popular culture

The San Francisco Campaign against circumcision has allied itself with “Intact America.” Its activists have dubbed themselves “intactavists.” In San Francisco’s annual Gay Pride Parade a group representing BANG, the Bay Area iNtactivst Group, makes their point in a vivid manner: they don puffy penis costumes and carry a poster of an indignant-looking infant asking, “You want to cut off what?”

Has there ever been a major pop group more concerned with exploring personal anxieties, aspirations, and narratives through music defined so fundamentally by religious themes? The turmoil and paranoia of the last decade—wars, attacks, economic crashes, myriad color-coded fears—run through Arcade Fire’s three full-length records. The newest effort induces a look back to previous decades, when suburbia seemed to offer placidity and refuge from the wilderness downtown.

Faced with a Broadway send up, Mormon PR plays it cool.

A few weeks ago the stars were realigned. The Archimedes’ Lever of this cosmic shift was, of all places, in Minnesota, where a newspaper published an article quoting an astronomer on an issue involving the accumulated result of long, slow gravitational pull. These comments went viral online at something close to the speed of light, leading to reevaluation of the Zodiac, panic among horoscope followers, assorted tweets defending or regretting tattoo selections, and some attempts at explanation from astrologists as to their systems of making sense of human existence through claims about the pull of the stars.

Most physicians trained in modern scientific medicine are quite skeptical of complementary and alternative medicine and other spirituality-based healing practices, but contemporary research points increasingly to what we might call the deep semiotics of health. It seems, minimally, that hope helps to heal. And ritualized hope in groups heals more effectively.

The gracious, affirmative, and arguably universalist tone of Pope Benedict’s encyclical (in marked contrast to his 2010 letter, with its emphasis on the authority of the priest as this fed upward through the hierarchy of the Roman Church) is more than a nod to the new digital social reality. Sure, it’s perhaps a little silly for the Pope to be “inviting” Christians into locales through which most have been travelling regularly for several years by now. But it is nonetheless important that he has offered his spiritual and ethical leadership into the increasingly digitally integrated world.

On January 1, Romania implemented new tax codes that, among other changes, added the occupation of “witch” to the nation’s labor codes. Those charging clients for tarot readings, curses, and blessings must now pay a 16 percent income tax and make contributions to health and pension programs. The ire of the witches, some of whom responded by performing rituals to hex the government, has become fodder for scores of offbeat news stories throughout the West. But there is a deeper story to the witches of Romania.

Twenty Zen teachers in the West sent open letters to The Zen Studies Society in New York. With compassion and understanding, their general thrust is to ask that the Society’s former head, Eido Tai Shimano, not be allowed access to students—a strong penalty for a teacher.

In the fall of 2009 I visited eight cities in China. I discussed Marxist understanding of religion, homosexuality, the persistence of popular religiosity, freedom of research, and approaches to the study of religion with Chinese colleagues in a carefree and open atmosphere. The Chinese colleagues followed closely what was happening outside and asked me about the schism within the Anglican Communion over the issue of homosexuality. I found many new books on religion by Chinese scholars and translations of Western religious texts selling in local bookstores. I offered lectures on feminist theology in top universities and a Protestant seminary. Religion was no longer a taboo subject. These kinds of exchanges would have been unimaginable twenty years ago.

Daya Mata’s death reminds us that American yoga has no single essence or form. Indeed, it’s in and through its countless varieties that yoga has become as American as Elvis himself.