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How “Gratitude” Underwrites Inequality, Power and Exclusion

…rket. But it does seem that the two opposing traditions have come together today to act as a powerful rhetoric of gratitude as indebtedness. Today we have a thriving self-help industry that churns out a steady stream of books on pop psychology, happiness, and gratitude. How well do these grapple with the issues you’ve raised? I was a little surprised by how little attention is paid to the history of gratitude in the self-help literature. I see my…

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Sex and the Chosen People: Be Fruitful and Multiply, Etc.

…to produce a child? Well, of course, there are so many more possibilities today in terms reproductive technology than the Torah, Talmud, or our medieval and early modern codes could have imagined! Certainly, some things possible in our world had been sufficiently anticipated by earlier Jews that we have a basis for discussion; there were forms of birth control mentioned in the Talmud, for example. And there are even intimations of the questions r…

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Escape From Manhattan: Tech, Tragedy and Storytelling in Sandy’s Wake

…cient for most people in their contemplation of supernatural other-spaces, today more and more people rely upon mediated worlds for this sense of voluntary displacement. So to see Manhattan itself go belly-up after the storm, to watch how carnal we become when met with loss of power, has been a sobering and a saddening experience. All of this has made me think more squarely about how inured we have become to screens as the mediator of our imaginat…

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No, I Don’t Owe My Yoga Mat to Vivekananda

…ury interactions between American and European physical culture and elite, Indian yoga culture in the context of colonialism. Those interactions resulted in the posture practice at the center of popularized forms of yoga today. So to even suggest, that yoga “won the West”—and that Vivekananda was the key player—is a gross simplification of modern yoga’s long, complex history. So why might someone insist on simplifying the history of modern yoga? P…

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A Short Theological Take on Why Messianic Jews Are Christians

…istory, there have always been rivulets of Jews who accept Jesus, and that today’s messianics perpetuate these, when the outside monies they now attract started burgeoning only suddenly in the 1970s, as the turn of the millenium neared, with its recurring hope for the Second Coming and even the end of the world.” When, he asks, “in previous history have rivulets of Jewish messianics received such largesse?” He concludes, “Today the mask is coming…

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More Pressure on Obama to Fix His Religious Freedom Legacy

…Vision Memo, has thus attracted a larger coalition. Organizations signing today’s letter include Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, a number of Christian Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, secular, and atheist groups, as well as legal advocates, abortion rights advocates, and LGBT groups. According to the letter, the World Vision Memo is based “on flawed legal analysis and wrongly asserts that R…

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The Immorality of Immortality

…boredom? I wonder. Needless to say, to the extent that longevity research promotes ways to alleviate the suffering caused by debilitating diseases such as Altzheimer and Parkinson, they are all very beneficial. However, I also believe that all programs about extension of human life cannot be divorced from the deeper reflection about the purpose of human life. Such reflection seems to be missing from the transhumanist literature. One could object…

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Why is the Pope Popular Among Nones?

…d), and the KKK unleashed verbal attacks on Catholics in the 20th century. Today, public suspicion of Catholics is less overt, but still present, and sometimes that takes the form of attacks on the pope. In addition, the current pope’s reluctance to identify too closely with culture warriors on the right has brought even more criticism making it more difficult to identify the roots of the pope’s critics. Brietbart bemoaned Francis’ failure to “fig…

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Christians of Color Are Rejecting “Colonial Christianity” and Reclaiming Ancestral Spiritualities

…obally, stripped people of a practice vital to their health and community. Today, some researchers report that group drumming reduces anxiety and depression, increases social resilience and boosts the immune system, along with other physical and mental health benefits. “So this thing that was inherently happening in all tribal lineages was healing the very things that were hurting people,” says Pasquale Mateus, adding that they didn’t need science…

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Why Has the Critique of Hypocrisy Run Out of Steam?

…ss of pretense. Our old friend self-deception But the hypocrisy we witness today may not be so much acts of pretense and public false performance as self-deception. In Hypocrisy: Ethical Investigations, Béla Szabados and Eldon Soifer suggest that our perception of hypocrisy has shifted in modern times. If Biblical and Medieval thinkers saw hypocrisy primarily as a matter of pretense, of the difference between the inner morality and outward perform…

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