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Church of Jedi Takes Advantage of Turmoil

By Gabriel Mckee

…ook their census statement seriously. According to the Church of Jediism’s official Web site, Daniel (Master Morda Hehol) dedicated himself to the Jedi way in 2003, and started an actual ministry with his brother Barney in 2007. The group claims 30 members in the UK, but has links to similar organizations in New Zealand and the United States. The Darth Vader attack occurred while some of these members were filming a lightsaber battle in their back…

To Fight White Supremacy We Must Resist Essentialism: The Author Responds

By Andrea R. Jain

…y I cannot do that until the public and intellectuals alike stop offering up essentialist visions of cultural products like yoga. Resisting the siren call of orthodoxy to claim a site of origin or authenticity is dangerous—it destabilizes our own sense of authority—yet it holds the possibility of empowerment….

One of These Things is Not Like the Other: Religion and the Obama Campaign

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…aign material and ask yourself: if a Republican had included this in their official literature, wouldn’t there have been a firestorm? From a pamphlet distributed in Kentucky, next to a big headline, COMMITTED CHRISTIAN: “Obama forged a profound connection with the people of these communities [in Chicago]. At their encouragement, he visited a local church one Sunday. That day Obama felt a beckoning of the spirit and accepted Jesus Christ into his l…

Espionage Allegations Against Russian Church Raise Religious Freedom Issue in Ukraine

By Katherine Kelaidis

…em up to potential closure. This comes on the heels of a raid by Ukrainian officials on the 1,000-year-old Kyiv Monastery of the Caves under suspicion that the UNESCO World Heritage site, which remains under the authority of the Patriarchate of Moscow, is being used as a base for Russian intelligence and military operations. Ukrainian security forces are calling it a success, claiming to have found cash in various currencies, Russian propaganda, a…

Evangelical PR Guru Signs Up for Romney Campaign Again

By Sarah Posner

…outreach he did for Romney again. In other Romney-evangelical news, the website Evangelicals for Mitt is up and running again, maintained by conservative Christian lawyer David French (who recently joined the American Center for Law and Justice, which is run by Jay Sekulow, who also supported Romney in 2008), his wife Nancy, and Charles Mitchell. At the 2007 Values Voters Summit, Mitchell told me EFM represented evangelicals who were tired of the…

Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

By Lauri Lebo

…emic experts), for example, wants to restore America, according to the Web site of his Massachusetts-based ministry, “to its Bible-based foundations through preaching, teaching, and writing on America’s Christian heritage and on Christian discipleship and revival.” He also believes that Hurricane Katrina, Watergate, and the Vietnam War are the result of divine wrath. As part of his curriculum review for the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills pro…

Dangerous Religion

By Gary Laderman

…America today. The opposition against building an Islamic center near the site where the World Trade Center once stood, and the growing outcry around the country about the creation of other Muslim places to gather and worship, suggests that many Americans are not afraid to answer the question without hesitation. In the post-9/11 world we now live in, Islam poses the greatest threat to American lives and security; a nefarious, fanatical religion t…

Religion and Other Animals

By Paul Waldau

…ses Goodall’s belief that expressions of awe by chimpanzees at a waterfall site “may resemble the emotions that led early humans to religion.” The debate over whether or not our animal neighbors can be “religious” is but one issue in the growing field of religion and animals. In the last decade, the field has also illuminated the significant roles played by religious traditions in our learning about and treatment of other living beings. The contem…

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

By Diane Winston

…igion they were covering. During a previous trip to India, the class had visited one of Delhi’s Hanuman temples, where the synesthetic overload of traditional Hindu worship (yonis and lingams, flowers, sugary prasad, gongs and incense) had left a group of cerebral journalism students with no choice but simply to be. On this trip, I wanted students to experience something like that before they started reporting. And for myself? I wanted a break, a…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…sed when the American Atheists chose Des Moines as the national convention site. “Why Des Moines?” people kept asking. “Why Des Moines? Because if we go to New York or L.A., we’re just another convention. We were in Atlanta last year and we didn’t raise an eyebrow. The adult toy convention had been there the week before. But we’ve got protesters in Des Moines!” The crowd murmurs, applauds, a few whistles. “It makes us know how right we are, doesn’…