cult/new religious movements

Although it seems like a late April Fool’s prank, a press release from the Raelian movement on April 2 announced that they were delivering a project file to the White House with plans to construct an…

For all its laudable qualities—its complex characters, its unwavering if imperfect commitment to tackling race, class, and sexual violence—Tina Fey’s new Netflix comedy, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt…

In the kitchen of his Charleston, S.C. home, wearing a flower in his hair, life coach and entrepreneur JP Sears explains, in a recent video, that, “being gluten intolerant used to be limited only to…

Despite media reports to the contrary, it doesn’t appear that San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is backing down from his attempt to dictate the private morality of teachers in San…

Pat Robertson, the notorious and influential television evangelist and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, is not new to the yogaphobic maelstrom that has been brewing for as long as…

As Luke Coppen noted in a recent piece in The Spectator, Francis “has been spun as a left-liberal idol,” in the popular media. There is reason to believe, however, that conservatives are also…

The debate continues to deepen over Graeme Wood’s Atlantic cover story on ISIS: Murtaza Hussain has noted how Wood ignores debates among Islamic intellectuals, Juan Cole argues for the fringe status…

Every June 18 for more than 25 years, Veronica Lueken—a Catholic housewife from Bayside, Queens—gathered followers for an all-night vigil beside the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. In a…

I went to India searching for spiritual enlightenment. I found a neoliberal heaven that catered to my worst possible self. That’s almost true. I took my journalism class to India this past spring to…

Anderson Cooper’s journey into mindfulness was featured on the latest episode of 60 Minutes, and it proved to be a textbook example of what I call the mystification, medicalization, mainstreaming, and…