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Sex and Civilization: The Body as Battleground

By Jay Michaelson

…ural) is that which curbs what we today might call “nature” in the name of spiritual discipline. Yes, Paul replaces physical circumcision with spiritual, but in doing so he creates a far more insidious apparatus of control. This is a nature of anti-nature. Ironic, then, that many of today’s anti-gay voices call homosexuality “unnatural” in a pseudo-scientific sense. They are wrong; Paul is right. Homosexuality is entirely too natural, found in ove…

Obama to Cave on Bush Tax Cuts: Letter to the Washingtonians, Chapter 1

By Daniel Schultz

…who bought and sold lives in mathematical equations without faces. But the spirit was gone; Rove was in disgrace, Cheney was reduced to playing the snarling bogeyman on occasion. Nothing new happened, thanks be to God. And in 2008, I, like so many others, dared to hope. Not in some supposed new Chosen One—that Obama was some messianic figure was an idea rooted only in the firm soil of authoritarian minds opposed to his election—but we hoped that w…

Indonesia: As Volcano Erupts, a Spiritual Loss

By Mark Woodward

…ng of a folk hero for his courage and was widely believed to have enormous spiritual powers. He appeared in advertisements for a popular brand of sports drink together with nationally known athletes. The advertisements suggested a relationship between the athletes’ physical prowess and Mbah Marijan’s spiritual power. I met Mbah Marijan only once, less than two months ago. He was a very deeply religious man in a very Javanese way. He was a pious Mu…

A Life After Death Double-Feature: Eastwood’s Hereafter and Noe’s Enter the Void

By Jay Michaelson

…enly realms, but in the traditional depiction of them, they are not vague “spiritual” places like the amorphous afterlife of Hereafter but actual places, albeit very different from any we usually know. Enter the Void is about the supernatural, but in a way it’s entirely naturalistic. The closest thing Hereafter presents as an authority figure, a Swiss hospice worker, says that she was once a skeptic, but was convinced over twenty years of working…

Conversion Story #643 (not a real number)

By Amina Wadud

…s hooked. I count my dates of entry from these two points: Thanksgiving day 1972 when I said shahadah, and March 1973, when I was began reading the Qur’an. For some time after that, all I read was Qur’an. Still today if things get freaky I return to just reading the Qur’an. Knowing it was originally in Arabic, I began studying Arabic through the local mosques until I could register for a course at my undergraduate University of Pennsylvania. In fa…

Sacrifice

By Amina Wadud

…e of November (or according to the Islamic lunar calendar, the 8th ’til the 13th of Zul-Hijjah), so I have some flexibility. Keep in mind, for example, that people already in Saudi Arabia, and even some minimalists from outside, will only come for the hajj proper. Although it tends to be crowded there starting with Ramadan, there is some semblance of ‘before and after.’ To maximize my before, I think having some time to be there, but not in the ih…

The Morning After

By Amina Wadud

…s right now. For one thing, I really did take this as a good thing, in the spirit of the early warning system. Since the time my friend said, you have to be invited by Allah to make the hajj; I have been in various states of preparation. I’ve been preparing to receive the invitation, preparing to recognize it when it is given, and preparing to accept it. I considered it a mandate to do whatever was necessary to put me in the right place for it all…

Gospel and Soul Lose a King and Queen

By Anthea Butler

…st gospel singer in the world.” For all that, she didn’t win a Grammy until 1995 for her album “Songs of the Church.” Walker’s voice and presence filled many a church, but it was her generous spirit that supported the careers of many singers that made her an exceptional woman and gospel singer. Burke’s influence on country western music, as well as the Rolling Stones, Al Green and others, was a seamless marriage of the sacred and secular. Burke, o…

Chilean Mine Rescue: Largest Global Spiritual Event Ever?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ion per minute), the rescue of the Chilean miners is the largest expressly spiritual, global, digital event. In a world of spiritual ambiguity and religious indifference, the Copiapó miners’ ascents from the depths of the earth were nothing if not a participatory allegory of the human spirit challenged by the machinery of greed and raised up on the strength of a complex technology whose success seems to have been made possible only by the perfect…

Religious Right “Compassion” and Other Lies

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…Church in America, and other denominations, have come to realize that the spirit of the law in their Holy book is one of love and acceptance of everyone instead of the bullying, compassionless, soul-killing, letter of the law. Mr. Sprigg, when Jesus looked out on the crowds that followed him, that book you love more than your fellow human beings, tells us that he had compassion on them. What did he do then? Did he tell them to change? Did he bull…