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Ministries of Presence: A Report from Nepal

By Cathleen Falsani

…reventable disease, ecological concerns, gender issues, and human rights. “More and more you are beginning to see people seeing the social aspect of the Gospel, where Jesus himself went out and ministered and touched people,” he told me. “Going out and just preaching isn’t cutting it,” Mendies said. “We need a new interpretation of what Christ told us. The verse says, ‘the harvest is ripe but the laborers are few,’ and we tend to stop at that poin…

Everything You Think You Know About the Dark Ages is Wrong

By Nancy Marie Brown

…m. Gerbert was not exceptional in that way. He was a typical tenth-century monk, though a more gifted teacher than many. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? A good nonfiction book both informs and entertains. I don’t want to piss anyone off, but perhaps knock them on the head. I want to open their eyes to a world they’ve been missing, the world of science in the Dark Ages. While working on The Abacus and the…

The Sacred and the Dead: Three Ways to American Beauty

By Aaron K. Kerr

…d, or even those who celebrate with the Dead, begin a restoration toward a more integrated, more whole sensibility. A special series on religion and culture produced in collaboration with the Office of Religious Life at the University of Southern California Religious consciousness, whether Navajo sand-painting or Catholic Mass, perceives and embraces the presence of the Dead, and does so in ritual. In the 1960s, the new consciousness from Californ…

What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail

By Steven K. Green

…one of the more powerful and feared people in American society. The most famous moral reformer of the Gilded Age, Comstock was the founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and a special agent for the US Post Office who mounted a nationwide crusade to suppress the circulation of anything he personally found to be morally reprehensible. He often claimed he was merely performing God’s will in an ongoing war against sin. Using an 18…

Weeks After Turkey’s Failed Coup, Thousands Have Been Arrested Over a Book

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…owning the book, Love and Tolerance, by Fethullah Gulen have had their lives turned upside down, their personal and professional futures uncertain. Their hopes for a vision of a modern Muslim modernity have been postponed, perhaps defeated, by the powerful forces of a different vision for post-secular Turkey….

The Religious Implications of Nudity

By Steve A. Wiggins

…a stranger was a sin. Now conservative Christian political interests have modified their position: anonymous government employees are allowed to look, to violate your embodiment theology. As the man’s latex-gloved hands reach for my crotch, Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” wafts from a shop at the bottom of the escalator. The irony is so thick I’d be able to feel it if this guy’s hands weren’t inside my waistband. Embodiment is a theolog…

“Tell Me What You Believe About Ferguson, and I’ll Tell You What You Believe About God”: A Missouri Pilgrimage

By Anita Little

…on. Sacred ground Earlier in the day, our group had stopped at the Cahokia Mounds. The most complex archaeological site north of Mexico, the Mounds were once part of a native civilization larger than London. Little remains of the city, and the sacred landmark with its intricate earthwork is now a popular course for joggers. “The story of Ferguson didn’t start on Canfield Drive. The story of Ferguson is a whole lot longer,” said Rev. McBride after…

Rage Against the New Age Machine: Three Days at the Osho International Meditation Resort

By Diane Winston

…veral sessions to unblock my energy, she said. Would I like to come back tomorrow? Now, months later, I’m unsure about why what happened next. On my way back to my dorm, I felt compelled to visit the Galleria. Finding Yogananda, I apologized for screaming at him. He must have assumed that I was on the path to my true authentic self because he smiled and asked if he could hug me. When he did, something broke inside me. My grief and anger, lonelines…

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

By Austin Dacey

…rge Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” the majestic opening melody of the slow movement, the andantino moderato. From the first moments, it was obvious that the sonorous orchestral instrumentation had been replaced by the sheen of digital keyboards. By the time the music reached the third measure, I sensed the dawning of something even more hideous. The melody disappeared entirely to make way for the announcer’s voiceover—“Please make sure your phone…

Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

By Marion Grau

…d to have been a false alarm. I shared what I learned with those standing around me or who didn’t have a phone, compared notes with others about what they knew, and tried to calm some who were scared and close to panic. As far as I could tell, the TSA personnel and other security officials seemed know about as much as the passengers about what was happening—all around me, I sensed a complete failure of nerve. A black woman wearing a security vest…