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.

In the almost 30 years that Margot Adler has worked with National Public Radio, she has covered social, health, and political issues for All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and many other shows. During that time, she has also been a practicing Pagan, a fact not often addressed in her professional life. Adler sat down with the radio show Interfaith Voices to talk about both paganism and public radio.

Adler, author of the book Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, says she was drawn to Paganism partly due to the inspiration she drew as a woman from ancient goddesses, but also because of her connection to the environmental movement. In the interview Adler talks about the unthinking, “anti-ecological” tendencies displayed by many people, and how Paganism can help people connect with the earth.

Teens at Morning Star Church in O’Fallon, Missouri, don’t get scolded by their parents for texting during services. In fact, it’s encouraged. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Morning Star has incorporated texting into its Sunday sermon, a trend some churches are embracing to engage younger followers. Morning Star worshipers are able to text questions to the church’s cell phone, where they are received by a church employee and routed to the Reverend’s laptop. On a recent Sunday, some of the texted questions included, “When we are in heaven, will we be able to touch our relatives still on Earth?” and “I'm wondering (and this will sound awful) about people I don't care to bump into in heaven. Will strained relationships here be awkward there, too?” Fourteen-year-old Maddie Howard told the Post-Dispatch, “You don't want to admit your sins to the rest of the church, but this way you can still ask something important.”

(Thanks, Articles of Faith.)

 Image by  Alton , 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 . 

Greed has emerged as a unifying culprit in the current financial crisis and recession in the United States. John McCain blames the situation on “unbridled corruption and greed.” Barack Obama’s campaign has presented a plan to reform the “greed and excesses of Washington.” Not far beneath this rhetoric is the implication that both presidential candidates are ostensibly rejecting the Gordon Gekko, Wall Street mantra of “greed is good” for a more moral and less sinful worldview.

Although it is a sin, greed does have its benefits, according to Dr. Rebecca Blank, interviewed on Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. “It's greed that makes people work harder, be more productive, and helps the economy grow,” Blank says. Greed also may not have been behind every decision that led to the crisis. Blank points out that there were “a lot of people at the very beginning of this, the whole sub-prime crisis that started this off, who saw themselves as providing more funds for low-income families. They were doing a good thing.”

The problem isn’t that people don’t care about each other, Rabbi Michael Lerner writes for Tikkun, it’s that people “don't feel ready to trust their own desires and think that they would just be making a fool of themselves to imagine a world in which people really took care of each other.” Americans continue to be generous right now, even when surrounded by excess and greed. People need to acknowledge and cultivate that altruistic impulse in others, instead of giving up on the government and the market as inherently evil.

The American economy has benefited millions of people, while tapping into a selfish and materialistic impulse inside of humans at the same time. Some people believe that the free market will work itself out on its own, but Jim Wallis writes on the God’s Politics blog, “left to its own devices and human weakness (let’s call it sin), the market too often disintegrates into greed and corruption, as the Wall Street financial collapse painfully reveals.” The government, according to Wallis, must figure out a way to encourage innovation, but reign in the greed.

It’s up to the American people to push elected officials in that direction, toward good regulation and away from unbridled greed. Too often, according to Lerner, politicians keep the “discussion in vague and technocratic terms that avoid the central ethical issues that are always at the heart of the economy.” Lerner writes that politicians, including Obama, need to directly address the moral and ethical issues facing the country, not just the economic ones.

Image by Galaksiafervojo, licensed under Creative Commons.

The Buddhist practice of mindfulness—the engaged awareness of the present moment, of one’s self and surroundings—has many practical applications in the modern, busy world. But many of us live in a loud, violent, crowded culture, and sometimes it’s hard to find room for mindfulness. “That’s all well and good for someone at a meditation retreat in the mountains,” an overwhelmed city dweller might sniff, “but it won’t work here.”

Andrea Miller, writing for Shambhala Sun (excerpt only online), anticipates that reaction and outlines five practical contexts where mindfulness can be practiced despite the odds against it. Miller describes mindfulness initiatives in health and healing, caregiving, education, prisons, and organizational leadership. “Not long ago seen as fringey and foreign, mindfulness practice is going mainstream.”

Image by mrhayata, licensed by Creative Commons.

It’s often easy to agree with spiritual ideals in theory but struggle to achieve them in practice, especially when it comes to sex and drugs. In an essay for the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, Hannah Tennant-Moore writes about her difficulties following the five precepts of the Dhammika Sutta: “do not injure others, lie, steal, consume intoxicants, or ‘go with another man’s wife’ (nowadays understood to mean ‘engage in sexual misconduct’).” When confined to a Buddhist monastery, Tennant-Moore writes that she was able to achieve all five ideals. Once faced with the temptations of the outside world, however, she found herself unable to avoid “sexual misconduct.” 

The Buddhist faith actually has a complex relationship with sex. Tennant-Moore writes that it can sometimes help and sometimes distract from achieving awareness. The Dalai Lama once said that sex between a guru and a student is sometimes (though rarely) acceptable, according to Tennant-Moore. She quotes Zen teacher Ezra Bayda who wrote: “The difference between experiencing our sexuality as heaven or hell is rooted in one thing only, and this is the clarity of our awareness.”

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.”

The large Hasidic Jewish population of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has been clashing with hipsters since an onslaught of 20-somethings began invading their neighborhood in the ’90s. Today the two groups are fighting it out over bike lanes. At a community board meeting on September 8, the New York Post reports that Hasidic representatives proposed the elimination of bike lanes on the grounds that the lanes cause traffic problems and congestion. One Hasidic representative, Simon Weisser, admitted to the Post that the hipsters’ scantily clad attire was also a major problem. “It bothers me,” said Weisser, “and it bothers a lot of people.”

The bike lanes are the latest front in the hipster vs. Hasidic cultural clash over fashion, modesty, and neighborhood identity. New York Magazine points to an article from the Brooklyn Paper about a fight over a billboard for the remade TV show 90210 that was deemed distasteful because it featured people in swimsuits. Back in 2004, Harper’s magazine printed a more spiritual salvo in the fight against the hipsters, when Hasidic Jews distributed a prayer called, “For the Protection of Our City Williamsburg From the Plague of Artists.” The prayer read in part:

Please, our Father God of Mercy, have mercy upon our generation that is weak, and remove this difficult test from these people, these immoral antagonists that by their doing will multiply, God forbid, the excruciating tests and the sight of the impurity and immorality that is growing in the world.

(Thanks, Jewlicious.)

Image by Sookie, licensened under Creative Commons. 

Although Jesus was tortured and murdered, a majority of white Southern evangelical Christians believe that torture is often or sometimes justified when pursuing terrorists, according to a new poll by Faith in Public Life and Mercer University. Among the general population, a smaller percentage (48 percent) of respondents believe that torture can be justified. White evangelical support of torture was much lower when the questioner appealed to the “Golden Rule,” asking respondents if  “the U.S. government should not use methods against our enemies that we would not want used on American soldiers.” A slight majority (52 percent) agreed that the government should not.

The torture and killing of Jesus should motivate all Christians to oppose torture, Jimmy McCarty writes for the God’s Politics blog. Waterboarding and other interrogation techniques currently being employed by the US government are unchristian, according to McCarty, and followers of Jesus have a responsibility to speak out.

For more coverage of torture from Utne Reader, visit www.utne.com/torture.

Sarah Palin’s religious rhetoric has managed to both rankle progressives and thrill conservatives. While Palin's nomination may have seemed foolish based on her lack of experience, George Lakoff at Tikkun articulates why McCain’s choice is a shrewdly political move that—in a cultural climate that places family values ahead of issues or experience—will appease culturally conservative voters.

“Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse,” Lakoff writes. “The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign is well aware of how Reagan and W won running on character: values, communication, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity—not issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is central.” In this political climate, where religious style trumps political substance and the “external realities” of a candidate’s voting record and job experience are nearly immaterial, Lakoff concludes that Sarah Palin is the perfect choice for VP.

Palin is not, however, the perfect choice for advocates of the separation between church and state—people like Rob Boston of Americans United. “I miss the days when pastors delivered sermons and politicians delivered political speeches,” Boston told the Associated Press. “The United States is increasingly diverse religiously. The job of a president is to unify all those different people and bring them together around policy goals, not to act as a kind of national pastor and bring people to God.”

On his blog at the Wall of Separation, Boston explains that he is not opposed to a candidate who makes references to God. He is opposed to candidates who would let faith do the governing. Referring to a speech Palin made at her former church in which she stated that the people of Alaska should “get right with God,” and that the war in Iraq reflects God’s will, Boston chafed at the idea that public officials might hope to mandate the faith of their constituency:

“I don’t want the president, governor, or mayor worrying about the state of my soul and whether my neighbors and I are ‘right with God.’ He or she would do better building the economy, creating jobs and filling potholes. We have great religious freedom in this nation. If any American feels that his or her soul needs a tune-up, there is no shortage of religious leaders willing to help out with that.”

Image by  wellohorld , licensed by  Creative Commons . 

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.”

A new, English-language translation of the Quran by Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar is causing controversy in some Muslim communities. The Sublime Qur’an (Kazi Publications, 2007) is the first English-language translation of the Islam's holy text by an American woman. Muneer Fareed, the Canadian secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), said he would consider banning it.

Though attempts to ban the book have been thwarted, the controversy continues. One passage is getting the majority of the heat: chapter 4 (Surah), verse (Ayah or Sign) 34. Sikeena Karmali, who interviewed Bakhtiar for Ascent, tries to clarify the issue:

Dr. Bakhtiar reverts the translation of the Arabic word dharhaba, translated for centuries by Muslim clerics as “to beat,” back to its original meaning of “to go away.” This is nothing short of revolutionary for empowering Muslim women in traditional societies, where a system of patriarchy cites the absolute authority of the Qur’an as the legitimizing factor for domestic abuse.

Bakhtiar says she wanted the translation to be as inclusive as possible. In the interview with Ascent she says, “Arabic is so rich that there are many different words you can use for [the translation of] a word. I always chose the word that would be most inclusive of people of all faiths.” Her translation is based on an understanding of the language as poetic, rather than didactic. In her reading, each passage is open to many interpretations, which “creates a diversity of belief that necessitates tolerance and openness.” Rather than putting her own interpretive spin on it, Bakhtiar tried consistently to translate each word throughout the text, leaving much of the interpretation to the reader.

Image by  el7bara , licensed under  Creative Commons .