Search for "cheap airline tickets from vancouver to los angeles phone number 1-800-299-7264"

‘How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World’: An Interview with Author Elle Hardy

By Katherine Stewart

…lism, yet know so little of its origins. While writing the book, I went to Los Angeles a couple of times and stayed downtown right near Azusa Street, which is considered the birthplace of the movement. Twice a day, I’d walk by the little plaque that marks the spot where the spirit allegedly came to William J. Seymour and his congregation in 1906. Part of me was wondering if some divine inspiration might come my way, but mostly I was hoping to find…

It’s the Catholic Bishops, Not Those Who Toppled Junipero Serra Statues, Who Have Failed the Test of History

By Jacqueline M. Hidalgo

…ly policed. The Knights of Columbus installed the Serra statue in downtown Los Angeles in 1932 where he served as a symbol of the United States’ conquest of Mexican and Native populations. As Roberto Ramón Lint Sagarena outlines in Aztlán and Arcadia, recuperation of Spanish mission pasts in the late nineteenth-century was an effort at racist myth-making. Mission memory revival justified the genocidal disappearing of Indigenous peoples even as it…

A Devil’s Dozen of the Best ‘New Religion Journalism’ Books of the Decade

By Ed Simon

…lical background, Meaghen O’Gieblyn’s essays in places like The Point, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Believer (among several others) probe the false dichotomy between the secular and the religious with rigorous astuteness. Interior States collects several of those essays into an anthology where the overarching theme, as provided by the pun of the title, is what it means to be a post-religion millennial living in the Midwest who still ha…

When a Pride March Means Owning the Shame of Racial and Economic Injustice

By Peter Laarman

…ou say, but this is all changing now, right? The Trump phenomenon is bringing us together in a united front for the freedom and dignity of all persons, right? I wish I could believe it. We will see how it goes. I will certainly be marching in Los Angeles on June 11. But somehow I can’t envision West Hollywood’s powerful gay white men doing a whole lot of sustained resisting when their unacknowledged core values—white supremacy and the rule of weal…

“My Scientology Movie” Pokes the Hornet’s Nest

By Gordon Haber

…willing to explain what people get out of it. During my own half-decade in Los Angeles, it was often difficult to avoid people wanting to talk about the joys of Scientology. Another puzzling elision is any mention of the fact that Scientology, at this point, is pretty well traveled ground. Despite the frequency with which Theroux refers to himself as a journalist, I found it strange that in My Scientology Movie there’s no mention of Janet Reitman’…

In Trump Era, Young Muslims Question Respectability Politics of Mosques

By Hebah H. Farrag

…ligious creativity, the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture has seen Los Angeles’ young Muslims create “third spaces” such as the Ehsan Center and the Women’s Mosque of America—spaces that operate outside the norm of what a traditional mosque looks like. Across the country, I have talked to young American Muslims who are disaffiliating entirely from formal institutions and participating in community-building in new ways. In the course of thi…

Black Satanist Candidate Faces LA Sheriff Shakedown

By Joseph Laycock

…,” he explains. In May 2020 on a job in Lancaster, a charter city north of Los Angeles, Hill noticed a man out trimming his hedges and staring at him while he did his appraisal. When Hill returned home 40 minutes later, he was met by a sheriff’s department officer. Hill says the officer was the neighbor of the hedge trimmer; no one had called the police, but he wanted to know why Hill had been in his neighborhood. This wasn’t the first time law en…

In the Age of Megachurches, Sometimes Less Is More

By Richard Flory

…ere aren’t urban megachurches in this mix as well. I could list several in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, or any other large metropolitan area, that are attracting large numbers of young, college educated congregants. Yet in many cases, these churches represent the problem faced by any mass event: it is easy to attend, and equally easy to avoid deeper commitment to the life of the church. The point is that what is often missed by these large scal…

The Higher the Dome, The Closer to God: “Megachurches” Explores the Arid Architecture of America’s New Sanctuaries

By Anita Little

…s aren’t too concerned with blending or subtlety, as a recent project from Los Angeles-based artist Lisa Auerbach shows. For “Megachurches,” Auerbach spent several years touring the United States and taking pictures of churches—exteriors only. While flipping through the photos online or in one of Auerbach’s outsized “megazines,” you might think the only thing that distinguishes these places of worship from a Walmart Supercenter is a cross adorning…

How Herbalife’s Gospel of Health and Wealth Fuels a Billion-Dollar Deception

By Michael Schulson

…ized. Hughes started the company in 1980, when he was 24 years-old. As the Los Angeles Times explained in a 2001 article, Hughes intended “ to start his own operation that would combine the Eastern philosophy of herbal medicine with the vitamin and mineral technology of the West.” By 1985, the company had $423 million in sales. Hughes gave motivational talks to his sellers. These talks took on the aura of sermons. They “were part revival meeting,…