With the Dead in Paradise: American Memorial Day, Floating Lanterns, and Free-Floating Spirituality
Gary Laderman The dead are with us. At least that’s what most religious cultures tell us.
The Body of Fried Chicken and the Blood of Bud Light: Religion Around the Tailgate Table
Madison Tarleton The relationship that the tailgating participants have not only with one another but with the event itself allows them to create a countered “sacred space” to the mundane routines of work and daily life.
Disney’s Christopher Robin and the Idolatry of Work
Daniel Anderson Tragically, Christopher Robin’s life seemingly proves Adorno’s adage that a “wrong life cannot be lived rightly.”
The Ghost of Roy Orbison Goes on Tour
Peter Lehman He seemed to be defined by an absence, which then materialized as a dark, quiet persona who always kept his eyes covered in public, inviting people to project their thoughts, fears and melancholy onto him.
A Long Strange Trip: Exploring How Yoga-Narasimha Landed on the Grateful Dead’s First Album Cover
Deepak Sarma He did suggest that I try to interview living members of the band but, alas, I am still pursuing that unreachable lead.
A Conversation with Be Zero’s Andrea Sanders
Madison Tarleton The longer Andrea and I stayed on the topic of “sacred,” the more I began to understand the short-sightedness of my question.
How Computer Simulations May Help us Understand Religious Behavior
Wesley Wildman The human approach to processing terrifying events involves an exquisitely complex system of deeply intuitive human responses to emotional, social and environmental threats and uncertainties.
Reconstructing Kiowa Cosmology: 7 Questions for Benjamin R. Kracht
Benjamin R. Kracht During the summer of 1935, field party director Alexander Lesser and five graduate students—Jane Richardson (Hanks), William Bascom, Bernard Mishkin, Donald Collier, and Weston LaBarre—interviewed approximately thirty-five Kiowas born in the mid-nineteenth century about indigenous Kiowa culture.
Investigating Moderate Islam: 7 Questions for Rosemary Corbett
Rosemary Corbett In other words, violence and coercion aren’t just what supporters of moderate religion seek to combat, they’re also what supporters (particularly state actors) of so-called moderate religion use as a means to achieve certain ends.
What Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Teaches Us About the Need for Mothers
Richard Gunderman The circumstances of the creature’s birth may be monstrous, but it is not yet a monstrosity. Only by depriving it of any semblance of love does Victor create a true monster.