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Rick Warren Busts a Gut Over Cultural Revolution

By Rob Shryock

…meral, temporary issue, deserving of only a brief note, rather than some serious soul-searching. American evangelicals have shown a distinct cultural insensitivity to Asians and Asian-Americans in the past. In 2009, Evangelical book giant Zondervan published, “Deadly Viper: A Kung Fu Survival Guide for Life and Leadership,” which basically invoked every stereotype ever thought of about Asians. To be fair, Zondervan was more apologetic than Warren…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…al religious or political groups to prisons, concentration camps, and authoritarian governments of nations. Americans generally agree that they’re abusive. Currently it’s fashionable to use the word “cult” to describe all sorts of groups and movements that people don’t like. It’s said that people who support former President Donald Trump constitute a “cult”; the diffuse QAnon movement is called a “cult”; and the January 6, 2021 insurrection agains…

Hajj Journal: Using the Toilet at the Grand Mosque

By Amina Wadud

…no time at all. Still, it was pretty minimal damage and if not for the propriety of my sisters in various states of undress, I would have loved to take a photo. Next time when it’s empty, I’ll do that. Empty? Imagine that. Okay, so I made my way out and retraced my steps back to my spot. Well, at least that is what I needed to do—but this is where those instructions on how to keep yourself sane would have been useful. Try to place yourself somewhe…

In the Papal Pocket: Benedict XVI and the Press

By Mary E. Hunt

…sure softball questions, few dissident voices, and reverent talk about the number of ciboria necessary to serve communion in baseball stadiums. And, we are all supposed to know what ciboria are (for the record, they are the goblet-shaped metal vessels that hold the hosts—that is, the wafers—used for communion). Catholic terminology is about the only thing used liberally in these exercises. Television hosts like Tim Russert fairly swoon over their…

Magic in the Air: How Intellectuals Invented the Myth of a Mythless Society

By Jason Josephson Storm

…se sorts of things didn’t go on in America. Before I could answer (and describe America’s own enchantment), a European patron jumped in, assuring everyone that Japan was much more spiritual and magical than the West. He looked to me to confirm the sentiment, which I did my best to refute. But that reflexive response reinforced in me a suspicion that had been bothering me for some time already—which was that by continuing to use Japanese history to…

Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

By Jori Lewis

…nd not be afraid of how people might react. “If more trans-people were involved in faith communities, then faith communities would normalize the experience,” she said. Walker used to run workshops at the LGBT center in New York City and she once, years and years ago, tried to start a spirituality group. The first week, two people showed up. The next week, there was only one other person. Eventually she gave up. But, these days, she’s more hopeful….

Blood and Politics — Christian White Nationalism in the Age of Obama

By Bill Berkowitz

…orces that continues to plague us today. How does that show itself today? Primarily in the anti-immigrant movement—the lobbyists, Minuteman vigilantes, and racist think tanks that support them. It is here that the idea that the United States is or should be a “White” country takes on the form of a policy issue. If you follow the discussion among anti-immigrant groups, the dominant discourse is about how the United States is becoming a “Third World…

Why We Won’t Let Jonestown (Or 9/11 or Sandy Hook) Die

By Kelsey Osgood

…the hippie ethos of the ’60s, it was Jonestown, the utopian dream gone terribly, terribly wrong, that was its death knell. One of the more poignant aspects of the trauma of Jonestown is that Jones and his followers held strong beliefs that today we recognize as commonplace. Whereas it can be easy to dismiss the Manson Family as a couple of deranged Beatles fans ruminating on inherently wacky apocalyptic fantasies, Peoples Temple began with the te…

Growing Up Cult: A Memoir of Life with Sri Chinmoy

By Brittany Shoot

…y’s devotees never experienced the group this way. But the role of guru carries risks; for the soul of the teacher as much as for the student. It is apparently all too easy to succumb to a particularly virulent form of narcissistic disorder when people are throwing rose petals at you all day. And when a teacher loses his bearings, the signs are hard to miss. As Tamm grew up and witnessed the guru’s increasingly erratic posturing (elaborate weightl…

Dispatches From the Rhodian Shore: A (Tough) Love Letter to Religious Studies

By Todd LeVasseur

…spot on: we are geographic, and thus geologic, agents to the point of now triggering shifts in ecosystems to new biological and chemical structures that will unfold in our lifetime and in those of our future students. These regimes will be hard to adapt to and will most likely inform very different human ways of being religious in the decades to come. How we understand these shifts and situate ourselves as scholars of religion studying them is a m…