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Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…ged in my seat at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre as I watched talented African American actors hamming up “African-ness” for cheap laughs. It brought to mind the long, shameful history of Americans—black and white—performing blackness (often in blackface) on stage for white audiences. The Book of Mormon wants to have it both ways. It wants to make fun of The Lion King and its African stereotypes by substituting more authentic stereotypes. It wants to…

How We Got to Super: Grant Morrison’s Visionary Gnosticism

By Jeffrey J. Kripal

…communicated with Morrison, transported him to what looked like a distant planet, and then showed him the secret of the universe, which involved a kind of hyperdimensionality. In the simplest terms, he was “turned around.” More complexly, “my being was rotated through a plane I could not now point to” into an azure hyperfield laced with shimmering, lattice-like information grids. Morrison had been “twisted off the surface of the universe into the…

After Embracing Female Bishop, Pope Spins Again on Women’s Ordination

By Kaya Oakes

…aced Jackelen at the passing of the peace. This morning, when he boarded a plane back to Rome, Kristina Kappelin of Swedish TV asked the pope if the Catholic ban on female priests was “forever.” “On the ordination of women in the Catholic church,” the pope replied, “the last word is clear.” Referring to John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter banning women from ordination, Francis told Kappelin that if the letter is “carefully read, it goes in that d…

Does Analytic Thinking Erode Religious Belief?

By Andrew Aghapour

…received sets of five randomly arranged words (e.g. “high winds the flies plane”) and were asked to drop one word and rearrange the others in order to create a more meaningful sentence (e.g. “the plane flies high”). Some of their participants were given scrambled sentences containing words associated with analytic thinking (e.g. “analyze,” “reason”) and other participants were given sentences that featured neutral words (e.g. “hammer,” “shoes”)….

Raelian Swastika Campaign Calculated to Stoke Controversy

By Joseph Laycock

…eet activism in Las Vegas. Press coverage indicates that those who saw the plane felt outraged rather than informed. A teenager who spotted the sign described it as “horrific,” while City Councilman Mark Treyger called the sign “a chilling message of fear and intimidation.” The Raelians almost certainly counted on this emotional response. In her book on the Raelians, Susan J. Palmer suggests that the movement intentionally generates controversy to…

“This Pope is a Brazilian!”

By Silvia Alves Fernandes and Manuel A. Vásquez

…threatens to be overshadowed by his comments on gay priests uttered on the plane to Rome, it has generated an enormous outpouring of emotion and fervor. From the time that he stepped out of the plane, he has been mobbed by throngs of excited followers, straining to see and touch him. Francis has relished the opportunity to get close to the people which, among other things, has given his security detail veritable nightmares. What accounts for this…

The Anglican and the Evangelicals: Insights from the Sudanese Genocide

By Frederick Clarkson

…” “On 17th of June in the morning,” she concluded, “bombing was heavy, two planes, two MIGs and helicopters were bombing Kadugli. I looked at my kids and told them that we have to leave. We relied on God and left. Our travels were long and it took four days to get a plane to be able to leave the region. If we had waited just one day, we wouldn’t have made it out of there alive.” Afterward, the UN’s press office took the unusual step of issuing a p…

Denzel’s Profane Preaching: A Religious Movie for the Rest of Us

By Sean S. O'Neil

…m in which Denzel Washington plays a pilot who miraculously lands a broken plane while drunk and high—opens with a scene of a naked woman smoking a joint. But even amid the sex and drugs, this film makes perfect sense as the latest installment of an acting career birthed in Pentecostal spirit. Ever since a woman with the “gift of prophecy” signaled a young Denzel out for future preaching prowess, he has been serious about his spiritual contributio…

Close Encounters

By Amina Wadud

…r me, except I admit, at the very last second when I was facing out of the plane, 40,000 feet above the ground. But then I had no time to think, the jump was on. It was fabulous! I used to tell people that in my next life I want to be a bird. In this life I do everything I can to practice. So I’ve been sky diving, parasailing, and now faux flying in a wind tunnel. It’s true I love the air; I love rides in the amusement park that let me soar throug…

Does It Matter If Islam Is A Religion? An American Ahmadi Explains The Effects Of Religious Discrimination

By Daniel Schultz

…ll for either of them. Bhutto was executed in 1989, and Zia died in a 1988 plane crash rumored to have been an assassination. Yet the anti-Ahmadi laws remain, according to Khurram Ahmad, because “nobody wants to now tackle this beast.” Even to suggest reining in the law can be dangerous: two legislators were murdered for trying to put safeguards around the law. *** Ahmad is the unassuming leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Society in Oshkosh, Wisconsi…