Forget Right or Wrong
If the traditional practice of prayer in the context of traditional institutional religions is increasingly meaningless for a significant and growing proportion of American believers and seekers, one...
View ArticleThinking About God Makes Your Brain Bigger
A new book argues that spiritual practices, be they secular or religious, are inherently good for you. Meditation and prayer—be it about God, or evolution, or peace, or the Big Bang—will actually...
View ArticleDoes Hitchens Have a Prayer?
When I was told that Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with cancer and that this has sparked a discussion about whether people ought to pray for him, my first reaction was a stupefying...
View ArticleWho (or What) are Sarah Palin’s Prayer Warriors?
The perils of reporting on the faith of Sarah Barracuda.
View ArticlePrayer Group Runs Away From Home, Sparks Fear of Mass Suicide
Another California story? Or is there something here we can learn about Pentecostal, charismatic religion?
View ArticleNuns Pray, Rangers Lose
So much for the efficacy of remote prayer. Or is there more to think about?
View ArticleShould Faith Healing ‘Do Business’ with Modern Medicine?
Although medicine should stay in the business of being evidence-based, says Harvard historian of science Anne Harrington, other healing communities don’t necessarily need to follow that model. There’s...
View ArticleThe Week in Religion: Haggard Would Identify as Bisexual, Trademarking the...
If RD were 21 it would identify as Bisexual too.
View ArticleTurn Off, Slow Down, Drop In: The Digital Generation Reinvents the Sabbath
As National Day of Unplugging looms (it begins a week from today) I hope we all can agree that taking time away from the frenzy of everyday life is a good thing. And pausing to reflect on the role of...
View ArticleManly Prayers at Penn State
Besides the weighty matters of truth, justice and protection, Coach Brown prayed for something much less obviously connected to the alleged sexual abuse: a restoration of masculinity to the game of...
View ArticleGod Wants You to Work Harder, and to Stop Complaining
So-called “workplace spirituality” teaches people that the anxieties associated with global capital are inevitable, even part of the natural order of things. Under the highly deregulated conditions...
View ArticleRomney Lets his Inner Mormon Out Just in Time for Tampa
With a Mormon scheduled to pray at the Republican National Convention, here’s a Mo-splainer on LDS prayer customs.
View ArticleConventional Wisdom: RNC/DNC Giving God a Bad Name?
All the invocations of God’s name and snippets of the Bible and Nuns On the Bus and what have you can't really help the Democrats so long as the larger religiously-tinged framing about what’s good and...
View Article“I’ll Pray For You”—Powerful or Pointless?
The title of Anne Lamott’s new book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers is such a boldly brilliant summation that I laughed with delight the first time I heard it. So much truth in three...
View ArticleSpiritual-Not-Religious or Just Lazy?
The folks most likely to be alienated by Daniel's book are, unsurprisingly, the seekers—those who call themselves SBNR, of course, but also those who want religious community, or at least want to want...
View ArticleThe Papal Prayer Machine
With Twitter, there is just the right mix of calculable dissemination and mystery. You know who has retweeted or favorited your prayer, but what of the followers of the followers of the followers who...
View ArticleWomen to Pray for the First Time in April LDS World Meeting
Another non-doctrinal barrier to Mormon gender equality falls.
View ArticleWhy President Obama Should Not Visit the Western Wall
While the Western Wall remains under the administration of a state-sponsored religious entity that prohibits the free worship of its citizens, President Obama should not visit the site. To do so would...
View ArticleHistoric Prayer by Woman at LDS General Conference Signals Growing Concern...
“More progress in the last six months than in the last sixty years.”
View ArticleJames Foley Prayed, But He Was Not a Martyr
One of many of the unbecoming habits of career non-believers is the mockery of prayer....
View ArticleWest Virginia Mayor Enlists Churches To Pray Away Drugs and Crime
Huntington, West Virginia Mayor Steve Williams thinks he has a solution to the scourge of...
View ArticleThe NFL’s Prayer Problem
Kansas City Chiefs safety Husain Abdullah was penalized last night for praying in the end...
View Article‘I Don’t Buy It’: The Gospel According to Frank Underwood
With bonus: 12 Quotes from the Underwood Bible
View ArticleWhy The Church Can’t Stop Gun Violence
Last night, as news of the shootings in San Bernardino was being digested, the Twitterverse...
View ArticleAct, Pray, Tweet: What the H*ll To Do About Gun Violence?
We’re now averaging more than one mass shooting per day, The Washington Post reported last...
View ArticleHow Not to Oppose the National Day of Prayer
Today is the National Day of Prayer in the United States, an annual day of...
View ArticlePredatory Prayer: When Does “Please” Not Mean “Please”?
Is it possible to coerce someone to pray? Is it still coercion if you say please?...
View ArticleI Don’t Think “Thoughts and Prayers” Means What You Think it Means: A...
The sudden birth and development of the #NEVERAGAIN movement, led by students who survived the...
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