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Taking (Public School) Teachers to Church, and the Mosque, and the Temple…

By Lisa Webster

…three weeks as they went from mosque to Hindu temple to Baptist church in search of new ways to educate young Americans about religious diversity. No, not a reality TV show, as Kevin joked, but part of a program called “Religious Worlds of New York: Teaching the Everyday Life of American Religious Diversity.” Intrigued, we asked him to tell us more about it. RD: A great idea, this program. Who is behind it? Kevin Childress: The Institute is co-sp…

Meditation Sickness: Everyone is Talking About How Nobody is Talking About The Risks of Meditation

By Ira Helderman

…s of unwanted meditation effects seriously enough. Her lab’s qualitative research has included extensive study of meditation teachers and the protocols they do (or do not) utilize to respond to students who do encounter struggles. She’s been troubled by teachers who suggest that such meditators must have a pre-existing psychiatric condition, even as the evidence shows that many do not. Arguing that, if someone falls into depression it’s because th…

Did We Drink the Kool-Aid in “Suicide Cult” Disappearance?

By Julie Ingersoll

…n watchers across the country followed the story last month of the frantic search for a California “prayer group”—labeled a “cult” by the authorities—whose members, it was feared, might commit suicide and perhaps murder the children with them. When the story broke, the CHP told the Los Angeles Times, that “it is believed… that [their] intentions are to commit mass suicide,” despite also reporting that “documents left behind by group members do no…

HBO’s Game Change Hits, But Sarah Palin Pic Misses Religion

By Anthea Butler

…ts from John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Those short-lived fiascoes left him in search of endorsements from prominent Christians. What Game Change did not show was how Richard Land and others had promoted Palin to McCain, and that she’d been carefully following the discussions of VP candidates, positioning herself so that she would be exposed to the McCain camp. When the call came, she wasn’t surprised. Palin knew it was God’s will because she had mane…

Selective Sympathy and the Mumbai Chabad House

By Naomi Seidman

…ial neighborhoods, I’d look up and see a lit window and suddenly wish I could be inside. To hell with the Louvre, I wanted to sit in someone’s house, have cup of tea, make myself at home. Maybe my search for news about the Holtzbergs is part of that same set of longings. I move through the world more anonymously now, but I’m always on the lookout for connections….

Oscar-Nominated Ajami Depicts Reality of Second-Class Citizenship for Arab Israelis

By Meghan McCarty

…the main Jewish characters’ only brush with overt religiosity comes in the search for the missing brother, who the family thinks may be hiding out in the ultra-orthodox Haredi community. Ostensibly, Jewish characters don’t emerge as real adversaries to the Israeli Arabs that are at the center of the story until the last half of the film. The conflict is among Bedoins, Christians, and Muslim Arabs. But underlying this conflict is always “The Confli…

Finding Love—and Dogma—in Unexpected Places: Jeff Chu’s Gay Christian Odyssey

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…f his new book, Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. Chu, a gay Christian and editor and writer at Fast Company magazine, gathers an impressive array of names for interviews, including one-time evangelical leader Ted Haggard (whose downfall included drugs and a gay prostitute) and blue-eyed hatemonger Fred Phelps, leader of the virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Chu’s odys…

Update #2: No Safe Place For Truthtellers: A Larger Frame For the House Chaplain Brouhaha

By Peter Laarman

…nts to get rid of you: when they finally do the deed, they will invariably put out the cover story that he or she was not sufficiently pastoral. Meanwhile the search is on for a new House chaplain. I doubt they will be be hiring an Amos anytime soon….

Old Testament ‘Bad,’ New Testament ‘Good’: A Dangerous (and Mistaken) Assumption

By Peter Laarman

…urprising to see it creep into high-end journalism as well. A quick Google search turns up a few random examples: “…this austere allegory of failed Christian charity and Old Testament payback is von Trier’s strongest movie—a masterpiece, in fact,” from a film review in The Village Voice. “We’ve seen Mount Mike spew Old Testament anger that could blister paint,” from a newspaper profile of football coach Mike Holmgren. “I don’t need religion to app…

Personhood Leaders’ Smear Campaign Debunked

By Lara Riscol

…host, arrested for protesting Focus on the Family as too liberal. A quick search of Enyart and the Masons turns up a pair of disgruntled former co-agitators, Dani and Curtis Kekoa, an anti-government Christian-Right couple out to expose all three Personhood USA leaders as criminals and frauds. A blog set up by the Kekoas details the soap-opera betrayal that forced them from Rev. Enyart’s flock and to break their years-long friendship with the Mas…