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The decision to deploy the image of innocent childhood at the end of Obama’s Tuscon speech seemed strange then, and still seems strange now.

Like superheroes, the Captain America redemptive hero does all the work, requiring no sacrifice from us. The prophetic model, like Martin Luther King Jr., asks us to see collective meaning in suffering.

Religious pushback against the Second Amendment zealots.

Builders of Noah’s Ark theme park defend educator for teaching creationism.

Tea Party Republican Senator places hold on already controversial nomination.

The film admired by Jared Loughner defies categorization but ultimately offers a dark vision.

The week in religion.

“Reform” in the interest of cost cutting does what 30 years of activism has not yet been able to do.

Recently, on The Huffington Post, Rev. Chellew-Hodge suggested that gays and lesbians should never argue Scripture—in particular, the half dozen “clobber verses” that some people interpret against gays. Why? Because nobody wins, everyone’s opinion hardens, and we talk past each other, because gays and lesbians are usually not biblical literalists, while our opponents usually are. Chellew-Hodge’s suggestion sounds wise, but I want to respectfully disagree with it.

Recent studies of yoga reveal the formative influence of (wait for it) Buddhism, Jainism, Sufism, television, military calisthenics, Swedish gymnastics and the YMCA, as well as of radical Hindu nationalism, upon today’s postural yoga practice. There is no doubt that the Vedas, Upanishads, and folk traditions of India have been formative toward yoga: yoga is almost inseparable from them. Nevertheless to assert that yoga is essentially and primarily a Hindu practice means to ignore millennia of generative influence from other quarters. Worse still, it means to step blindly into a political fight for the heart of India that has simmered for over two hundred years.