popular culture

James Dobson wants to teach parents how to win the war against their unruly children.

A Church of Jedi attack spawns numerous interviews; despite thinly-veiled mockery, the coverage offers an unprecedented legitimacy, allowing them to subvert traditional media for their own ends.

Was Michael Jackson a supernatural magician or an icon of self-immolation? Both? The physical body is gone, the musical productivity has ceased, the capacity to speak for himself is no more, so now MJ is a wonderfully ambiguous figment of our imagination. Three religion scholars discuss the life, legend, meaning, and myth of one of the world’s most talented, successful, and perhaps tortured performers.

In the wake of a terrifying and unexpected mauling by a chimpanzee, some have rushed to blame Darwin for putatively implying that they should behave just like us. But we’re just as close to another chimp whose behavior is markedly different from this bellicose cousin.

Why did coverage of the murder of a pregnant Muslim woman merely record the outrage “in the Muslim world”?

Some saw ghosts and traces of MJ while others advised fans to quit worshiping the “pervert,” totally missing the point that people need exceptional figures, particularly in the midst of a depression.

18th-century visionary financier John Law and 21st-century crook Bernie Madoff both had compatriots with a ravenous desire for free money—the vice that drove the systems in which these kindred spirits operated.

A hip new apostolic movement with claims of a direct line to God, molding the young for God’s kingdom with sexual purity, 24/7 prayer, and asceticism.

A recent statement by a Vatican astronomer opens a theological can of worms…

Hozan Alan Senauke talks about socially engaged Buddhism, weapons of mass redemption, and “just sitting down” as a radical act.