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Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

By Alana Massey

…arilyn Manson scared the daylights out of children and parents alike in his 1990s heyday, but his most controversial album, Antichrist Superstar, was little more than a play on words of a harmless and beloved musical. Even the reliably contrarian Slayer could come up with an album title no more nuanced or threatening to the establishment than God Hates Us All for their early twenty-first century release. It was a time of ordinary gods fighting ord…

The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

By Varun Soni

…America’s cultural mythology, a connection that was cemented permanently in 1997 when the Library of Congress declared “Truckin’” a national treasure. Iconic portrait of Jerry Garcia by Herb Greene. Photo used with the gracious permission of the photographer. So “Truckin’” is not just the narrative of an American band on the road, but it is also an aspiration for a uniquely American adventure where the road trip is a pilgrimage and the real journe…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…on average, 422 people in the US ask Google “Why did God make me ugly?” and 103 ask “Why did God make me black?” The most common God-related question, asked over 25,000 times per month in the US, is “Who created God?,” followed by that old Job-ian classic, “Why does God allow suffering?” But we should be careful here; Google search data offers a skewed sliver of insight into the full range of human motivation and behavior. The population of people…

First U.S. Visit of the Virgin Mary Confirmed in Wisconsin

By Lewis Wallace

…ough Bernadette). Young Bernadette enjoyed regional fame until her death in 1879, and in 1933 she was canonized as a saint. The small village of Lourdes brings in an average of five million tourists each year. The site’s success as an attraction is partially due to its pop cultural currency: a 1943 film starring Jennifer Jones, Song of Bernadette, made the saint a star in the English-speaking world. But it also has a particular theological signifi…

Not a ‘Weenie-A** Lodge’: James Ray Trial Begins

By Johnny P. Flynn

…ss, and fifteen were reported to be suffering ill effects. In spite of the number of people who experienced difficulties during each of the eight fifteen-minute rounds, Ray contends he did not know that there were problems. In fact, Ray is accused of ignoring the pleas of those who wanted out; in one case an individual went out through the side of the sweat lodge to escape the heat. The prosecution played tapes of Ray before the sweat saying, “It’…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…onstitution.” Based on the “explanatory memorandum” document identifying a number of American Muslim organizations as allies in its author’s aspirations, prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation trial publicly labeled over 200 American Muslim organizations “unindicted co-conspirators,” a highly controversial move derided at the time by legal experts as contrary to Justice Department policy and in violation of the groups’ constitutional rights. Even…

New Pope Accused of Conspiring in Kidnapping

By Nicole Greenfield

…Bergoglio noted disapprovingly in a 2007 speech. Meanwhile, an astounding number of women in Argentina, women without access to or education about contraception, die annually as victims of botched abortion procedures carried out in secret. If we do dig a little deeper into Bergoglio’s past, we find that he was accused of participating in one of the numerous human rights violations committed during Argentina’s Dirty War (which ended up resulting…

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…

How the Politics of the 1890s Explain the GOP’s Health Care Woes

By Patricia Miller

…evolution and the increasing urbanization and interconnectivity of life. In 1888, the Republicans finally broke through and gained control of the presidency and Congress and passed a number of historic bills, including the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which reintroduced silver into the currency supply, and the McKinley Tariff Act, the Republican attempt to modernize the tariff schedule. They also passed a long-awaited pension for Civil War veteran…

The Brutality of Life for Syrian LGBTs; Saving the Anglican Church by Dissolving It; Backlash to Hindu Gay Wedding Ceremony in Indonesia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…iscrimination based on sexual orientation when drafting its constitution of 1996 — the first country in the world to do so. Brazil’s post-junta constitutional guarantee of health care as a fundamental human right led the country in the 1990s to become a global pioneer in providing free and universal HIV medications. More recently, Argentina’s path-breaking 2012 law on gender recognition has become the template for transgender rights advocates in m…