Monthly archive June, 2011
Atheists’ Public Sphere
Angela Zito: Greta Christina gives us a list of the ten worst states to be an atheist. It's really a list of: "Ten Worst States to Declare Publicly That You're an Atheist." A lot of the anger is actually about atheists daring to claim some part of the public discourse for...
No Headscarves, No Iranian Team
in 2012 Olympics
Kathryn Montalbano: After the debate following last year's decision by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) to host the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, soccer continues its role in global religio-political contention. Warned in April 2010 that the football "monarchy" would prohibit any religious garb incorporated into...
Weird Waves are the New Heat Waves
Abby Ohlheiser: It's not global warming, it's global weirding, according to a Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) article, prophetically published last Friday to ready us for today's choking heat along the East Coast. CBN has recently published a series of articles (read here, here and here) rekindling doubt in the...
Circumcision and Religious Tolerance
Amy Levin: From the 30-year anniversary of the AIDS epidemic, to the Weiner scandal, to the current debate over legality of male circumcision, the public eye is certainly holding its gaze on men’s bodies. While religious discourse undoubtedly has a stake in each of these issues, the surgical removal of men’s foreskin...
Taking Gaga Off the Lebanese Shelves
Ashley Baxstrom: Not even a celebrity shout-out is enough to satisfy some.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday that Lady Gaga’s latest album Born This Way has been unofficially banned in Lebanon on the grounds that it may be “offensive to religion” in general and Christians in particular. The office of censorship said it had collected CDs...
Pathologizing the Sexual Revolution
Part of The Revealer’s series on the John Jay report, “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010.”
by Peter Bebergal
The Sixties counterculture beleaguered most traditional religious communities. Not only was there an increase in behavior deemed inappropriate (drug use, promiscuous sex, and the generalized spread...
May the Truth Force Be With You
India's yoga guru, Baba Ramdev, is on a hunger strike starting yesterday, along with 100,000 of his followers including some in Houston, Texas (click on the prior link to catch the Houston Chronicle's Kate Shellnut comparing Ramdev's popularity to that of Oprah or Joel Osteen!). He'll fast to the death, Ramdev says, if...
Whole Lotta Testosterone
by Mary Valle
I don’t think that men and women are the same. I think we have a lot in common, being humans. However, if you look around, you’ll agree that there’s a big difference between us and that difference is testosterone. Skyscapers. The space program, with its great missiles impregnating the silvery, virginal moon. Football....
Religion, Saudi Arabia’s Symbolic Resource
Stephane Lacroix writes for Foreign Policy that the same types of unrest that are taking place across the Middle East have bypassed Saudi Arabia for two reasons, one "material" and the other "symbolic." The first is most obviously Saudi Arabia's immense oil reserves and subsequent national wealth. The second is what Lacroix calls the...
The Birth of Religion
We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art and religion. Now the world's oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.
by Charles C. Mann
Below is an exclusive excerpt from the June issue of the National Geographic magazine, on newsstands now and online here:
Anthropologists have assumed that organized...
