If art is the new religion, then museums are the new temples; temples uniquely suited to the vagaries of spirituality in the modern age.
That is the suggestive idea explored in Marcia Brennan’s new book, Curating Consciousness. Brennan introduces us to James Johnson Sweeney…
Much of Steve Fuller’s new book is just a strong way of saying what is entirely uncontroversial among historians of science, even if easily forgotten by most everyone else.
Forget the Mormons. Forget Pentecostalism. Hell, forget the Rastafarians. The most fascinating subgroup on the religious landscape at the moment is… soccer fanatics. Catholics are upset about a recent Hyundi commercial…
The popular term “spiritual but not religious” only goes so far in describing an event like this. I think Burning Man shows us the enduring importance of ritual as a vehicle through which humans connect with one another and as well as with a mysterious “more,” while also showing us how these expressions are increasingly displaced outside the bounds of the dominant Western cultural concepts of “religion.”
Whether or not we believe in evil as a supernatural force it cannot be denied that when we as a culture project the idea of evil outwards, onto others, it gives us license to engage in extreme forms of cruelty—witch-hunting, racism, nationalistic hatred.
