Religions often have strict rules regarding treatment of the dead, which can be problematic when local authorities need to perform autopsies. Writing for The Tablet, Sarah Weinman points out that Orthodox Jews often object to autopsies, citing Jewish laws that say people must be buried within 24 hours of death, and that the body must not be disfigured in any way during that time. Autopsies, according to some, violate those rules.

 It’s not just Jews either. According to Weinman, “the Amish, Hmong, and many Muslims also try to avoid the procedure.” In response, forensic pathologists have been working hard to respect religious laws where possible and to come up with alternatives. Some pathologists now perform “virtual autopsies” that use CT scans and MRIs to get the information they need without the invasiveness of a traditional autopsy. The scans aren’t as comprehensive as a full autopsy, but they’re becoming increasingly accepted by religious communities, and they’re far less expensive, too.

Source: The Tablet

Why are increasing numbers of Americans declaring themselves as having “no religion”? Don’t automatically assume that a new wave of godlessness is sweeping the land, writes Christopher McKnight Nichols in the Fall 2009 issue of Culture magazine. Nichols attributes the trend to three different factors, none of them having to do with humanism, paganism, socialism, or Satanism taking over:

“First, over the past few decades there has been a marked trend toward sharper polarization among religious outlooks.” Nichols cites the rise of evangelical Christian influence under the George W. Bush presidency, but also the more recent emergence of polemic “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris.

“Second, diverse changes on the geopolitical stage have had profound impacts on images of public religion.” Americans’ common enemy used to be the godless powers of Europe and Asia. Now we are chilled by the specter of Islamist extremists driven by a deep religiosity—and suddenly it’s not so clear whose side God is on. “No doubt there will be important consequences for American civic culture,” he writes, “now that affirming America’s godliness no longer servers to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them.’ ”

“Finally, alienation from organized religion is growing for other reasons.” While Nichols is hard pressed to speculate on these reasons, he notes that while fewer of us are calling ourselves “religious,” more of us are calling ourselves “spiritual,” indicating a growing acceptance that the two are not synonymous—and that “one can believe in God and yet have no religion.”

Source: Culture (article available in PDF)

Image by *BGP*, licensed under Creative Commons.

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 

Religious Americans are up to four times more likely to be active in their communities than nonreligious Americans—and the link is causal, according to new research from Robert Putnam and David Campbell. The scholars have observed increases in civic involvement that come after individuals join a religious group.

“The reason for the increased civic engagement may come as a surprise to religious leaders,” the Christian Century writes. “It has nothing to do with ideas of divine judgment or with trying to secure a seat in heaven. Rather, it’s the relationships that people make in their churches, mosques, synagogues and temples that draw them into community activism. . . . The theory is if someone from your ‘moral community’ asks you to volunteer for a cause, it’s really hard to say no.”

Source: Christian Century

Spiritual children are in general more happy than children who don’t have spiritual aspects to their lives, according to research from the University of British Columbia. Religious practices, on the other hand, don’t have the same positive effect. LiveScience reports, “Religion is just one institutionalized venue for the practice of or experience of spirituality,” and it’s spirituality, not religion, that predicts happiness.

That dichotomy between spirituality an religion isn’t particularly helpful to Marjorie Ingall, writing for the new Jewish online magazine the Tablet. She writes, “I’m not so sure you can tease apart spirituality and religion.” Many religions fuse together aspects of family life, social justice, and community making the split between spirituality and religion nearly impossible to define.

Sources:  LiveScience ,  The Tablet  

Hospitality, a tradition ingrained in most religions, is not always extended to people with disabilities. Disabled people can sometimes feel unwelcome inside of churches, mosques and synagogues. “Too often faith communities sanctify prejudices in the community rather than challenge them,” Reverend Bill Gaventa told Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. He added, “It shouldn’t be easier to get into a bar than a church.”

The article profiles a few religious institutions that are actively welcoming people with disabilities. Describing his synagogue, Rabbi Dan Grossman said, “We have a reputation that we are a special needs community, when in fact that probably only makes up a small percentage of the active community in the synagogue. I think it defines the synagogue because it simply doesn’t happen elsewhere.”

Source: Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

Image by Elessar, licensed under Creative Commons.

The Pope wants his flock to get online and start blogging. In a recent announcement, Pope Benedict XVI extolled the virtues of the world wide web saying, “Young people in particular, I appeal to you: bear witness to your faith through the digital world!” A recent article in the Smart Set points out that religion’s embrace of emerging technologies extends back further than the current, blog-loving pontiff. The Gutenberg bible was cutting-edge media for its time, and the clothespin, the wheel-driven washing machine, and the circular saw were all invented by the industrious Shaker Christians. (Though their sex-adverse beliefs, rather than their ingenious inventions, were likely what doomed the sect.) Golberg also shows how the story of Noah’s ark could be considered a parable for the benefits of embracing technology, before it’s too late.

Source: The Smart Set

In June, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his support for the banning of wearing burqas in public. Speaking to the French National Assembly, Sarkozy said that “The burqa is not welcome on French territory. In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity...It is a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.”

Needless to say, in the blogosphere these comments have set off a round of fiery debates reminiscent of the conversations about the 2004 French law that banned Muslim head scarves, Jewish yakamas, and large Christian crosses in public schools.

Writing for the Huffington Post, Liesl Gerntholtz, the director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, argues that we need to look beyond controversial burqas: “Women's oppression is universal. Those who want to help address this sorry state of affairs should start not by telling Muslim women how to dress, but by tackling the root causes of this oppression both at home and abroad: discrimination, lack of access to services, and unequal economic opportunities.”

Newsweek senior editor Lisa Miller and a professor at the Chicago Theological Seminary, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, warn on the Washington Post blog On Faith that any government decision about which religions’ traditional clothing is offensive and very dangerous. 

Over at the fantastic blog Muslimah Media Watch, Krista points out that the problems surrounding sexual oppression aren’t going to simply go away with the burqa:

So when these women make the “choice” to wear the burqa, they are not necessarily choosing between imprisonment and freedom, or between subservience and empowerment; they may be making this choice between multiple forms of imprisonment (symbolic or otherwise), or multiple options that still place them in subservient positions, or they may even be making this choice in a context where the burqa represents the positive side of those dichotomies.

Sources: Huffington Post, Newsweek, Washington Post, On Faith, Muslimah Media Watch

Image by fabbio, licensed by Creative Commons.

How well do religion and politics really play together, wonders Will Braun in the Summer 2009 issue of Geez. The co-editor/publisher of the irreverent Canadian spirituality magazine confesses to being a “pessimist in a time of promise,” after pondering the religious bracketing in President Obama’s inauguration speech. It was in that speech that Obama spoke of reaffirming “the greatness” of the United States, and drawing confidence from “the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.”

“Does the narrative of ‘richest, most powerful’ fit with religion?” Braun asks. “At one point, Obama heralded ‘the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.’ If this God-given promise applies to all God’s children—not just Americans—then how can the U.S. guard its top spot and strive for equity at the same time?”

Braun offers some food for thought: “Consider the biblical lines that would never make it into a presidential speech (in any country): ‘love your enemies,’ ‘the last shall be first,’ and from the beatitudes, ‘blessed are the poor,’ and ‘blessed are the meek.’ My point is not that presidents should be preachers but that God is not in any country’s corner. And perhaps the parts of the biblical story that could never make their way onto a presidential tele-prompter indicate the exact elements that Christians should bring to the discourse of a nation.”

Bonus time: Not too long ago, Will Braun was our guest on Alt Wire, a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a rotating cast of alternative-press luminaries.

Source: Geez

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

Religions have never been particularly open to change. Changes are usually referred to as “revolutions” or “schisms” in religious history. Believers of the open source movement, profiled by Sam Kean in Search magazine, believe it doesn’t have to be that way. By applying the open source philosophy, best known for software like Wikipedia and Linux, a few tech-geeks are using a nonhierarchical, change-based approach to change religion.

Strict adherents to the open source philosophy point out that neither Wikipedia nor Linux are considered truly open source, because there are certain restrictions in place that prevent people from editing everything. This becomes a problem in open source religion too, where certain traditions and rituals are literally sacred. Kean also identifies “a certain lackadaisicalness about some open-source religions,” where people aren’t as religious in their dedication.

Source: Search

In the film Guest of Cindy Sherman, the photographer's former lover set out to tell the story of an art star, but, according to a critic writing in The American Prospect, winds up presenting a "creepy, cringe-inducing rehash of a relationship's failure, told through intimate home-movie footage and the annotations of friends. Importantly—albeit inadvertently—it is also a film that illustrates the misogyny still pervasive in the art world today, a misogyny that Hasegawa-Overacker both records and exudes."

Sherman’s work questions the role and representation of women in society, and Hasegawa-Overacker's argument, as presented in The American Prospect, is that "the market swung once wildly in the direction of the macho, so the swing toward the feminine represented by Sherman's enduring success must be some sort of overcorrection."

Beyond the strange world of Hasegawa-Overacker's film, that feminine swing is still evident in the art world. The up-and-coming, 24-year-old UK photographer and painter Sarah Maple is feeding an art world buzz. Maple grew up in southern England struggling with her Muslim/western identity and explores that identity in her art. Having been compared to Cindy Sherman, her provocative work explores sexuality, feminism, religion and culture, and she has been making headlines since her first solo exhibition “This Artist Blows” in London in 2008, as featured in Red Pepper.

Some of her paintings were so controversial that a gallery showing them was vandalized and put under police surveillance. The painting which received the most heated debate within some Muslim communities depicts the artist in a headscarf cradling a baby piglet. In her piece I Love Orgasms, black fabric covers her entire face and body except a small slit for the eyes and a white pin exclaiming, you guessed it, “I love orgasms” on her chest. In an interview with Red Pepper about the themes of religion and sexuality in her art, Maple explains “a lot of my work is quite cathartic it gives me the opportunity to explore the sorts of things I wouldn’t explore in my actual life. I can use art as an outlet—especially with sexuality.”

As for the Sherman connection, she brushes it off: "Yeah, it’s funny, everyone says Cindy Sherman to me and I’ve never looked at her work. I know of her because everyone keeps saying Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman. So I’ve looked at her and now I quite like it. People think I’m trying to copy her, but I’m not. I’m not really even familiar with her work."

Sources: The Amerian Prospect, Red Pepper

Top, Cindy Sherman Untitled #132. Image by hragvartanian licensed under Creative Commons.   

Bottom, Passport by Sarah Maple. Image by libbyrosof licensend under Creative Commons.

Religious people may be less anxious than the non-religious, according to new research reported by the New Scientist. Using brain scans, researchers found that non-believers showed more activity in a part of the brain linked to anxiety than their devout counterparts. Religion could help reduce anxiety, according to the study’s lead neuroscientist Michael Inzlicht, because “it provides a kind of blueprint on how to interact with the world."

You’ve got to hand it to atheist champion Christopher Hitchens for going out and engaging with his ideological foes. Ever since the 2005 release of his best-selling book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Hitchens has been publicly debating Christian speakers on the existence of God. In advance of his latest bout—a March 3 face-off with Oxford University professor John Lennox at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama—Hitchens spoke about his atheistic, er, crusade with Greg Garrison at the Birmingham News.

Hitchens is in fine, feisty form in the interview. Here a few highlights:

On the God question: “There is not another greater topic. It’s the first question humanity began to ask itself. Religion was our first attempt to make sense of things.”

On Mother Teresa: “I was invited by the Vatican to testify against her, and did. I’m the only person who’s represented the devil pro bono.”

On the sincerity and depth of Christian belief in America: “A lot of people go to church for reasons that are not strictly theological.”

On the success of his book: “There’s a big thirst for a reply to the theocratic bullying that’s been going on. There are a lot of people of faith buying it on a ‘know your enemy’ basis.”

(Thanks, Religion News Service.)

Image by ensceptico, licensed under Creative Commons.

Source: Birmingham News

Social scientists find it helpful to think of ideas and religions spreading like infectious diseases. Phrases like “going viral” and “tipping points” are often used to describe the spread of memes. Though many religious adherents are loath to admit it, Sam Kean writes for Search Magazine that “genes, germs, and memes of religious ideas all seem to spread through societies in the same way.”

One social scientist takes the idea a step further, saying that real diseases (the kind spread by microbes) help explain the spread of religions. Corey Fincher points out that diseases are more common in places near the equator, and there’s a vast disparity of religions in those regions, too. Up north, in places like Norway, both diseases and religious diversity are less common. Fincher believes that this is not a fluke. People tend to isolate themselves from others to stay away from diseases, and isolation breeds new ideas, so a greater number of diseases would lead to a wider variety of religions.

Even with plenty of research, most people wouldn’t cite disease as the reason for their religious beliefs. But as Harvey Whitehouse, an Oxford University anthropologist points out, “It’s not that what people say is wrong, it’s that it’s often a poor guide to people’s implicit beliefs.

Image by Orange Tuesday, licensed under Creative Commons.

Source: Search Magazine 

Church and state are becoming increasingly intertwined in Georgia, reports EurasiaNet, noting that “the Georgian Orthodox Church has become one of the most prominent actors in Georgia’s social and political life.”

Church patriarchs have gotten involved in political frays; the church gets $15 million a year from the state budget; and 86 percent of Georgians consider the Orthodox patriarchy to be Georgia’s most trustworthy institution, according to Molly Corso at EurasiaNet, the Soros-funded news outlet we turn to for rock-solid reporting about the “Stans” and all their neighbors at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

“Now it is much more difficult to say you are atheist, for example, than it was four or six years ago,” Georgian sociologist Giorgi Nijaradze, who conducted the poll, tells EurasiaNet. “People consider themselves obliged to declare their respect toward the church; they are very afraid to say something against it.”

Corso reports on an instance in which the church allegedly exerted pressure on state media, but no matter the depth of church-state collusion, it’s clear even at a glance that Georgians are undergoing a religious rebirth.

“On the streets of Tbilisi, public expressions of faith are becoming ever more commonplace,” she writes. “Pedestrians and drivers alike routinely stop in front of churches—or within sight of a church—to cross themselves.”

Image by Temo Bardzimashvili, courtesy of EurasiaNet.

When the organization Islamicity.com organized a hajj in the video game Second Life, pilgrims were faced with a question: Is a religious experience possible with a virtual avatar dressed in a Batman costume? In an article for Religion Dispatches, Rachel Wagner explores some of the strange issues involved in virtual spirituality. Wagner taught a class called “Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality,” where she led her students on the virtual hajj in the game Second Life. Unfortunately, the avatar she used was dressed in a Batman costume. Considering her class, and religiously themed video games both banal and disturbing, Wagner eventually concludes that spiritually enriching experiences are possible online, but it “must in some way change how we live our lives offline.”

Source: Religion Dispatches

"When starting a play, I ask myself, 'What's the last play in the world I would ever want to write?'  Then I force myself to write it." That is how playwright and director Young Jean Lee describes her process. Since The Appeal debuted at SoHo Rep in 2004, Lee has been considered a leading new voice in American theater. Determined to shake both herself and her audience free from complacency, she states, "I want to create work that disarms audiences with humor and then excoriates them … until they are left disturbed, exhilarated, and without answers." 

Church, which premiered in 2007 at P.S. 122 and was recently performed at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, is a provocative exploration of religion that straddles the line between earnestness and irony so delicately as to leave its audience in a constant state of unease. Structured as a religious service complete with preaching, testimonials, singing, and dancing, Church works on its audience like its namesake. Through its cast of liberal Christian characters, the show calls people out on their ego-based, petty worries and challenges them to meaningful action. What makes it all tolerable, and indeed compelling, is Lee's ability to balance piercing social satire with disarming sincerity. At various moments in the show, you may feel uplifted, moved, amused, ashamed, or devastated. But you will never feel complacent.     

Image by Ryan Jensen, courtesy of Young Jean Lee Theater Company and Walker Art Center.

As the Vatican launched its own YouTube channel, the Pope tempered his embrace of new media with a contemplation on the meaning of friendship in an increasingly digital world. His thoughts were included in a letter that cautioned against the marginalization of offline relationships:

The concept of friendship has enjoyed a renewed prominence in the vocabulary of the new digital social networks that have emerged in the last few years. The concept is one of the noblest achievements of human culture. It is in and through our friendships that we grow and develop as humans. For this reason, true friendship has always been seen as one of the greatest goods any human person can experience. We should be careful, therefore, never to trivialize the concept or the experience of friendship. It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop on-line friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbours and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation. If the desire for virtual connectedness becomes obsessive, it may in fact function to isolate individuals from real social interaction while also disrupting the patterns of rest, silence and reflection that are necessary for healthy human development.

But while the Pope points out the spiritual shortcomings of cyberspace, he’s plugged in enough to recognize its potential to spread the gospel. He concludes his letter by encouraging young Catholics “to bring the witness of their faith to the digital world,” and, “to introduce into the culture of this new environment of communications and information technology the values on which you have built your lives.”

(Thanks, Articles of Faith.)

Religious institutions are far from immune to the woes of recession. Recent articles for the Boston Globe and Ethics Daily report that many churches and religious organizations are already feeling the downturn squeeze. And as the Globe points out, widespread financial crises are particularly tricky for the faithful:

For religious organizations, the nation's economic woes hit twice. The faith groups rely for income on sources vulnerable to a downturn - contributions from individuals, income from investments, and, in the case of faith-based social service organizations, funding from government. But the faith groups also aspire to assist the hungry and homeless and unemployed, meaning that during a recession their expenses go up even as their revenue may go down.

For Ethics Daily, Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for Ethics predicts a Darwin-esque future for religion, which he thinks could profoundly affect our belief landscape:

A deeper and prolonged financial crisis will likely result in a survival-of-the-fittest scenario among local and national faith organizations, which, in turn, will reshape the religious ethos for years to come.

(Thanks, Religion Blog.)

Image by szlea, licensed under Creative Commons.

Barack Obama’s faith was the subject of a lot of analysis on the campaign trail, and many are pondering the effect that his victory will have on religions in America. Jeff Sharlet at the Revealer wonders whether Obama’s election signals the demise of the Religious Right, but some think that reports of the movement’s death are premature. Sharlet quotes conservative scholar D. Michael Lindsay who predicts that an Obama Administration will give the movement something rally against: “Political movements like the Religious Right don’t need a ‘god’ to succeed, but they do need a devil. Nothing builds allegiances among a coalition like a common enemy.”

The Religious Right might make an enemy of Obama, even though he is a Christian, because his faith is moderate and measured, and because he’s prone to seek out different opinions and shun absolutism.

This measured worldview could be why Obama will present a problem the New Atheists, too. As Frank Schaffer wrote for the Huffington Post the day after the election that Obama’s victory is drawing the curtain on an era on spiritual certitude and intolerance at both extremes:

Into the all or nothing culture wars, and the all or nothing wars between the so-called New Atheists and religion the election of President elect Obama reintroduces nuance. President elect Obama’s ability to believe in Jesus, yet question, is going to rescue American religion in general and Christianity in particular, from the extremes.

In a list of people who would make atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Bill Maher sick with rage, Foreign Policy has compiled the five most powerful religious leaders in the world. The Pope makes an appearance, but more for his power over Italian politics than for his theological pull. And Pastor Rick Warren, head of the 23,000-member Saddleback megachurch congregation and author of the bestselling book The Purpose Drive Life, also makes an appearance, after hosting Obama and McCain in their first joint appearance as the presumptive presidential nominees.

All five leaders may have their critics, but they’re certainly better than the five worst religious leaders that Foreign Policy listed back in April.

Image by  All About You God , licensed under  Creative Commons .

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.

When a Catholic gets hurt, an image of the Virgin Mary could help soothe the pain. New research suggests that “religious belief alters the brain in a way that changes how a person responds to pain,” Irene Tracey of Oxford University told Science News.

For the research, Catholics, agnostics, and atheists were subjected to a series of electric shocks, some while looking at a picture of the Virgin Mary and some without the image. Practicing Catholics perceived less pain when they were staring at the Virgin Mary, Science News reports, and displayed increased activity in an area of the brain associated with “emotional detachment and perceived control over pain.” Agnostics and atheists didn't show the same kind of neuro-activity, nor the perceived pain reduction.

Are Americans living in a recession or a financial apocalypse? Is now a time for prudent financial choices or a time to pray? Sean Cole reports for Marketplace that some economists are embracing the gloomy financial indicators as a sign that Armageddon is upon us. Cole talked to an “end times economist” who said that the current recession is God “saying that this world's financial system is built upon an unrighteous foundation.” 

The financial system has become a religious cult of its own, Peter Laarman writes for Religion Dispatches. The financial crisis was caused in part by an adherence to “economism,” a creed that Laarman describes as “the notion that every part of human life is governed by economic considerations and that everything that happens—or at least everything that matters—is reducible to human monads pursuing their rational self-interest.” 

Questions about financial regulation in the current presidential race should be treated with the same importance as religious questions, since the two have become so closely related. Laarman writes, “we are now in actual danger of losing what remains of democracy itself in our unseemly desire to enshrine the money-changing cult at the very center of the temple.”

“Whether you're a believer or not, maybe now is a good time to ask ourselves what we worship,” Cole said for Marketplace.  That simple sentiment was applauded by Amy Frykholm, writing for Theoblog. Even if he didn’t mean to, Frykholm writes that Cole echoed Matthew 6:2, which reads, “Where your treasure is there your heart will be also”

Image by  David Paul Ohmer , licensed under  Creative Commons .

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.

Considering the community they provide and the devotion they inspire, sports serve religious functions, Andrew Cooper writes for Tricycle. “Sports satisfy our deep hunger to connect with a realm of mythic meaning, to see the transpersonal forces that work within and upon human nature enacted in dramatic form, and to experience the social cohesion that these forms make possible,” Cooper writes.

For players, a form of spirituality is often experienced in the idea of the “zone,” according to Cooper. Players and announcers speak of a game-time “zone” mindset, where a player is able to forget himself and his surroundings and play almost unconsciously. Cooper writes that this experience is similar, though not the same, as the Buddhist idea of enlightenment. He writes, “a Zen perspective on the relationship between practice and enlightenment may help clarify structural issues in the relationship between self-effort and self-transcendence in sport.”

Ten examples of the transcendence in sports can be found on BeliefNet, where the editors have compiled the top 10 “sports miracles.” The website compiled 10 feats of athleticism that they call miracles because of their improbability.

Taken to the extreme, the parallels between sports and religion quickly become absurd. The Onion ran an article with the headline, “God Wastes Miracle On Running Catch In Outfield.” Rather than bringing peace to the Middle East or helping victims of natural disasters, the God of the Onion opts instead to meddle in a baseball games. No word yet on who God supports in the current Major League Baseball playoffs, unfortunately.

 Image by Moazzam Brohi, licensed under Creative Commons.

When I saw the title, Jesus Christ Super Zine, it was impossible for me not to crack open Ariel Birks’ personal zine. Distributed by S.S.O. Press out of Olympia, Washington, the first installment is full of illuminating stories from Birks’ stint as a hardcore evangelical Christian. Part handwritten and part typewritten, the charmingly sarcastic stories revisit her teenage years of proselytizing, abstaining from sex, and praying cross-legged on the grass with attractive secularists.

The essays reflect the author’s personal experiences, but there is a distinct familiarity of religious zeal for anyone with a history of zealotry. Here are some of my favorite quotes from Jesus Christ Super Zine, which encapsulate the sincerity and devotion of her then-Christian life:

On Christian camp: I got to hang out with the most awesome people ever. We had few inhibitions about ‘fitting in’ as we were all liberated by Jesus to do whatever the hell we wanted (except sin.) 

On Birks’ friend Jamy finding Jesus: I’m sure it was some worship service or camp. You know. With really emotional music that made me feel vulnerable.

On witnessing: He was 19, his name was Chris and well, he was extremely attractive to me. So, so very attractive. Actually he looked exactly like Chris Cornell. And thus, a wee little bit like Jesus, no? But that’s not what I was after, of course. I was there for some mind sex. 

Reading Jesus Christ Super Zine is better than remembering my own stories as an ex-Religious Freak. I can rest assured that others have been through the same experience: first hopelessly devoted, then utterly apathetic, and finally truly embarrassed. This trip down the memory lane of impressionable youth turns that embarrassment into entertainment, portraying a light-hearted coming-of-age tale.

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."

While Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn clash with their neighbors over traffic codes, ultra-Orthodox groups in Jerusalem are taking things to extremes, violently lashing out at people whose behavior contradicts their moral code.

Bands of vigilantes dubbing themselves “modesty squads” have been accused of attacking citizens who violate the groups' ultra-Orthodoxy, Breitbart reports. A divorced woman alleges that one such squad beat her, tied her down, and threatened to kill her if she did not move out of their conservative neighborhood. A clothing store selling “indecent” clothing was recently torched, with one person taken into custody. One group has protested outside an electronics store that sell satellite dishes, MP4 video players, and other devices that transmit “immoral” entertainment. Another squad is accused of throwing acid on a 14-year-old girl because she was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

Heeb HQ calls the groups "Joogs," after the sadistic gang of Droogs in A Clockwork Orange, and suggests that “even pinning their eyes open and forcing them to watch Yentl without sleep for days on end would not be sufficient punishment for these guys.”

At its core, psychoanalysis is a quest for self knowledge, in some ways similar to religious study. Patrick Lee Miller writes for the Immanent Frame that psychoanalysis is a “source of self,” borrowing a phrase from author Charles Taylor, and is able to “enrich our lives with meaning, arrange our activities to serve higher goals, and thus motivate us at times to act beyond our narrow interests.” And if psychoanalysis is able to generate wisdom and reveal meaning, why can’t it be considered alongside other modern worldviews and religions?

As much as people try to avoid it, religion and politics have taken center stage in the 2008 Olympic games. The Israeli coach of the Russian basketball team made headlines recently by shaking hands with the captain of the Iranian team, the Jerusalem Post reports, in a show of interfaith support. The gesture occurred the day after an Iranian swimmer refused to race against an Israeli. President Bush then added his own dose of religious politics to the games in a speech saying, “No state, man, or woman should fear the influence of a loving religion.”

For many competitors in the Olympics, athletics and religion are inexorably linked. Josh McAdams, a Mormon American steeplechase competitor, told the Washington Post, “athletics is not only physical and mental but spiritual.” Unfortunately for McAdams, practicing that spirituality is difficult inside the Olympic Village, as China has banned many foreign chaplains from living with the athletes. China promised to provide their own religious leaders, but the Washington Post reports that religious facilities on the Olympic grounds are remote, often don’t have enough space for worshipers, and participants are getting frustrated by the inadequate language skills of the service leaders.

Private worship aside, athletes are also under threat from the Chinese government and the International Olympic Committee, should they express their religion openly during the games. In another article for the Washington Post, Wang Baodong, a Chinese Government spokesperson said, “There are very specific provisions on how an athlete should practice his religion or beliefs during the games.”

Many have pointed out that hampering religious practice violates the Olympic commitment to freedom of expression. It also goes against the explicit religious traditions of the Olympic Games, Louis A. Ruprecht writes for Religion Dispatches. Ruprecht points out that the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, once referred to the event as religio athletae, explicitly positioning the competition as religious. Even today, when the event is being held in an expressly non-religious country, Ruprecht writes that “the Modern Olympics are choreographed to give the athletes, and to a lesser degree, the spectators, a spiritual experience of enormous and lasting power.”

If you’ve ever found yourself struggling to be open-minded about someone's spiritual beliefs, Emily DePrang can empathize. In “Cult Following,” a Nerve essay subtitled, “How I learned to embrace my girlfriend’s ridiculous religion,” DePrang describes the bumpy spiritual path that lead to her girlfriend Sam, a follower of Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, known in the West as Amma, the “hugging saint.” The use of the word "ridiculous" in the piece's subtitle is appropriate, since spiritually transcendent moments aren't always elegant or otherworldly, and might seem absurd at first blush.

Finding spirituality in the seemingly ridiculous is also the focus of a piece by Rabbi Naomi Levy in Moment Magazine. Levy describes an epiphany she had involving a spectral figure wrapped in what appeared to be toilet paper. She sheepishly told her boyfriend about her vision, afraid of appearing insane, but he pointed out that “if God can could come to Moses in a burning bush, who's to say that God can't come to you in a roll of Charmin?” 

Both stories explore the confluence of the absurd and sublime, a point well-taken by a cynic like me. The experience for me isn't always spiritual, but the act of finding beauty and common ground with others is almost always revelatory. For Emily and Sam, the story culminates in a pilgrimage to a desert ashram where they receive hugs from Amma herself, and Emily’s cynicism dissolves. DePrang's writing is well-suited for the subject: sharp and sardonic but also kind. She’s an assured writer who can still articulate her doubts. The piece—just as much a love story as it is a story about religion—considers the ways compassion can chip away at skepticism, both in our spirituality and our relationships with others.

Image by  kalandrakas , licensed by  Creative Commons .

Although he’s still on John McCain’s short list, revelations that Bobby Jindal took part in an unconventional exorcism ceremony must have hurt the Louisiana governor’s chances at the vice presidential nod. Jindal wrote about his exorcism experience in 1994 for the New Oxford Review, a Roman Catholic magazine. In the article, deconstructed on the Daily Kingfish blog, Jindal describes a formative religious experience where a number of students laid hands on a young woman who tried to escape, but was restrained by the students who forced her to read passages from the bible. “The essay raises more questions than answers,” according to the Daily Kingfish, “and many of these questions are uncomfortable.”

Part of the discomfort stems from the fact that exorcisms in America are often confined to the movies. In Germany, however, exorcisms are experiencing a revival in popularity, according to an article from the British Times Online. The German Catholic Church has shied away from exorcisms since 1973, when a 23-year-old woman was killed during an exorcism ceremony. Today, the Times reports that hundreds Germans are turning to find exorcists abroad, where cultures are more accepting of the pracitce. In Italy, for example, the Times estimates that there are some 300 trained exorcists.

“To the people who come to see me, I first advise them to go see a doctor or a psychologist,” the official exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, Father Gabriele Amorth, told the Spanish newspaper La Razon, but there are still enough possessed people to keep him busy. At 82 years old, Amorth has performed an estimated 70,000 exorcisms in his lifetime, he continues to work seven days each week, and his schedule is full for the next two months. Amorth also gave some insight into the roll of exorcisms in politics, telling La Razon, “the devil likes to take over those that hold political positions.”

Spanish photographer Fèlix Curto's latest exhibit, “Heart of Gold: Visits to the Mennonite communities in America,” on display at La Fábrica Galería in Madrid, is the result of a number of visits to traditional  Mennonite communities. The website We Make Money Not Art showcases the photographer's work, some of which could reinforce the popular perception of Mennonites as luddites who live apart from modern society. Comments on the site point out that the people represented are a small subset of a larger Mennonite population that has otherwise integrated itself into mainstream, modern life. Still, Curto’s photographs display a beautiful, almost surreal austerity: Mr. Soul (seen left), for example, depicts a farmer whose weathered face emanates strength and rectitude against a wide-open sky.

Image by Fèlix Curto, courtesy of La Fábrica Galería.

A lot of ink has been spilled over recent experiments that study religious experiences using brain scanners. Brendan Mackie wrote about the experiments back in 2007 for Utne.com. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about how neuroscience will “not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.” 

Brooks’ assertion is entirely backwards, according to Kelly Bulkeley, writing for the Immanent Frame religion blog. Since religious experiences have differed drastically in the brain scans, depending on the person and the religion, Bulkeley writes that neuroscience will likely undermine people’s faith in a monotheistic God, favoring a more polytheistic view of religion. It will, however, reaffirm the importance of the Bible as “a valuable collection of teachings about history, morality, and collective meaning-making.”

The Church of Scientology is an easy target for skepticism and derision. Some like to belittle its founding story, allegedly about an alien named Xenu and hydrogen bombs in volcanoes. Others tell an alternate story about writer and founder L. Ron Hubbard deciding to make up a religion and telling another sci-fi writer, “that’s where the money is.” To me, the eeriest story about Scientology is how it aggressively attacks its critics.

Gerry Armstrong is considered the “Salman Rushdie of Scientology,” profiled in the spring issue of Maisonneuve (article not available online), an “unemployed, penniless man living on a disability pension in the middle of nowhere in British Columbia.” Armstrong was once a member of Hubbard’s inner circle, and he compiled biographic material that contradicted Hubbard’s claims of being, among other things, a nuclear scientist, a civil engineer, and a wounded war veteran. As a result of Armstrong’s vigorous attempts to expose Hubbard, “the Church of Scientology [has] spent nearly three decades trying to discredit and silence [him]…. For Scientologists, it’s like Armstrong has spent time with Jesus or Mohammed or Moses. The only problem is, Armstrong does not worship Hubbard.” In the article, Armstrong claims to have been repeatedly harassed, physically assaulted, and threatened with assassination.

Far from being a turn-the-other-cheek kind of religion, Maisonneuve reports that Scientology condones attacking Church detractors, per Hubbard’s instructions. An internal Scientology tape quoted in the article shows Tom Cruise summarizing how the Church deals with its critics: “confront, shatter, suppression.”

Image by Jason Mouratides, licensed under Creative Commons.

Getting in touch with your spiritual side just got tastier with the release of Geez magazine’s winter Taste Issue. The fiercely independent, Utne Independent Press Award-nominated, Canadian Christian magazine showcases its mischievous yet insightful style, covering social, political, and religious ideas, this time through a food-smattered lens. In the issue, Dan Wiens explores common perceptions of farming and the distance people have created between food and its source. Elsewhere, Barbara Kingsolver discusses growing up in the farming sect of the American "caste system" in an excerpt from her latest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. The articles track food from the North American table, through the myriad channels of distribution, and back to production. They also examine the global tremors created by each of these steps. Mmm…gastro politics. 

—Morgan Winters