new religious movements
Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?
The popular term “spiritual but not religious” only goes so far in describing an event like this. I think Burning Man shows us the enduring importance of ritual as a vehicle through which humans connect with one another and as well as with a mysterious “more,” while also showing us how these expressions are increasingly displaced outside the bounds of the dominant Western cultural concepts of “religion.”
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A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change
For progressives in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the wider Christian church and society at large, the vote was a thrilling victory after decades of struggle and setback. For conservatives, the vote signaled a decisive break with scripture and tradition and called the orthodoxy and orthopraxy of the this denomination into question. Almost one year later, we can take a step back to consider what happened in Minneapolis and to map some of the trajectories of this historic vote.
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New Age Tragedy in Sedona: Non-Indians in the Sweat Lodge
Wealth creation guru James Arthur Ray is under investigation for criminal negligence in the deaths of two participants in a sweat lodge last week. Is this the inevitable result of outsider appropriation of a sacred ritual, or is the story more complex? Our writer, whose own tradition includes the sweat lodge ceremony, explains the nuances.
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Animal Sacrifice and Sexuality in Santería
In the wake of a religious freedom victory, scholar Salvador Vidal-Ortiz discusses the concepts of “newborns,” “wives,” and the role of gays and lesbians in Santería.
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The Christian Roots of the New Age: The Aquarian Gospel
In this 1908 retelling of the gospels, Jesus travels to India, Persia, and Greece, preaching of a “cord of love” that binds all humanity. What does The Aquarian Gospel have to teach us about Christianity, New Age religion, and the birth of the culture wars?
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When Medicine and Religion Conflict Around Children: The Case of Daniel Hauser
When Daniel Hauser and his mother, members of new Native American religion the Nemenhah Band, opted out of chemotherapy and fled to Mexico, the media were ready with a religion vs. medicine narrative.
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True Blood: When Marketing Goes For the Jugular
An HBO show about vampires in the rural South depends on “viral marketing” for its buzz. But some people resent the conflation of fact and fiction that this kind of advertising entails. And what of the new religious movement known as the Vampire Community?
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