A Church With a Hole In Its Heart: An Excerpt from Peter Manseau’s “One Nation Under Gods”
In the dry red soil of Chimayo, New Mexico, there is a hole in the…
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Thanksgivukkah, With a Side of Christmas Envy
Thanksgivukkah is a way of being out, loud, and proud—We’re here! We’re Jewish! We eat turkey AND latkes!—but can Jews ever compete with the juggernaut of Christmas?
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Is Yoga Hindu?
Recent studies of yoga reveal the formative influence of (wait for it) Buddhism, Jainism, Sufism, television, military calisthenics, Swedish gymnastics and the YMCA, as well as of radical Hindu nationalism, upon today’s postural yoga practice. There is no doubt that the Vedas, Upanishads, and folk traditions of India have been formative toward yoga: yoga is almost inseparable from them. Nevertheless to assert that yoga is essentially and primarily a Hindu practice means to ignore millennia of generative influence from other quarters. Worse still, it means to step blindly into a political fight for the heart of India that has simmered for over two hundred years.
Read MoreThink Yoga is a Religion? Try Youth Soccer!
Controversy over who owns yoga simmers at 105 degrees.
God is Not Interested in Religion
Is Easter drained of meaning if we acknowledge its borrowed practices and mixed origins? Is there a limit to how porous the boundaries between traditions should become?
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Rum and Gunpowder: How to Take Out a Vodou Doll
A scholar of the religion known as Vodou (or Voodoo, if you’re Anglo) tells how she saved a small cloth ritual object from desecration by a gang of spooked professors.
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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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