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Sit Down and Shut Up: Pulling Mindfulness Up By Its (Buddhist) Roots

By Max Zahn

…n a practitioner’s experience in cultivating the technique. But for modern-day meditators, instructed in the benefit of practicing just five minutes per day, this appeal to long-cultivated expertise means little. The aims of contemporary mindfulness are very different, too. “The way mindfulness is practiced, it’s not necessarily Buddhism,” said Reverend Toshikazu Kenjitsu Nakagaki, president of the Buddhist Council of New York. “It’s used to impro…

Promise Keepers 2.0: Women and Jews Invited

By J. Terry Todd

…iversity,” Rabbi Jonathan Bernis of Jewish Voice Ministries declared on Friday night. During the altar call, Bernis told Jews to remember that “if you are Jewish and you have converted, you are still Jewish.” Saturday afternoon brought the heaviest dose of Messianic Jewish themes, with performances by Paul Wilbur, the man who pioneered Messianic praise music, Joel Chernoff, and Marty Goetz. (Wilbur’s band anchored the music throughout the two-day…

Religious Traditionalists Resist Marriage Equality, Artist Questions What Is “Un-African” & More in This Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…more than 50 countries went on strike on Wednesday’s International Women’s Day: “We demand that our lives and labour be treated with dignity for they form the basis of this society,” the platform of the International Women’s Strike reads, calling for “full reproductive justice for all women, cis and trans” and “complete autonomy over our bodies and full reproductive freedom.” OutRight Action International’s Jessica Stern, in a commentary posted on…

On the 20th Anniversary of Waco

By Kate Blanchard

…erable in the same way the first followers did. Buddhists, Muslims, Latter-Day Saints, and now even Unification Church members can also, like Christians, take comfort in the fact that their founders can no longer disappoint or embarrass them. Increasingly covered by ever-thickening layers of time, these charismatic persons will never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise child…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Contraception Reversal

By Patricia Miller

…planning when it approved the rhythm method. As Ruether noted in her Saturday Evening Post article, the church’s distinction between “natural” family planning and contraceptives was “theologically meaningless.” The church’s incongruence on the issue of family planning dated back to 1930 and the papal encyclical Casti Connubi (On Christian Marriage), which was written to address the growing acceptance of birth control throughout the Western world….

Nike’s Token Equality: New Campaign Masks the Truth About Workers’ Rights

By Gerald J. Beyer

…ontractors enough to pay a living wage. In fact, Nike workers earn $3.50 a day in Indonesia. That’s not enough to purchase a gallon of milk there! It barely buys a Big Mac! Today no one can claim ignorance. Workers have journeyed to the U.S. to give gut-wrenching accounts of their travails. Journalists and watchdog groups have exhaustively exposed the injustices workers making Nike products endure. Read, for example, this recent article based on i…

It’s the Year of the Protester: Would Santa Occupy? How About Mother Teresa?

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…s, because the current tax rate was crushing the poor of Myra. And to this day, his remains are said to exude a watery substance that some people collect as a holy relic. They say it smells like rosewater. Would he be at Occupy? Despite caring for the poor, I don’t think St. Nicholas would join the Occupy movement. I don’t know that he’d see the point, since he would be able to make there be more money and less poverty, miraculously… which some da…

Harold Camping, Prophet of Apocalypse, Dies at 92

By Daniel Silliman

…h and the 17th of the month. Critics quoted Jesus saying “no man knows the day nor the hour” of Christ’s Second Coming, but Camping said that was right. He knew the year, the week and the month, not the day or the hour. A follow-up, setting the same date, was titled Are You Ready? In it, Camping claimed to have discovered a calendar in the Bible, missed by everyone who had ever read the Bible before. Referencing the prophet Daniel’s description of…

RNC Chair Hopefuls Defend “Traditional Marriage”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…the America of the 1950s or 1960 or even the 1990s. It is a very different day.” That’s nice sentiment from Steele, but the RNC chairman is really Fundraiser-in-Chief and as much as he might like to reach out to traditional Republican punching bags like Latinos, African Americans, and gays — they aren’t the ones giving up the big checks. It’s still the old guard — the religious right and those who use them — who continue to fill the RNC coffers. S…

Warpaint: What Does George W. Bush See in His “Portraits of Courage”?

By Sarah Sentilles

…was the last thing on my husband’s mind.” Bush now spends several hours a day painting. In his opening essay “Painting as a Passion,” Bush recalls telling one of his art teachers, “[T]here’s a Rembrandt trapped in this body . . . Your job is to liberate him.” He first painted a cube, then a watermelon, then an apple. He took online courses from the Museum of Modern Art to study art history. He painted his pets and landscapes at his ranch and self…