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America, the Mythical: “Mother of Exiles” or Denier of Safe Haven?

By Ed Simon

…ian, but in many ways we have made the pilgrims themselves characters in a new faith. The New England settlers constitute both the Genesis and Exodus of the American scripture. The pilgrims are celebrated as the originators of the American ideal, embodying religious liberty, thrift, industriousness and individuality. Historical fact is secondary to mythical power. The Mayflower leader and first governor of the Plymouth Colony William Bradford, amo…

Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak’s Search for the Meaning of Bowie—A Critical Novella

By Mark Dery

…kinned, purple-haired Jesus in the Sky with Diamonds stared soulfully from American newsstands—the Peter Max-style illustration for Time magazine’s cover story on “The Jesus Revolution.” Time dutifully informed Middle America that: Jesus is alive and well and living in the radical spiritual fervor of a growing number of young Americans who have proclaimed an extraordinary religious revolution in his name. […] Christian coffeehouses have opened in…

A collage of a Bible, Valdimir Putin, and the Kremlin and an outline of Russia

Putin’s ‘Year of the Family’ Declaration Blends Russian Nationalism with the Far-Right Rhetoric of the Global Pro-Family Movement

By Irina Smolevskaya

…ions in Russia Spark Outrage as the Country Takes a Conservative Turn,” AP News, October 27, 2023. [35] Team, “New Year Address to the Nation.” [36] For the quote, see Team, “New Year Address to the Nation.” According to the 2021 Russian census, there are 193 different ethnic groups residing on the territory of Russia, with nearly 72 percent of the population identifying as ethnic Russians. [37] According to the 2021 census, Russian total populati…

Trump’s Inaugural Address Gets an “F” in American Civil Religion

By Spencer Dew

…bility to transcendent value. Indeed, his nationalism may well represent a new American civil religion—an idolatry of empty proclamations reliant on divisions within the American people. In an inaugural address decrying “empty talk,” Trump eschewed detailed articulation of American values for vague proclamations of a new nationalist ethos. Thus, we are offered Orwellian statements like “We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny” and t…

Raising Children the Right Way

By Jeffrey Feldman

…Jeffersonian lesson about the privilege and responsibility of adulthood in American democracy. In Thomas Jefferson’s view, this balance was the essence of a new political system whereby each person would play a role not just as an individual in private life, but as “participators” in the public realm. The goal of Jefferson’s democratic system was not to quash the individual or subsume the family within some broader collective concept, but to orien…

The Protestant Mainline Makes a (Literary) Comeback

By Gary Dorrien

…inly out there, as do religious studies sociologist Courtney Bender in The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination and religious historian Kathryn Lofton in Oprah: Gospel of an Icon. Religious historian Matthew S. Hedstrom, in The Rise of Liberal Religion, amplifies the cultural victory thesis by focusing on the liberal Protestant creation of a book-reading, middlebrow, Emersonian spiritual culture. And religious his…

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

By Diane Winston

…rsity offered then, as it still does, a wide range of spiritual, mystical, New Age and therapeutic teachings and practices. During our stay, guests could experience centering, energy balancing, massage, astrology, breathing, hypnosis, counseling, neo-Reichian bodywork and workshops on laughing and crying, seeking the feminine, primal feelings and family dynamics. Classes were an hour but courses could take weeks or months. Prices were consistent w…

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided Explores the Dark Side of Positive Thinking

By Michelle Goldberg

…nking nostrums that made a phenomenon out of The Secret. “[N]ow there is a new role model for New York’s former Carrie Bradshaws—young women who are vegetarian, well versed in self-help and New Age spirituality, and who are finding a way to make a living preaching to eager audiences, mostly female,” reported the Times. One 31-year-old member of this eager audience is quoted praising her spiritual tutor Gabrielle Bernstein, a 29-year-old former nig…

No One Can Tell I’m a Muslim: All-American Muslim Debuts

By Su?ad Abdul Khabeer

…ry, choosing a cast of immigrants and first-generation Americans, all Arab American save the newbie white convert, may just propel the show into another set of tropes: all Muslims are Arabs, all Arabs are Muslim, and all Muslims are immigrants. Indeed some Muslims are Arab, some Arabs are Muslim, and some Muslims are immigrants. But many are not. Many will celebrate the show, and those who do may read this review (if they get this far) as a killjo…

Before We Scold DeSean Jackson and Others For Anti-Semitism We Need To Talk About ‘Chosenness’

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…lbany or Washington—are controlled by Jews. I think they are controlled by Americans, and the American Negro situation is a direct result of this control. And anti-Semitism among Negroes, inevitable as it may be, and understandable, alas, as it is, does not operate to menace this control, but only to confirm it. It is not the Jew who controls the American drama. It is the Christian. At the time of Baldwin’s writing these were some of the most powe…