“Looking” for Spirituality and Truth

Luís León The second season of HBO’s ground-breaking mini-series Looking aired this week, January 11, at 8:00 PM. The premiere on January 19 of last year marks a milestone for lgbt-themed television drama: a realistic and edgy depiction of young gay men set in San Francisco, with a multicultural cast (albeit still mostly focused on white men). Even while it’s a coup in the struggle to advance lgbt rights—depicting and thus familiarizing audiences with the interior lives of gays—creating empathy and affect— it is at once an advance in efforts to understand the human condition.  

American Gurus: Seven Questions for Arthur Versluis

Walden Pond

What sparked the idea for writing this book? Why write it now?  American Gurus was a long time in the making. I first had the ideas for some of the book when I was working on American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (1993). In particular, I wanted to look at how Platonism influenced American Transcendentalism. 

Seven Questions for Suzanne Glover Lindsay

What sparked the idea for writing this book? Like many researchers, I smelled a story in the gaps and disparities within even the newest work on a great topic: nineteenth-century French sculpture. Some of its most famous examples were funerary monuments that were hailed as artistic masterpieces or as key players in France’s political history without any significant reference to their intended purpose as parts of tombs.

Seven Questions for LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant

In our new interview series, we ask cultural theorists about what inspires them and how their latest work challenges our understanding of the sacred in American cultural life. For this segment, we chatted with LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant about her latest book, Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory among Gullah/Geechee Women. 1.     What sparked […]

An Interview with Frans de Waal Part 3: Science & Religion

This is part 3 of our series of interviews with Frans de Waal. Check out part 1 and part 2 of our interview series. Frans de Waal is an eminent primatologist renowned not only for his many publications in scientific journals, but also for several widely read books, including Chimpanzee Politics and, more recently, The Bonobo and the Atheist. In the […]

Daily Sacred

“Sunset” by one of our contributors, Louis Ruprecht Jr. Show us your sacred! Share your images with us by tagging your photos with #sacredmatters on Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr or email us at sacredmatters [at] emory [dot] edu. Please include where and when your photo was taken. We will publish your images here on sacredmattersmagazine.com and through […]

LSD and the Rabbis

"Reb Zalman in celebratory prayer at Baker’s Beach, California.”

This article is Part I in a three part series. Click here for Part II and Part III. By Shalom Goldman The reactions to the death last month of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi may be a sign that the conversation about psychedelic drugs and American religion is moving into a new stage. On July 8th that “Old Grey Lady,” the […]

Seven Questions for Nathan Rabin

In our new interview series, we ask cultural theorists about what inspires them and how their latest work challenges our understanding of the sacred in American cultural life. For our inaugural segment, we chatted with The Dissolve’s Nathan Rabin about his latest book, You Don’t Know Me but You Don’t Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown […]

An Interview with Randall Balmer, Part Four: The Legacy of Jimmy Carter

Catch up on part one, part two, and part three of our interview with Professor Balmer. A conversation between Paul Courtright of Emory University and Randall Balmer of Dartmouth College on his new book, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. Balmer talks about how Carter’s religious formation in the American evangelical tradition informed his early character and later political ambitions that took him to […]