popular culture

After two years of planning and development, “ The Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam” was launched this week. But the project does not come without hope and expectation in this post-9/11 era.

Recently, a controversial megachurch minister Eddie Long was crowned a Davidic king “on behalf of the Jewish people”; but he’s far from the first non-Jew to make use of a so-called rabbi to bolster his spiritual authority.

Faith is completely redundant. It may take a long time for people to figure out it’s redundant, but given what we know about psychology and the way the brain works and the way evolution has taught us not to just battle each other into submission, but to cooperate and help each other, there will come a time when people see it as unnecessary, a philosophical distortion of reality.

Two unlikely heroes, Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin, have rocked the sports world. Lurking behind their stardom is a whole lot of bad theology.

Shockingly, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue is angry about the Minaj’s Grammy performance; but why did she go with the “Roman Zolanski” bit?

A new book reveals the historical roots and conservative uses of the positive thinking movement, showing how it encourages victim-blaming, political complacency, and a culture-wide flight from realism.

“Despite a large missionary force and a persistent emphasis on growth,” Phillips and Cragun write, “Mormons are actually treading water with respect to their per capita presence in the U.S.” In fact, additional studies by Cragun and Phillips show that retention rates of young people (young men especially) raised Mormon have dropped substantially in the last decade.

Throughout his 32-minute set, Mangum returned more than once to the sad fate of the teenage diarist, and in doing so he created a moment that seemed at once a communal high point of the movement and a peculiarly ominous sing-along, Kumbaya mashed up with catastrophe.

Rimer’s passing has led to an lively online conversation among Pagan and vampire groups. Many of these groups regarded Rimer as a political enemy and some individuals expressed relief that Rimer will not be holding any more seminars. However, important leaders of these communities have called for respect. One community member invoked Proverbs 24:17, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.”

People are watching The Tebow Show because he’s a second-rate quarterback… and winning games, often against great odds while playing his best at the most opportune times. For a large segment of the population (43 percent according to a recent poll), Tebow’s success is proof that God intervenes in history, even in football games.