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Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…ublic information, and porta-potties being just a few), but participants must still supply all of their own gear, food, and water; sufficient to survive for one week in a very harsh desert environment. The Black Rock Desert is dominated by a dry lake bed called the playa—an absolutely flat and desolate expanse of cracked alkali clay—and the experience of camping there can be extreme. At the center of the Black Rock City is the Burning Man icon it…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…liked having Thursday morning coffee with Lieutenant Heather, the enthusiastic pastor whose response to all my questions was, always and only, “Jesus.” But when Heather and her husband moved away, and a new couple was assigned as pastors to our corps, I took it as an opportunity to step further away from church attendance. My kids are still in the process of sorting out their beliefs. A couple say they are atheists, a couple call themselves Chris…

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

By Haroon Moghul

…nd largest by leased area: the Dubai Mall, which is a great place to get lost and start crying out of desperation in one of the many prayer areas interspersed throughout. The government plans a massive mosque to complement the neighborhood, ready to fit 15,000 folks. Their wet feet will be visible from space. Based on an Islamicate floor plan, the Burj Khalifa is one of the few modern skyscrapers that are genuinely beautiful. Its delicacy belies i…

Where’s Wallnau? A NAR Apostle Takes Aim at Swing Counties in ‘The Battle for the Mountain of Government’

By Frederick Clarkson

…gence apps” including As One America, which contains the name, address and phone number of Christian neighbors “who are not showing up to vote or who are not registered.” He then showed a map with big red arrows pointing to precincts “within striking distance” from Vida Church to the precincts that are “where the devil’s got a stronghold that God wants to break up.” The app was developed by Superfeed Technologies, which has also designed apps for…

What Will Orthodox ‘Republicanity’ Look Like?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…an “invisible hand” as the faith-based final justification for the capitalist system he was attempting to theorize). Indeed, a truly free market would actually increase federal revenues by putting more people to work and making taxpayers of them of all. This last article of faith has demonstrated just how far the argument from absurdity can take us, and how little facts can be made to matter. The trickle-down theory, first enunciated at the presid…

Religious Affiliation, ‘Mankind’: India’s Anti-Corruption Activist Leads Second Freedom Struggle

By April L. Bogle

…ed by the Indian government, Bedi says only 16 go to the common man. The rest is lost in graft. She wants to raise this amount to 90 and put the money into the country’s infrastructure: schools, universities, roads, and bridges. The Lokpal Bill was set to come up for parliamentary vote, but ministers and reformers had drafted separate versions. The “mischievous minister” we were watching on the laptop was being questioned about the status of a joi…

What’s More Frightening Than Snakes on a Plane?

By Devin Kuhn-Choi

…n an airplane aisle knows there will be some sort of contact as you move past; the space just isn’t big enough for most people to avoid that. If your goal is sincerely to avoid contact, it seems to me that remaining in your own seat, lowering your eyes and simply relinquishing your claim to the armrest would be a more effective means of not touching a woman. It seems hard to believe that “hundreds” of men wound up in the same situation and found i…

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men “Stand Up” for “Religious Freedom”… On a Plane

By Kara Loewentheil

…rk, you try to make it seem like complying is really in the person’s own best interests: you offer to pay your seatmate to vacate, or you claim that contraception is harmful to women. Third, if none of that works, you create costs for both the authority attempting to regulate you and the innocent bystanders around you in the hopes that if you create enough problems the authority in question will cede way (in other words you block the aisles for a…

What the Lost Finale is Really About

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…er Locke or Shephard or Austen are saviors or demons does not matter. The hero is the community, the living together. The greatest fiction of Lost is the apocalyptic tale that we are individuals, that it is survival of the fittest. Lost then, is the antithesis of Lord of the Flies, but also of the so-called reality television shows that extol the individual “dancers,” “idols,” and “survivors.” Those are the real fictions. Lost reveals itself as re…

The Religious Implications of Nudity

By Steve A. Wiggins

…we all share this—at times frightening—humanity. We only want those we trust most intimately to see us naked. To touch us in certain places. Several years ago I lost a secure seminary teaching job for being too liberal. My academic career never recovered (just try to explain that to a search committee repeatedly asking, “but why were you let go?”). For five years I clutched to the lifestyle I knew by living as an adjunct instructor at four differ…