Nirinjan Khalsa-Baker How does a community of practitioners, who have spent the past 50 years dedicated to spreading the light, move toward healing when there is so much darkness in the shadow?
The Painful Process of Awakening: Harm and Healing in the Healthy Happy Holy Kundalini Yoga Community
How the Model of Money Laundering Can Help Us Understand Abuse within 3HO
Philip Deslippe If someone was sincere in their devotion, does it really matter if the object of that devotion was not exactly what it was supposed to be?
Sacrilegious Episode 03: Who?
Who on earth studies religion? What are the forces that motivate someone to take up religion as a calling–not in terms of faith, but in terms of teaching and study? This episode explores some of the answers with reference to the host of Sacrilegious, Gary Laderman, who shares some of his perspectives and experiences on coming to the study of religion, being saved by education, and what he hopes to achieve in this enterprise.
The Labyrinth of Molestation and Denial
Chuck Rosenthal Because you don’t start having sex with someone at thirteen and just stop at nineteen. You don’t just walk away. You carry it inside and live with it, hide it, go back to it, ignore it, fail to ignore it; you live with shame; you try to normalize what happened.
The Presence of One Man Rule in FLDS Mormonism: Contextualizing an American Religion that Became Synonymous with Abuse
Cristina Rosetti Warren Jeffs did not emerge in a vacuum. Rather, he is part of a larger history of both internal religious struggle and outside persecution that created a landscape where Jeffs succeeded at making rape a matter of doctrine.
Sacrilegious Episode 02: What?
What the hell is religion? In this episode Laderman explores the questions and problems around defining religion.
Clericalism as a Cultural Pattern: Aiding and Abetting Abuse
Clericalism as a Cultural Pattern: Aiding and Abetting Abuse Michael Horan Clericalism, like racism or sexism, festers within cultures and inside individual imaginations. Clericalism is based on social location in the Catholic church’s cultural system for both worship and governance, a system developed a millennium ago. Theologian Paul Lakeland asserts that all isms at their root are moved by a belief in the lesser humanity of the oppressed group. You know when you are adversely affected by an ism, but you hardly notice it if the ism benefits you. Just as sexism or racism privileges men over women and whites […]
Manufacturing Consent: Creating Hierarchies in the Guru-Disciple Relationship
Manufacturing Consent: Creating Hierarchies in the Guru-Disciple Relationship Amanda Lucia Sexual abuse happens across the globe and in nearly every environment. Recognizing this, religion scholar Andrea Jain argues that focusing on a specific religious context can be distracting and detrimental to tackling what is a global and ubiquitous problem. She writes, “The appeal to the dangers of guru charisma and devotion as an explanation for sexual violence pulls our attention away from larger social structures and norms that cultivate a dominant global culture of sexual violence … and lends itself to an orientalist stereotype of South Asians, their religions, and […]
Sacrilegious Episode 01: Why?
In the first episode of Sacrilegious, Gary Laderman explains some of his thinking behind starting the podcast. What is sacred? Are we religious in ways we may not be aware of or are not immediately obvious to the naked eye? From the get-go, the podcast asks listeners to begin reconsidering how they understand religion, define it, and identify it in the world around them, and to enter into a public discussion about the various ways religious forces of all kinds shape identities, communities, and societies. Religion is more than churches, temples, and mosques, and not always concerned with bibles, dogmas, […]
Introduction: Abuse in Yoga and Beyond: Cultural Logics and Pathways for the Future
Introduction: Abuse in Yoga and Beyond: Cultural Logics and Pathways for the Future Christopher Miller In recent years, abuse scandals have shaken the yoga world once again, overturning previously held conceptions of yoga gurus, their teachings, and the individuals and organizations that have enabled their abuse. Most importantly, these abuse scenarios – whether they have involved sexual assault, cruelty, financial exploitation, etc. – have left individuals and communities disoriented, deeply traumatized, and desperately searching for answers. As Sacred Matters editor Gary Laderman writes, “the sacred is not always what it seems, can be associated with just about anything, and remains […]