Religion Dispatches
…ay to act in the interest of the common good, we will learn to manage this newest aspect of pollution. As we can see, the “common good” frame informs the entire environmental discussion—past, present, and future. What is so fascinating about framing the environmental debate, however, is that the “common good” frame extends far beyond the issue of managing pollution. Ultimately, environmentalism is as much a moral debate about American citizenship…
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…cclaim of Glory at Sea, Zeitlin redirected his attention from post-Katrina New Orleans to parts of Louisiana that, in the words of Zeitlin, “kind of crumble off into the sinews down in the gulf where the land is getting eaten up.” He made his way to Terrebonne Parish, where he found inspiration on a narrow strip of land surrounded by a dilapidated ring of levees built to protect the two dozen remaining French and Indian families of Isle de Jean Ch…
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…personal lives. Against this backdrop, to what degree do you feel that the new formations of folks exiting traditional religion but still feeling some kind of “God-shaped space” will create a new spiritual culture in which resistance to exploitation and degradation is a central theme? I realize it can be argued that strong and growing resistance movements, notably Black Lives Matter, already constitute the new spiritual formations needed by the ex…
Read More…reportedly seeking broader religious exemptions akin to those contained in New Hampshire’s marriage equality law. CNN and other news outlets have reported that the governor can extend the legislative session beyond today’s deadline and has said that he would do so. Today, a Buffalo television station reported that the marriage vote would likely take place tomorrow; it said the governor and Republicans were still working on reaching agreement on ot…
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…re domestic threats. Their materials are considered required reading for a new private intelligence and militia formation called, American Contingency. “We are definitely living in the last days,” the Patriot Church conference description declared, “but yet we are called to occupy until the Lord comes.” It’s clear that if the occupation comes, it will be the result of the convergence of far right factions seeking to tear down the established insti…
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…ctional medicine; traditional Chinese medicine and qigong; and more of the new age spirituality diet and health advice that I describe in my book. Move forward to 2021, and health freedom has become a concept that brings together right-wing libertarianism, conservative Christianity, and new age spirituality, especially regarding vaccinations and Covid regulations. Health libertarianism dates to the antebellum period when the concern was bodily fre…
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…Manhattan? No government or an ineffective government leaves us with post-New Orleans Katrina, a disaster that helped doom the Bush Presidency; last year, New York City went into overdrive, going out of its way to be ready for Irene. That was a good thing, and thank God Irene wasn’t as bad as we thought she might be. This time around, maybe last year’s preparations will make New York City’s recovery from this disaster more efficient and more comp…
Read More…ropriate to represent the pious mother. She turned the role down. Klein, a New York-based writer and sexuality educator, shares this memory and other striking stories of her experience growing up in the purity movement in Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free (Touchstone, 2018). She combines memoir with survivor interviews and research on shame, sexuality, and religion to effectively arg…
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…cans who sought to counter mainstream institutional forms of religion with new metaphysical movements, such as Christian Science and New Thought. He encouraged his disciples to turn inward, toward the self, rather than outward, toward either Christian or Hindu orthodoxies. Vivekananda responded to Americans interested in wedding metaphysics with modern ideas and values as well as the aim of self-realization. In all of these ways, he appealed to an…
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…outgoing administration. Yet it goes deeper than this. Trump attended the New York church of Norman Vincent Peale in his youth. Peale took the positive affirmations of New Thought and turned them into religious principles and economic maxims. It also goes further than Christianity, connecting to new age thinking found in works expounding the Law of Attraction, such as Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, now in its tenth edition. The Law of Attraction stat…
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