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Hookers for Jesus: Sex and Salvation on the Strip

By Nicole Greenfield

…d into the industry as a child. The point is not to trivialize prostitution-as-choice, or to ignore the effects of coercion, but rather to point out the realities indicated by the terms ‘slavery’ and ‘trafficking.’ Benjamin Skinner, author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face With Modern-Day Slavery, addressed the issue in a 2008 interview with Mother Jones. “For the record, I think prostitution is always degrading and exploitative and it is ofte…

Jeff Sharlet’s Weird Religion, in 13 Chapters

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…the third emplotment, the cemetery plot. In “Begin with the Dead,” Cornel West offers his attitudes toward teaching and all other manner of life. As Sharlet paraphrases West: To be a scholar of the humanities—to be human—is to begin with the dead, to see that our futures are linked to our pasts, to acknowledge, deep in our bones, the truth of our own dying selves, ‘from womb to tomb,’ West says. The earth-born, earth-bound human equivocates and d…

The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…r, into far-right belief systems. For instance, we know for a fact that neo-Nazi and white-supremacist organizations have made an active effort not merely to recruit members of the military, but also to have their members join the military and obtain combat training and experience. We know from FBI reports that they’ve had at least some success in doing this. Then there are paranoid, black-helicopter types from the Patriot movement who are recruit…

How Not to Support Obamacare

By Peter Laarman

…Democrats, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders: “I am a strong advocate of a Medicare-for-all single-payer program.” Yes, Obama should apologize for misleading purchasers of cheap policies by insisting that if they like their current coverage, they can keep it. He needs to take his licks on that. But the right answer is not to cave on the fundamental principle of shared risk. The right answer is to say, “Yes, I spoke too broadly about keeping what you have….

NC’s Gay Marriage Ban: “It’s Going to Hurt the Church”

By Nicole Greenfield

…cal language that’s been used for decades. One need look no further than 93-year-old Billy Graham’s endorsement of Amendment 1 to realize that the terms of this debate are firmly rooted deeply in the past. “For me, it’s heartbreaking that we’re still having this conversation,” Bakker said, noting conservative Christianity’s continued insistence on law and regulation and divisiveness. “I wish people lived life on life’s terms instead of turning the…

Who’s to Blame for BP?

By David True

…ith guilt flowing in multiple directions for everything from apathy to self-righteousness. Near the center of that motley crew are those of us whose lifestyles are dependent upon a ‘religious’ devotion to cheap oil. The deepest irony of all is that BP, along with the other oil companies, has come to function as a god. The truth, buried beneath all the oil and punditry, is that our devotion to this false god has led to the suffering of innocents, i…

Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…t next to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and other sort-of-atheists. (I’m talking the nerdy academic’s version of “fantasy football” here.) And I give them the assignment I always give to my eighteen-year-old students: come up with your own definition of religion, see if you can put it in a sentence, and then give some paragraphs of support to back it up. The assignment has no singular answer, of course; I’m looking for their a…

‘Enchanted New York’ Offers a Journey Through the City’s Magical History — With Some Mystifying Oversights

By Gordon Haber

…logue of the city’s magical places and events, demonstrating that from the American Revolution to the Red Scare of the 1950s, “both witting and unwitting actors have engaged in magic, often with enormous historical consequences rippling out far beyond Manhattan’s shores.” The question arises, at least for me, of what Dann means by “magic.” He means “mind over matter,” that the “subtle always and everywhere rules over the dense” (his italics). Acco…

The Sex Scandal Following Whole Foods’ Guru

By Michael Schulson

…l to the arch-capitalist set. For one thing, it jibes with an entrepreneurs-as-social-heroes mentality—only instead of being “winners” or “job creators” they’re creative minds unlocking a better world, their ideas transforming the texture of reality. For another, it affirms, rather than polices, the expression of desire (sound familiar?), and it does so within a pleasingly vague moral framework that doesn’t offer much by way of fixed ethical deman…

With the Pope at Ground Zero

By Anthea Butler

…ester NY, who lost his daughter Jean, a flight attendant on board American Airlines Flight 11. Mr. Roger said he hoped the pope would say prayers for the place, for the people, and for his daughter Jean. Praying at a unlighted candle next to the prie-dieu Pope Benedict XVI used on his visit, the Pope offered those prayers silently while looking at the south pool of the memorial. The 9/11 site has become not just a memorial or a museum—it is a pilg…