Culture

Culture, Julie IngersollApril 22, 2013

Howard Phillips, Founding Father of Religious Right, Has Died

By Julie Ingersoll

It’s hard to overstate Phillips’ influence on today’s religiously-inflected conservatism.

Culture, Kate BlanchardApril 22, 2013

When Bad Weeks Happen to Good People

By Kate Blanchard

Or maybe it’s not so simple.

CultureApril 19, 2013

To the Wonder: Terrence Malick’s Mystical Lens

By Jay Michaelson

As usual, Malick also provides us with some of the most sympathetic religious figures one sees on the American screen.

CultureApril 18, 2013

#PrayForBoston: Prayer as a Meme

By Elizabeth Drescher

So far as I can tell, nothing in our language or in our collective practice, digital or otherwise, holds space for such moments of spiritual pause, however secularized that spirituality might be.

Culture, Kate BlanchardApril 18, 2013

Neologism of the Week: ‘Tragicglee’

By Kate Blanchard

We saw it after Sandy Hook and Kermit Gosnell, and it’ll probably crop up in discussions of Boston.

CultureApril 17, 2013

The Myth of News Media as Secularist Conspiracy

By Diane Winston

The notion that the news media is a secularist cabal ignoring stories that challenge its shibboleths is wrongheaded. The media is not sentient and its decisions are not logical. It reacts more than acts, often driven by random factors (What did my husband say over breakfast? Who’s trending on Twitter? When was the last time I read a story about ____?). Equally mistaken is the premise that if there were more believers in the nation’s newsrooms things would be different.