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Note From Across The Pond: Church-State Separation Isn’t For Everyone

By Linda Woodhead

…citizens, which they certainly used to. But it’s over a century since most European countries upheld restrictions on particular religious groups. Indeed European equality laws enacted at the start of the 21st century now enshrine even stronger legal protection against discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief than is available under U.S. law (alongside protections relating to gender, disability, age, ethnicity, and sexuality). And given…

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

By Jason Josephson Storm

…spiritualist and occult revivals. Magic and séances were on the surface of European culture at the very moment that Europeans came to argue that magic had vanished. So I began to ask: how did this narrative of modernity become dominant? Put differently, how did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? And that was what I set out to answer in The Myth of Disenchantment. “Higher education levels do no…

In a Time of Irrational Fear and New Media: The Deadly ‘Dance Plague’ at 500

By Ed Simon

…e of nationalism was emerging in individual states, the media explosion of cheap print caused a type of epistemic collapse where truth itself was uncertain. With such uncertainty, Europeans experienced the simultaneous birth and death pangs of two different eras, where medical historian John Waller claims that this dance phenomenon was a “hysterical reaction … one that could only have occurred in a culture steeped in a particular kind of supernatu…

U.S. Religious Right Groups Support Move Toward ‘Illiberalism’ of Hungary and Poland; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…minique Menoga and Michaël Cousin reflect on the first international francophone conference on sexual and gender minorities, which was held in Montreal in August. A new international coalition, the Global LGBTQI Francophone Initiative” is in the process of coming together and working together “to end governmental and societal repression of sexual and gender minorities.” A U.S. vote against a United Nations resolution condemning the death penalty f…

Pride Month & Prejudice; ‘Worrisome Time’ For LGBT People; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ed pick for leader of Ireland — a country that’s still finding its secular European footing after years of church influence over the state. But Varadkar’s policies signal a sharp move towards the right. In his leadership campaign, “Taking Ireland Forward,” Varadkar’s fiscally conservative politics took center stage. He fiercely campaigned against benefit fraud with the slogan “welfare cheats cheat us all.” He pledged to invest in large infrastruct…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…waste American money to buy their expensive oil when we could have our own cheap oil?” “Why is he trying to make rich people poor?” “How is it right to punish rich people for working hard and realizing the American Dream?” It was late on a Friday night and I was tired, so I half-heartedly responded by explaining that there are other factors to consider in every charged question she’d been armed with. But I wondered, “Why the hell was the Salvation…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

Gambian Leaders Portray Anti-Gay Law as Defense of Islam, Ugandan Politicians as ‘Christmas Gift’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Press that scores of Russian gays are seeking asylum in the United States. European Union: Court Bans Requirement that Asylum Seekers ‘Prove’ Their Sexuality The European Union’s top court has said that countries cannot violate the privacy of LGBT asylum seekers by forcing them to “prove” their sexuality. BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder reports: The European Court of Justice ruling comes in response to a petition brought by three people denied asylum in t…

The Intellectual Source Code For National Conservatism Can Be Found at This Niche Catholic Publication

By Peter Schwartz

…he latter portion of the 19th century, predominantly Catholic countries in Europe—which of course European nations have largely been since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia—experienced an upsurge of royalist and irredentist passions to which the Catholic Church often attached itself (for example, Carlism in Spain). In the 20th century, spasms of reaction to war and revolution in many of these same countries produced right-wing political movements acros…

Modernity’s Fraternity: What Dan Brown Gets Right

By Samuel Biagetti

…uence of Masonry was part of the process that democratized and liberalized Europe and North America through a wave of revolutions. The Masonic faith laid the foundations for modern ideology: belief in each person’s and each nation’s right to run their own affairs, in the unlimited power of the human intellect, in the continuing forward march of history, and in the boundless ability of science to solve the mysteries of the universe. In the lodges,…