Culture

Archive, Culture, StoriesJanuary 6, 2014

As Cambodia Erupts in Protest, a Stolen Buddhist Relic Ignites Anger

By Joe Freeman

“I was quite shocked upon learning of the relic’s loss,” said former prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh in a rare public statement released days after the disappearance. “As a Buddhist and the one who listed Buddhism as the state religion in the 1993 constitution, I am extremely sad, completely grievous for the loss of the Buddha relics which were a happy, peaceful, prosperous, and holy thing for our respectful country.”

Archive, CultureDecember 18, 2013

Jesus, Santa, and Now Sound of Music‘s Mother Abbess?

By Shannen Dee Williams

Detractors maintained that their opposition to McDonald’s Mother Abbess was not driven by racial bigotry but instead by a desire for “accurate” history.

Culture, FeaturedDecember 18, 2013

I’m Dreaming of a White Christ(mas)

By Evan Derkacz

Megyn Kelly’s infamous comments on the color of Santa and Christ didn’t just spring fully formed from Fox News host’s mind.

Culture, Featured, Politics/LawDecember 16, 2013

LDS Church, US Government Swap Positions on Polygamy

By Holly Welker

Utah judge Clark Waddoups strikes down part of polygamy law in case of Sister Wives’ Kody Brown, ruling that although the state has the right to deny people more than one valid marriage license at a time, Utah’s anti-cohabitation laws violate the Browns’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion and elements of constitutional due process.

CultureDecember 12, 2013

Robert Bellah’s Powerful Legacy: A Mixed Blessing for Religious Studies?

By Ivan Strenski

When we talk of a department of religious studies being the breeding grounds for a “new religious consciousness” together with Bellah’s evangelizing for republican civil religion, along with his desire to inform a “a new way of being religious within modern culture,” we can easily see how Bellah got the Berkeley secularists running for their guns. What was Bellah, a sociologist, thinking, anyway? Had he forgotten all he learned and taught about first-order religious institutions?

Culture, Sexuality/GenderDecember 12, 2013

“Burka Avenger”: Pakistan’s Middle Class Gets a Feminist Cartoon

By M. Sophia Newman

A mild-mannered schoolteacher doubles as an education-defending Muslim heroine.

Archive, CultureDecember 12, 2013

Fight to the ‘Death’ and Go ‘Hungry’ at Hunger Games Camp

By Jodi Eichler-Levine

Inmates at Guantanamo Bay are hunger striking in an attempt to make their suffering visible while children at a camp in Florida are using the fantasy of hunger as entertainment.

CultureDecember 12, 2013

Holy Ground in Kentucky: Monks and Nuns Fight Fracking

By M. Sophia Newman

Two monastic orders in rural Kentucky, the Sisters of Loretto and Our Lady of Gethsemani, have made news recently for refusing to permit a gas company to install a pipeline across their property.

(A)theologies, CultureDecember 12, 2013

Losing Their ‘Religion’

By Rachel Gordan

American Jewish history is the history of Jewish grappling with the American (and Protestant) category of religion. At the moment, it’s not working out so well.

(A)theologies, CultureDecember 12, 2013

Spiritual (And Jewish), But Not Religious

By Martin Kavka

Among other things, the Pew poll gives us the fascinating statistic that almost half of “Jews of no religion” are nonetheless believers.