallie Ann Glassman receiv…

Terror In South Carolina

By Sarah Posner

…l Assembly.” The church that he has pastored since 2010 is, as President Obama put it earlier today, “more than a church.” It is “a place of worship that was founded by African Americans seeking liberty” and “a sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America.” Yet, as Obama noted, Emanuel, like other black churches, has been the target of violence, not just last night, but throughout its history. In an excellent essay at TP…

The Sacred and the Dead: Ten Writers on the End of an American Adventure

By The Editors

…rning and temper that sense of loss. #5 : Three Ways to American Beauty by Aaron K. Kerr At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were opening the windows of Vatican II and American theologians were delving into what was known as the gospel of Christian Atheism, a California dance band re-named themselves, and the Warlocks became the Grateful Dead. #6 : “Ripple” is a Spiritual Manifesto by Jim Burklo The Dead sang, plucked, and pounded i…

Can You Make a Comedy About UFO Cult Mass Suicide?

By Joseph Laycock

…ass suicide in U.S. history” (not counting Jonestown, which occurred in Guyana). Funny stuff, right? Satire about religion is a double-edged sword. American popular culture has long been fascinated with cults. After the Heaven’s Gate suicide, Family Guy as well as the comedy Road Trip (2000) poked fun at the mass suicide meme. By portraying cult leaders as suicidal maniacs and cult members as helpless losers, these comedies reinforced a distinctio…

Gay, Christian, Pagan, Artist: How Matt Morris Defies the Borders of Spiritual Identity

By Jesse James DeConto

…n spirituality. He’s a cradle Episcopalian who became one of American neo-Paganism’s most famous voices, only to return to the Episcopal church, where he served briefly as a parish music minister in Portland, Oregon. Of late, he’s been investigating Quaker spirituality. Morris’ religious wandering as what he calls a “minor-league celebrity” has played out in cyberspace and on the pages of the New York Times. As a child, Matt Morris steeped in the…

Racial Justice Will Be Top Priority for New Prez of the United Church of Christ

By Frederick Clarkson

…ulture. That, and the fact that the UCC wields considerable institutional capacity via its 5100 churches, seven denominationally related seminaries, eighteen colleges and two publishing houses. (Another thirty colleges, universities and seminaries have varying degrees of history with the denomination, past and present.) Dorhauer urges leaders to choose “the collective missional calling of the church” over the “perpetuation” of nonessential functio…

Dear Lindsay Lohan, I’m Sorry

By Haroon Moghul

A few weeks ago, you shared this image on Instagram: The Arabic should’ve said “Anti jamīlah,” but actually read, “Anti himār”—you’re a donkey. Enthusiastically, you’d shared it with a brief, “Habibi” (beloved). This became wildly popular, for unintended reasons. It was widely derided as a “social media fail,” or what we used to know (before the internet disrupted our lives and sense of social decorum) as “an innocent mistake.” Yours was. Mine wa…

The Glorious, Ethnically-Challenged, Sisterhood of Spy

By Haroon Moghul

…al or aspirational. Long before East versus West, there was Eastern Europe against Western; swarthy Mediterraneans dragging down flaxen Nordics, even presently present with industrious Germany condescending to a Greece heading for the Grexit. Thanks for democracy but what have you done for us recently? Even the adjectives are ominous: Oriental. Balkan. Byzantine. Why explain what makes someone your enemy when you can just point to geography? Melis…