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Proposition 8, Mormonism, and the Other Fight for Alternative Marriage

By Holly Welker

…another added. While I had no desire to adopt their lifestyle, I couldn’t help respecting these women, the clear-eyed choices they had made, their willingness to work with people whose lives and ideologies were so different from their own. I also couldn’t help coming to the conclusion that their marriages didn’t hurt me or anyone else, really, in the slightest, any more than cohabitation or west coast polyamory or gay marriage or adultery in the…

Confront Death by Avoiding Fritos: The Gluten Lie, Fad Diets, & Foodie Faith

By Michael Schulson

…These things don’t work. They’re a marketing gimmick. They aren’t going to help you lose weight. It’s another ritual—a modern technological ritual that people are adopting in order to feel as though they’re living better. This takes us back to religion. There are a great many things about religion that are extraordinary. It helps us ask and answer questions about mortality, about beauty, about goodness, about truth, that really can’t be addressed…

Will Religion Solve the Obesity Crisis?

By Andrew Aghapour

…ey no longer seem like temptations at all. These findings are particularly helpful for understanding Warren’s diet plan and Roundling’s study. As any dieter will tell you, the secret to self-control is to change your day-to-day relationship with tempting foods. Chocolate cake has to code-switch, from “a thing I want and must resist” to “a thing I don’t want right now,” and that happens in the ACC. As Roundling’s study shows, religious thoughts see…

Teaching Plato in Palestine: Can Philosophy Save Us From Our Differences?

By Jerome E. Copulsky

…that others may be right. This public philosophical demeanor may not only help us clarify our own most deeply held convictions; it may also help bring about peace by channeling potentially violent disagreements into conversation. He recommends this culture of debate as a better way of dealing with diversity than the French model of laïcité, with its public suppression of religiosity and religious difference, and a relativistic (and ultimately inc…

Do Boys in Tutus Break God’s ‘Chain of Command’?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…urple sparkly tights and a velvety dress is what makes my baby happy one night, then so be it. If he wants to carry a purse, or marry a man, or paint fingernails with his best girlfriend, then ok. My job as his mother is not to stifle that man that he will be, but to help him along his way. Mine is not to dictate what is ‘normal’ and what is not, but to help him become a good person. I see my daughter-in-law doing the same thing for my precious gr…

The Anti-Gay Highway

By Kathryn Joyce

…didn’t have an interest in Africa then. [The mainline churches] managed to help Africans get their independence, but now the Christian right appears to have taken an interest in Africa because they want Africans to fight their wars. I am an evangelical myself, but [conservative evangelicals in the United States are] opposed to caring for the poor in their own backyard; now they want to care for the poor in Africa? There are people who need help he…

Why the Disappeared Malaysian Airliner Brings Out the Paranormal

By Joseph Laycock

…ed to help search for the missing plane. Geller rose to media fame in the 1970s for his alleged ability to bend spoons with his mind. He’s hinted he could help find the missing airliner by using the power of remote viewing, a form of ESP….

A Queer Atheist In the Heart of Mormon Country

By Chris Stedman

…But as was evident at this year’s Utah Pride, there is also a fast-growing number of Mormons who are working for change. They may be less visible—after all, our society, and the media in particular, privilege polarizing perspectives—but these Mormons are there, doing difficult but important work. Among them is Joanna Brooks, who served as the Mormon panelist at the conference. She has been an advocate for LGBTQ equality and acceptance among Mormon…

Welcome to the (New) Gilded Age: Supreme Court Delivers the Goods to Corporations

By Peter Laarman

…ty to corporate interests while serving as Speaker of the House. It didn’t help Blaine’s cause when one of his supporters, a New York clergyman, declared that the Republican Party represented the country’s last defense against “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Both prairie populism and urban populism surged on into the 1890s, although the two never managed to combine effectively and both were marred and hobbled by the deep-seated racism of white pop…

Paul Weyrich, “Godfather” of Modern Conservative Movement, Dead at 66

By Bill Berkowitz

…y persuading the Coors family to finance the venture. Later, he went on to help found the Moral Majority [Weyrich apparently offhandedly coined the name and it stuck] with Jerry Falwell; The American Legislative Exchange Council, a group pushing conservative ideas among state legislators; the Conservative Digest; and the Free Congress Foundation.” Weyrich had been described by The Economist as “one of the conservative movement’s more vigorous thin…