Sometimes a piece of nonfiction rolls around that, without even meaning to, puts in vivid perspective just how unwriterly a fair bit of nonfiction (especially memoir) can be. In the Fall 2009 issue of Ruminate, April Schimdt’s “40 Days” is just that piece—a captivating, expertly crafted story about intimacy, marriage, and faith, made searing by the periodic remembrance that it’s not a work of fiction.

Source: Ruminate

Image by Hammer51012, licensed under Creative Commons.

Hardcore Christian creationism isn’t just for the U.S. Bible Belt. A creationism-based zoo outside Bristol, England, attracts more than 100,000 visitors a year with its mixture of furry animals and fuzzy science, reports New Humanist in its Sept.-Oct. 2009 issue. At Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in North Somerset, owner Anthony Bush perpetuates a unique interpretation of the earth’s history, which of course includes a global flood and a kindly man with a large boat who saves all the animals—but also branches into soundly unscientific territory concerning the non-evolution of humans.

New Humanist writer Paul Sims, on his visit to the zoo, found the creationist agenda to be more implicit than explicit in the place’s signage and materials. “Rather than providing the headlines, creationist propaganda … was more often than not inserted alongside established science,” he writes. “Unless you are actually looking for the creationism you might not even notice it.”

But I suspect Sims, in his humanist heart of hearts, is trying too hard to overlook the obvious. The magazine gives enough glimpses of Bush’s interpretive displays to establish the zoo as a wonderland of weird science:

One sign reads, “Eating meat was allowed after the flood. Before this most people might have been veggies.”

Another describes “30 reasons why apes are not related to man.”

And another boldly states, “All the people in the world come from Noah’s sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Caucasian from Japheth, Semitic from Shem, Negroid/Mongoloid/Redskin from Ham.”

The zoo has made the news a couple of times since the New Humanist article came out: The BBC covered the British Humanist Association’s objections to the zoo, and earlier this week one of the zoo’s tigers ascended a climbing tower and wouldn’t come down.

If the cat is that freaked out by life at Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm, imagine how it would do aboard Noah’s ark.

Source: New Humanist, BBC

Utne Reader has partnered with Link TV to present Global Spirit, an "internal travel series" covering the spiritual, mental, and physical practices that define us as human beings. Watch excerpts from the series here, or view entire episodes at the Link TV website. 

This episode, The Spiritual Quest, explores the personal, spiritual journey with Karen Armstrong, best-selling author of A History of God, and Robert Thurman, the first American ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

In a Religion Dispatches essay that deserves more attention than it is likely to get, Ivan Petrella argues that "progressive religion isn’t good enough for our nation. Instead, we need a shift in paradigm. We need to become progressive about religion." What does that mean? He explains:

Being progressive about religion requires rescuing the best of atheism and progressive Christianity while discarding their mistakes. From atheists, I’d rescue the commitment to reason. Like them, I’m unwilling to abdicate the use of my rational capacity in the name of faith. Unlike atheists, however, I don’t believe religions are false. Billions of people practice religions; in that sense they’re true. Billions of people believe in God, in that sense God does exist. Religions are true, but they’re not sacred. We need to be as self-reflective and critical of religion as we are of any other part of life.

From progressive Christians, I’d rescue the commitment to progressive understandings of faith and politics. But I’d reject their reliance on the Bible and Jesus. Here they are no different from the religious right, picking and choosing what suits them while ignoring what doesn’t.

It would be a relief to see the national discourse over religion shift to the rhetorical space Petrella is offering up here, if only because he offers a starting point that is firmly rooted in the realities of religious life in the United States. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, authors of God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World, declare secularization theory dead in a recent piece for the Fox Forum:

Today it is secularization theory that is dead rather than religion. Religion continues to flourish in the United States. Megachurches across the country are full to overflowing. Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life” has sold almost thirty million copies. Granted, the latest religious surveys show a rise in the number of non-believers, to around 15% of the population. But that is a tiny portion by European standards. The reason why so many atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have written books attacking God is that they feel on the defensive. You do not engage in battles that you think that you won years ago.

Sources: Religion Dispatches, Fox Forum 

Taiwan’s Pacific Department Store is the unlikely home of an unlikely homage to the world’s faiths. At the Museum of World Religions visitors wander a great hall, watch video footage of funerals in other countries, leave a handprint blessing on the heat-sensitive wall, partake in a purification ritual at the water curtain, and marvel at the wall of gratitude. This “spiritual supermarket” is the brainchild of Buddhist monk Master Hsin Tao, who came up with the idea after renouncing the world and living in isolation for more than a decade. Spirituality and Health reports, “Master Hsin Tao believes that today’s tech-savvy kids are not interested in dusty cultural artifacts. They want technologically sophisticated displays that allow them to experience all the religions of the world and feel the concept of universal love.”

Source: Spirituality & Health  (article not available online)

Utne Reader has partnered with Link TV to present Global Spirit, an "internal travel series" covering the spiritual, mental, and physical practices that define us as human beings. Watch excerpts from the series here, or view entire episodes at the Link TV website. 

This episode, The Spiritual Quest, explores the personal, spiritual journey with Karen Armstrong, best-selling author of A History of God, and Robert Thurman, the first American ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

Utne Reader has partnered with Link TV to present Global Spirit, an "internal travel series" covering the spiritual, mental, and physical practices that define us as human beings. Watch excerpts from the series here, or view entire episodes at the Link TV website. 

This episode, In Search of Ecstasy, explores the ecstatic state—a global phenomenon found in all kinds of spiritual and religious traditions. How is ecstatic trance practiced around the world, and why are so many people today fascinated by it?

Jalaluddin Rumi, "The Shakespeare of the East": Follow Andrew Harvey on a Sufi pilgrimage to Turkey, as he celebrates the 800th anniversary of the 'wedding night,' or passing, of Jalaluddin Rumi, the internationally-beloved poet and mystic...

Zikr and Divine Ecstasy: Observe a Sufi zikr ('zikr' means remembrance) in Istanbul, Turkey, led by Shaykh Sherif Baba...

Matheus Moraes is an 11-year-old rock star for God. He started preaching when he was six. In 2006, at the age of nine, he preached 250 sermons all over Brazil. Vice magazine talked to Matheus Moraes and two other child preachers in the country. The conversations are bizarre, sad, and, at times, profound. Here's an excerpt:

Vice: Was there anything especially religious about your birth?

Matheus: I was born in Rio on the 18th of May, 1998, after a promise. God sent a prophet to earth who told my mom that she would get pregnant very soon and that the baby she was going to give birth to would have a very special gift. He would be a son of God.

At what age did you start preaching?

Officially, I started preaching in 2003. My parents told me that I mumbled Bible phrases when I was a baby—even when I wasn’t able to read. I spent most of my childhood in church and had a pretty close connection to the pastor. At some point he asked me if I would like to give sermons, and so I started to walk the path to God.

Do you have a lot of fans?

Every time I go back to a city there are always people with signs and posters. They ask me for signatures, too, and bring me gifts. Most of them buy my DVDs, and that is really good because I can make some money and give it to my parents.

Here's Matheus in action:

Source: Vice

Parents, does the overt (and sometimes covert) Christianity of many summer camps give you pause? Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, feels your pain. According to a report in the UK current affairs site First Post, The Richard Dawkins Foundation is funding an atheist summer camp, and it sounds rather fantastic:

Alongside the more traditional activities of tug-of-war, swimming and canoeing, children at the five-day camp in Somerset will learn about rational scepticism, moral philosophy, ethics and evolution. Camp-goers aged eight to 17 will also be taught how to disprove phenomena such as crop circles and telepathy. In the Invisible Unicorn Challenge, any child who can prove that unicorns do not exist will win a £10 note - which features an image of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory—signed by Dawkins.

Wait, are we talking invisble unicorns or just plain unicorns? A challenge indeed.

Source: First Post

Image by  Steffe , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The Buddhist magazine Tricycle (a 2009 Utne Independent Press Award nominee) has unearthed something quite precious from their archives: a 1991 interview with the Dalai Lama conducted by the late writer and monologue master Spalding Gray. The conversation is colored by the kind of blunt truths Gray was famous for. It's a great exploration of the fundamental tenets of Tibeten Buddhism, and it's also hilarious:

Spalding Gray: We’ve both been traveling these last weeks and the most difficult thing that I find on the road is adjusting to each location, each different hotel. And I don’t have the centering habits you do. I have a tendency to want to drink the alcohol, which, as you said in an earlier interview, is the other way of coping with despair and confusion. I have a feeling that you have other methods for adjusting. Just what are some of your centering rituals and your habits when you come into a new hotel?

The Dalai Lama: I always first inquire to see “what is there.” Curiosity. What I can discover that is interesting or new. Then, I take a bath. And then I usually sit on the bed, crosslegged, and meditate. And sometimes sleep, lie down. One thing I myself noticed is the time-zone change. Although you change your clock time, your biological time still has to follow a certain pattern. But now I find that once I change the clock time, I’m tuned to the new time zone. When my watch says it’s eight o’clock in the evening, I feel sort of sleepy and need to retire and when it says four in the morning I wake up.

Spalding Gray: But you have to be looking at your clock all the time.

And then there is this gem:

The Dalai Lama: As a Buddhist monk, I usually have no solid meal after lunch, no dinner. So that is also a benefit.

Spalding Gray:  When I passed your room last night, I saw six empty ice-cream sundae dishes outside your door.

Translator (after much laughter): It was members of the entourage.

Source: Tricycle 

Christian radio is becoming less, well, Christian, reports Sojourners—and the shift is treating stations well. By including more “family-friendly” songs (i.e., less overtly religious) and paring down bible-thumping programming, Christian stations have grown their pool of listeners, even nabbing listeners outside the faith who are simply looking for uplifting music.

Not all Christians are fans of the trend. Daniel Radosh, whose rollicking book Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture is excerpted on Utne.com, tells Sojourners that “the fact that committed Muslims can listen to Christian music actually says quite a bit, and I think not anything very good about Christian music these days.”

Christian music’s new listeners tend to disagree. Christian stations and artists “have an opportunity to offer the mainstream market the kind of inspiration and hope that people really need,” a Muslim listener tells Sojourners. “I appreciate it if they can touch the hearts of people like me.”

Source: Sojourners

The relationship between Salt Lake City and its non-Mormon inhabitants is a curious one. Scott Carrier—whose distinctive, wavering monotone has been an NPR cornerstone for more than two decades—delivers a lovely soliloquy about the Stockholm syndrome-esque attachment he has for his hometown in the Spring ’09 issue of the High Desert Journal.

I’ve tried to leave, many times, but I always come back. Now, after living here for nearly 50 years, I’m starting to realize I need to see these mountains, the central Wasatch. Lone Peak, Twin Peaks, Mt. Olympus. I need to watch how they change shape with the light in order for my mind to stay calm. On a clear morning after a snow storm they rise up like a wave about to crash down on the city, in the summer haze they are so small and far away. Up there with tundra grass and mountain goats, limber pines on the ridge lines, walls of white granite 800 feet tall that turn the sky beyond dark blue. I need to be up there, looking back down on the city, with skis attached to my feet, in order to feel at home. 

Laced within Carrier’s beautiful descriptions of the city itself, is the fascinating narrative and sometimes problematic beliefs on which the Mormon faith is based. And true to Carrier form, there is a touch of desert-dry humor involved.

They told me they’d been baptized in the Temple, and now they were going to a different heaven than I was. They said there are three levels of heaven and they were going to the highest one, but unless I converted and got baptized the best I could hope for was the second level, which wasn’t bad, and even the lowest level was so good I would kill myself right now just to get there if I knew how good it was, or is.  

Source: High Desert Journal (full text not available online)

Image by  Edgar Zuniga Jr. , licensed under Creative Commons.

Faith—how we find it, hold it, and sometimes lose it—gives people some of their finest stories to tell. And some of the best I’ve read lately are in the April issue of The Sun, in the eight-page smorgasbord that the magazine calls “Readers Write.” Yes, yes they do.

You can get a taste of Sun readers’ faith online (pdf). Of the vignettes not included in the excerpt, here are two of my favorite passages:

On a child’s decision to pursue a career in dance: “I watched my daughter dance with joy on her face, and I finally understood that to be an artist requires faith. People who paint in garrets, rehearse in walk-ups, write poetry in parks, and practice en point until their toes bleed do it because they believe in art. They believe that their passion will sustain them. And somehow it does.” —Gerry Befus  

On a sister’s joyous announcement that God has spoken to her: “When I read her e-mail, I laughed out loud. Then I felt embarrassed for her. I imagined her friends forwarding it to their co-workers for a good chuckle. Even my religious parents acknowledged it was strange. My other sibling and I still talk about her story with puzzlement and disapproval. But part of me is jealous that my sister believes in something so firmly that she doesn’t care if others laugh or not. Part of me envies the comfort she finds in God and religion. Part of me wants badly to have her faith.” —C.E.

Source: The Sun

What is the appropriate space for prayer? Landscape Architecture—an accessible, engaging magazine published by the American Society of Landscape Architects—offers some points to chew on in its coverage of the Pope John Paul II Prayer Garden, which opened in Baltimore last October.

Situated next to a parking ramp, surrounded with a cage-like security fence, and locked up at night, the location prompted Landscape Architecture editor J. William Thompson to wonder back in February: “Who chose this site for the Prayer Garden, anyway?” Thompson points to Matthew 6:6, which calls for keeping prayer to private spaces.

Readers fired back in April’s letters: “What better place to bear witness than a busy street in downtown Baltimore, a city whose street corners are sometimes open-air drug markets or refuges for the homeless?” Catherine Mahan and Scott Rykiel write. (Baltimore landscape architecture firm Mahan Rykiel Associates, Inc. designed the garden.)

“Although the prayer garden in Baltimore may not be conducive to quiet meditation or contemplation, any venue is fitting for prayer,” another reader writes. A reader completing her master’s thesis on designing spiritual spaces emphatically disagrees: “Would I pray in this garden? The answer is NO.”

So, I’ve got to ask (nursery-rhyme style): Mary, Mary, quite contrary / from where does true prayer flow? Would you pray in a public garden? Even next to a parking ramp?

Source: Landscape Architecture 

The intersection of spirituality and environmentalism is somewhere in Idaho—on a gravel road where a painted turtle is trudging across, making her way from one marsh to another. “My spirits soared,” Rick Bass writes in Shambhala Sun, “at the life-affirming tenacity of her journey, her crossing, as well at this most physical manifestation that indeed the back of winter was broken; for here, exhumed once again by the warm breath of the awakening earth, was the most primitive vertebrate still among us.”

Here’s to that awakening earth, and all the surging, ecstatic feelings it can conjure. For as much time as we might spend talking (and listening, reading, and thinking) about the need to protect the earth, to save our fragile, damaged world: We need to connect with it too. For Bass, it’s all in one: “For me, activism is a form of prayer, a way of paying back some small fraction of the blessing that the wilderness is to me.”

Source: Shambhala Sun

Image by Pvt. Pondscum, licensed under Creative Commons.

Gender equality is a constant source of controversy within Orthodox Judaism. According to tradition and interpretation of the Old Testament, women must remain separate from men in synagogue and cannot go anywhere near the sacred scrolls of the Torah. They also do not count as part of the minyan, or quorum, needed to conduct services.

The latest issue of Moment —a magazine of independent, Jewish thought—profiles Tova Hartman, the "Orthodox feminist revolutionary" who cofounded Shira Hadasha, a traditional Orthodox synagogue that allows women privileges unthinkinkable for most Orthodox communities: the right to handle and read from the Torah. And to lead services—in front of men.

Hartman's progressive ideas were born of her own experiences. When Hartman was 15 years old, she moved with her family from Montreal to Jerusalem. Back in Canada, she'd always felt at home in her family's shul. Once in Jerusalem, however, her family began worshiping at a traditional Orthodox synagogue "where women were relegated to the balcony," and Hartman realized that she could not truly feel at home in a temple where women were so ignored.

For her ideas, Hartman has come up against plenty of resistance, both in Israel and abroad, but she's also found ample support. As Jessica Ravitz writes for Moment: Hartman is "smack in the middle of what some have called the 'Orthodox feminist revolution.' "

Image by jonny.hunter, licensed under Creative Commons.

According to a recent poll, the number of Americans who believe that Jews run Hollywood has significantly dropped (22 percent, down from nearly 50 percent in the 1960s). The finding has Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein all worked up. “The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping,” he writes. “Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.”

Stein hillariously rants about the deep Jewish presence in Hollywood. “The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies,” he asserts. “When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.”

All jokes aside, Stein does have a good point: “As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment,” he writes. “Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you'd be flipping between “The 700 Club” and “Davey and Goliath” on TV all day.”

Washington D.C. buses are the front lines in a new kind of religious conflict: ad wars.  

The American Humanist Association threw the first punch by running an ad on 200 city buses reading: “Why believe in a God? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” On Faith's Under God blog reports. The ad is part of the group’s “godless holiday campaign,” aimed at raising humanism’s profile and connecting non-believers through whybelieveinagod.org.

“Humanists have always understood that you don’t need a god to be good,” said AHA executive director Roy Speckhardt in a statement posted on the association’s website. “Morality doesn’t come from religion.”

The D.C. Examiner reports that one woman is leading a grassroots effort to counter the AHA with an ad saying, “Why believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness’ sake. –God.”

While Under God calls the back-and-forth, “a light-hearted joust,” some are taking the campaign quite seriously. The Dakota Voice reports that Christian groups calling the ads “another attempt by those waging a war on Christmas to ban God from the public square.” In a more aggressive response, executive director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, David Hankins, attacks humanism in the Baptist Press:

We do have some recent examples of societies that do not believe in God nor recognize a mandated divine value on human beings. They are associated with names like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein. Devoid of any sense of God or godliness, they created a social order of mayhem and evil that destroyed millions of lives. So much for the morality of godlessness.

A presidential or vice presidential candidate in this election said, “The political tactics of division and slander are not our values, they are corrupting influences on religion.” Do you know which one it was? Do you know what was “god’s will” according to Sarah Palin? 

For the answers, Beliefnet has a quiz to see how much readers know about the candidates’ faiths. I got two wrong, when I took it. Feel free to leave your scores in the comment section.

With a notoriously “faith-based” presidential administration in its last throes and a race for the White House boasting a varied slate of Christians—a  man who’s been called a “semi-Baptist,” a Pentecostal conservative, a Catholic Democrat, and a member of the United Church of Christ whom some insist is a “secret Muslim”—it’s surprising that faith and religion aren’t playing a more central role in the presidential and vice-presidential debates.

There’s been a relative lack of religious talk during the presidential face-offs, and various spirituality blogs are wondering if tonight’s will be any different. Both Christianity Today and the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life noted a dearth of religious talk in their liveblogs of last week’s debate, with the notable exception of Tom Brokaw’s zen question. GetReligion also called attention to the fact that the latest presidential debate’s only spiritual reference was to Buddhism, after the website live-blogged the Palin-Biden debate and its own lack of religious language.

One explanation is that Iraq and the tanking economy have largely pushed aside religious and social issues that dominated previous debate cycles. Nathan Empsall at the Wayward Episcopalian is glad the candidates are addressing the economy, but still frustrated by both candidates’ remarks in that regard. With McCain foundering in the polls and in need of a game changer, it’s questionable whether Christianity will make an appearance in tonight’s debate.

Image by Ricardo Carreon, licensed by Creative Commons.

Years after their original releases, books like Eat, Pray, Love and The Power of Now remain fixtures on nonfiction bestseller lists due to their personal, uplifting messages on the exploration of life and spirituality. But for every captivating memoir of religious journey and self-realization, there’s at least one that tries to pass off a common experience as something unique. Writing for The Smart Set, Bookslut founder and editor Jessa Crispin’s smart, funny essay picks apart the recent influx of mediocre spiritual memoirs, calling out all those authors who assume that “a story being true is a greater virtue than being well written, or insightful, or interesting.”

Crispin uses two opposing examples of the spiritual autobiographies: Danya Ruttenberg’s Surprised by God and Robert N. Levine’s What God Can Do for You Now. Ruttenberg’s book tracks her spiritual journey from renouncing Judaism at age 13 to revisiting faith and tradition after her mother’s death. Her personal story is somewhat intriguing, says Crispin, but in her return to religion she leaves all of her previous questions about religious origin and belief unanswered. Instead the book focuses on her complete acceptance of doctrine and her disdain for those who don’t follow religion as closely as she does. Her ideas come off as frustratingly “half-formed and unsupported,” reinforcing Crispin’s point that “just because you lived through something, that doesn’t mean you have anything interesting to say about it.” Harsh, but true.

Ruttenberg’s second-rate execution contrasts with Levine’s intelligent discourse on God and the Bible. Levine tells readers of his belief that actions like charity, compassion, and protecting God’s creation can all contribute to spiritual healing as much as (or more than) traditional rituals. His message is one of tolerance and personal spirituality: A person can establish a relationship with God even without following all the rules and restrictions of mainstream religion. Though she doesn’t agree with many of his beliefs, Crispin respects Levine’s non-judgmental tone much more than Ruttenberg’s shallow dismissal of the spiritually deficient.

Image courtesy of  Lost Albatross , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The Roman Catholic tradition of indulgences—when the church cancels divine punishment—is being revived under Pope Benedict XVI. The Catholic News Agency reports that the Pope offered partial or full indulgence to believers for this summer's World Youth Day celebration in Sydney, provided they fulfill particular requirements. For full, or plenary, indulgence, followers must:

devotedly participate at some sacred function or pious exercise taking place during the 23rd World Youth Day, including its solemn conclusion, so that, having received the Sacrament of Reconciliation and being truly repentant, they receive Holy Communion and devoutly pray according to the intentions of His Holiness.

 Seems like a small sacrifice for the opportunity to escape eternal damnation.

This resurgence of indulgences is oddly refreshing for atheist author Christopher Hitchens, writing for Free Inquiry. Benedict is taking Catholicism back to its roots, according to Hitchens, by reasserting its status as the True Faith and lobbying for the reintroduction of obsolete Catholic traditions like the Latin Mass. The mystery and magic of the Church (“ceremony and ritual and a special language for the priesthood”) has been lost in its efforts to gratify the population at large. Hitchens writes: “Nothing is more bogus and unconvincing than the idea of an ‘ecumenical’ Catholicism pretending to make nice with Protestants and Jews and Muslims and sinking the differences that had once been so doctrinally essential.”

Image courtesy of  Paul Resh , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

The intersection of religion and politics in the US has been hotly debated since the country’s inception, and focus on the subject seems especially heightened since the presidential election kicked off last year (e.g. Mitt Romney’s religion speech, the tiff between Obama and Rev. Wright). In any presidential race, a candidate's spirituality could influence future Supreme Court Justice appointments, which could in turn affect the Court's rulings on issues like abortion rights and the death penalty. In Moment Magazine, nine legal experts, including Eugene Volokh and Jeffrey Toobin, respond to the question “Does the religion of Supreme Court justices play a role in their jurisprudence?” Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at The George Washington University, echoes several other panelists' opinions, saying: "Religious background is one of several elements of personality and temperament that may affect leadership styles, the way that a justice interacts with colleagues, and the way that he pursues his agenda, but it does not guarantee that he will vote one way or another."

Christians are trying a new tactic to pack pews: magic. That's right, pick-a-card, nothing-up-my-sleeve magic. Writing for Mother Jones, Catherine Price explores the world of Christian illusionists, entertainers who use tricks to connect audiences with Christian concepts. For example, “[a] mind-reading trick may illustrate God's omniscience; an escape-artist routine reminds audiences that they can break free of sin; an illusion in which three black rings explode into color is a metaphor for what it's like to suddenly see the light.”

Critics point out that the Bible expressly forbids any type of witchcraft or sorcery (a problem that comes up frequently, most recently in a controversy over Harry Potter), but these entertainers insist that the ban is not an issue. They’re careful not to equate their illusions with the miracles found in the Bible, and claim Jesus’ stories and parables as the inspiration for their craft. In other words, they’re following Jesus’ teaching examples, only with silk scarves and coin tricks rather than walks on water. Replacing fire and brimstone with smoke and mirrors may be effective at drawing crowds, but Price writes that entertainers must not “derive too much pleasure from performing, lest they divert glory from God. Given that most successful magicians (not to mention preachers) are born scene-stealers, this can be tough.”

Reaching out to young, single adults is quickly becoming a necessity for religious leaders. In the July/August issue of the Futurist, Aaron M. Cohen addresses the lack of programs in organized religion for singles between 20 and 45 years old. With most spiritual activities geared toward elderly folks and married couples with children, it’s no wonder that singletons aren’t finding the welcoming support they need. Adding programs that interest young and single people could help quell the national participation decline in organized religion.

One evangelical church in Concord, North Carolina, has already adapted services for today’s individualistic, tech-savvy generation. The Concord First Assembly has a community for young single adults called the “Underground,” which “offers espresso, pool tables, satellite TV, and free wi-fi” to participants. Rather than set an alarm for Sunday morning worship, members can attend the 7 p.m. “Underground” service. The group also has a profile on MySpace and Facebook, an approach that may help congregations connect with younger members.

Cohen says that, “while the internet will likely become the medium that people turn to most often when seeking religious information, it is unlikely that the virtual church, synagogue, or mosque will replace its real-world counterpart anytime soon.” It seems that the physicality of worship is one tradition that won’t lose to the era of increasingly impersonal communication.

Image by  iron fillings , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Hollywood has been bombarding moviegoers with apocalyptic visions, from 2007’s No Country for Old Men to The Happening to the current Disney/Pixar darling, Wall-E. Faced with their bleak depictions of the future (Wall-E lightens it up for the kids, of course), religion is sometimes offered as a countervailing, hopeful force against such dark visions.

Examining No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road as emblematic of our bleak cultural outlook, the wellness magazine Lilipoh (article not available online) finds hope through pastor and author Brian McLaren’s vision of "emergent Christianity" to fight the “sense of impending doom [that] fills all three works.” Rather than despairing over the ineffably evil of characters like No Country’s mass-murdering Anton Chigurh, Lilipoh suggests turning to Jesus’ original message of helping others to find hope:

Radical forgiveness, service to the poor and sick, a slow and steady aligning of our will with God’s...stripped of the nauseating rhetoric and distorted lens that the Christian church has all too often applied—this message offers a revolutionary and unlikely promise. 

Film critics offer a different way to lessen the depressing effects of hopeless movies: deny their credibility. David Denby's therapeutically harsh appraisal of No Country for Old Men from the New Yorker, for example, credits the film for its skillful opening twenty minutes of “the physical and psychological realization of dread,” but the final judgment is dismissive. “In the end," Denby writes, "the movie’s despair is unearned.” 

Image by Anthony Easton, licensed under Creative Commons. 

“Most Asian American Christians are conservative,” begins Bruce Reyes-Chow in Asian Week. Reyes-Chow describes the similarities between “traditional Asian values” and conservative Christian values, both of which esteem hard work, the family before the individual, and obedience to the authority of elders. “If this does not describe you as a person of faith,” Reyes-Chow writes, anticipating his detractors, “please save the hate mail for another day.” He promises a taxonomy of progressive Asian American Christians in a June issue of Asian Week. 

His generalizations set off a storm of comments. In a response to the article, Calvin Chen wrote that Reyes-Chow oversimplified the situation, failing to "distinguish between theological, cultural, and political conservatism." Chen attempted to offer a more nuanced reason why Asian Americans Christians might be thought of as more conservative:

Theologically, Asian American Christians are overwhelmingly conservative (evangelical or fundamentalist) because liberal Christianity has little to no evangelistic drive and Asians are not historically Christian — therefore Asian Americans who are Christian are recent (relatively speaking) converts to a theologically conservative faith.

Image by Shubert Ciencia, licensed under Creative Commons.

Five women theologians talk about their spiritual foremothers in the latest issue of Boston College Magazine. Each selection highlights a woman in the Christian or Jewish tradition who, despite the historical or religious obstacles, expressed her spiritual insights through public speaking, teaching, or writing. 

Theology professor Lisa Sowle Cahill is the only one to invoke Mary Magdalene. “Magdalene was an apostle for the same reasons and in the same way that St. Paul was,” Cahill says. “Neither was one of the original twelve, but both saw the risen Jesus and were sent by him to announce the gospel.” She uses Magdalene’s role as an apostle to raise a question about contemporary Catholic hierarchy: “What possibilities might that leave us with, in regard to the status of women in the Church today?”

“I’m drawn to bad news like a moth to a summer porch light” confesses editor Kristyn Komarnicki in the November/December issue of the evangelical Christian magazine Prism. Komarnicki’s confession seems like dreary reading, but her unflinching interest in bad news is tempered by a faith “in God’s power to… transform us through every drop and sliver of anguish that life can hand out.” 

The news that fills Prism’s columns isn’t easy reading: mountains are being destroyed for coal mining, Americans are over-worked and still poor, and teens are getting into abusive relationships—at church. Behind the doom and gloom, however, the magazine’s evangelical message points toward concrete solutions. No matter how audacious the challenge, evangelical Christians are willing to fight, buoyed by a faith that lives and struggles have meaning. You don’t need to be an evangelical, or even a Christian, to appreciate Prism’s strong message of action. Even staunch atheists may be able to find inspiration in the magazine’s motivating message .

—Brendan Mackie