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The Sacred and the Dead: The Trouble with Sugar Magnolia

By Kaya Oakes

…r “Ripple” conversation, and today, there are hundreds of Dead songs on my phone and dozens of live recordings in playlists, even a nod when I see a Deadhead sticker on a car. I am a relapsed Catholic, and thanks to my friend, I am also a repentant Deadhead. Dear Jesus, let me confess: I even wear Birkenstocks. Shannon. Deadshow, Deadhead. Dominquez Hills, 1990. Photo by ChasM3/https://www.flickr.com/photos/chasm3/ “Sugar Magnolia,” however, still…

Modernity’s Fraternity: What Dan Brown Gets Right

By Samuel Biagetti

…all rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real.” As a student of Freemasonry, I can vouch that Brown’s claim is generally true. The strange rituals and traditions that the novel attributes to the Masons are all in fact practiced by some branch of Masonry. Dan Brown is able to work so comfortably with real Masonic symbols and lore because they resonate with his own sensibility. Not only do Brown and the Masons both love secrets…

Yes, It’s Worse To Be Gay in Russia

By Chrissy Stroop

…out the arguments for same-sex marriage. Although there was at least one student in my class who was under 18, no students or parents complained about my pedagogical methods in Vladimir. But if I were to do the same thing today, I could be arrested, detained for up to 15 days, deported, and fined 100 thousand rubles (a little more than $3000) to boot. Four Dutch nationals have already been arrested and deported for violating Russia’s ban on so-c…

How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?: An Interview with Jacob Needleman

By Lisa Webster

…at. I was totally allergic to religion. But I had training as a philosophy student, a grad student, a PhD. I did very well, was at the best colleges, best universities— Harvard, Yale—and I was willing to undertake preparing myself to teach such a course. Philosophers generally don’t want to come anywhere near that kind of stuff—nor did I. But I honorably tried to prepare myself. It meant I had to read theologians, Christian writers like St. August…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…h buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?) The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, punching a massive hole that has filled up with…

Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…e for Peace, on whose Rabbinical Council he serves. (Compared to J Street’s 800-plus-member Rabbinic Cabinet, JVP’s two-year-old Rabbinic Council has just 50.) Rosen told me he was not forced out, but that his decision to step down was driven by “stress between individual congregants and me,” and was made “for my congregation’s well-being and my own well-being.” Rosen described Israel’s 2009 war in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, as the “breaking point…

LGBTQ Victory at Christian Azusa Pacific U. Leaves Significant Questions About Future and Faculty Security

By Chrissy Stroop

…and Universities, Azusa Pacific accepts non-Christian as well as Christian students, and thus does not require students to sign its statement of faith. This in particular may have made it untenable for the school to hold to overtly discriminatory rules with respect to student conduct in the face of public scrutiny. Before the latest change, APU alum and Brave Commons leader Erin Green, who has worked closely with APU students from the beginning of…

Expelled: Christian Student Claims Discrimination, But Judge Says No

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…y basis proscribed by law. Counselors do not discriminate against clients, students, employees, supervisees, or research participants in a manner that has a negative impact on these persons. It would seem that someone going into counseling would understand what kind of conduct is expected of them. To refuse would be like a doctor refusing to take the Hippocratic Oath. They wouldn’t make the final cut, either. This doesn’t bode well for Jennifer Ke…

Student Expelled from Sorority for Transphobia Illustrates the Problem with Evangelical Understanding of Pluralism

By Chrissy Stroop

…ff of just about any statement of faith or lifestyle agreement required of students and faculty at evangelical colleges, and of employees of evangelical ministries. It could be that her family is unwilling or unable to hire expensive spin doctors, as in the case of Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann. Or maybe, in the aftermath of a nightmare presidency, in a moment when violence is flaring up between the Israeli government and the occupi…

“As Orthodox As They Come”: A Backstage Conversation With Rob Bell

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…re so fantastic—brought the idea that the whole thing is static. I think a number of people picked up over the past three hundred years that space is empty, we move things around in space, and there are levers and pulleys and buttons. I think for a number of people, atheism is simply the rejection of somebody sitting on a cloud somewhere with a beard who might intervene from time to time. I think quantum physics, the little I know, it just intuiti…