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As a “Cult Leader” Disgraced Pastor Mark Driscoll Does Not Rank

By Jesse James DeConto

…, drug-smuggling and “free-love,” guru Baghwan Shree Rajneesh gathered thousands of followers to a headquarters in rural Oregon. Conflict with the natives yielded criminal charges against Rajneesh’s henchmen for wiretapping, arson, attempted murder and salmonella bioterrorism resulting in 751 cases of acute gastroenteritis. Paul Erdman went on an acid trip, changed his name to Love Jesus and founded a patriarchal commune in Seattle’s Queen Anne ne…

The New Disciples: Report from South Carolina

By Sarah Posner

…ocal power brokers like Bob Vander Plaats in Iowa. (Vander Plaats endorsed Santorum, but that failed to fulfill the Christian right’s wish to vanquish Mitt Romney.) At the South Carolina Citizens for Life Rally in Columbia on Saturday, that conventional story was on view: voters for whom abortion is the number one motivating issue, trying to send that message to both candidates and observers. There, on the statehouse steps, another kind of conserv…

The Protestant Mainline Makes a (Literary) Comeback

By Gary Dorrien

…Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005); Schmidt and Sally Promey, eds.,American Religious Liberalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012); Courtney Bender, The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Kathryn Lofton in Oprah: Gospel of an Icon(Berkeley: University of California, 2011); Mat…

‘Hardwired’ for Hetero Marriage, LDS Tension Mounts Over LGBT Rights

By Joanna Brooks

…lity in places where they are numerous enough to be able to leverage their numbers effectively and to experience themselves as total social community. Where they are so few as to make political mobilization ineffective or even costly to their relationship with their host community, they have not. Mother Jones’s Stephanie Mencimer suggested that fear of harming Mitt Romney’s run for the presidency kept the Church on the sidelines in 2012 marriage…

HitchBot Meets His Maker: What a Robot’s Murder Tells Us About Ourselves

By Michael Schulson

…ago, the Canadian-built hitchBOT left Marblehead, Massachusetts. The goal: San Francisco. It was supposed to be an On the Road-meets-Wall-E jaunt, and a testament to the goodwill of human beings. Instead, over the weekend, somebody in Philadelphia destroyed hitchBOT. Game over. The timing for hitchBOT’s destruction felt oddly appropriate. Late last week, the New York Times published a startling article about Xiaoice, a Microsoft chatbot that’s gai…

Obama Administration Gives Free Pass for Faith-Based Groups to Discriminate

By Sarah Posner

…n in employment decisions by grantees.” After the 2011 hearing, Scott told San Francisco Chronicle reporter Bob Egelko that Holder was “obviously ‘embarrassed to try to explain the policy’” and that Obama could repeal the OLC memo via executive order but had made no effort to. The responses to Scott’s question finally reveal the straightforward answer CARD has long sought. Although it was unclear at the time exactly how the Obama administration wa…

Love Jesus, Hate Religion

By Nicole Greenfield

…on’ thing,” says Juliana Anderson, a member of IKON Christian Community in San Francisco. “The meaning of religion and religious is so messed up these days. It’s got a bad rap.” For many young Christians, identifying as such bears the risk of being characterized as judgmental, as discriminatory, as politically conservative, as anything like their unhip counterparts. By repudiating religion, they establish themselves as subversive, as anti-establis…

Sex and the (Hipster) Church—Just a Gimmick?

By Nicole Greenfield

…n’t even there. “Your grace abounds to me, your grace abounds to me,” they sang. “Jesus, in you I find all that I need.” The capacity-crowd of worshippers joined in, arms in the air, and then they prayed. They prayed for marriages, for husbands and for wives, for reconciliation. They prayed for romance and commitment, and for miracles. They prayed for singles, for forgiveness, and for cleansing. Sex was the topic of the night at Hillsong NYC’s mid…

As Culture War Rages, What’s the Status of LGBT Rights on Catholic Campuses?

By Jamie L. Manson

…ents raise their hands and come out during that class session.” Of course, Santa Clara may be an exception to what is typically a stricter rule. The Bishop of San Jose, Patrick McGrath, puts effort into maintaining a collegial relationship to the religious studies faculty. The faculty is equally respectful of McGrath’s position as leader of the diocese. “It’s not that we’re not going to raise challenging issues,” said Crowley, who previously serve…

A Monumentally Different Kirk Cameron

By Julie Ingersoll

…nything but. Cameron recently returned from the Reconstructionist-inspired San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival (SAICFF) hosted by Doug Phillips and Vision Forum (I wrote about SAICFF and his previous participation here and here) where he and Phillips discussed the theological background to the version of American history presented in the film, showing the subtle influence of Christian Reconstructionism and R.J. Rushdoony’s Biblical Phi…