Category

One of the earliest sources of humanity’s religious impulse was severe weather, which ancient peoples attributed to the wrath of storm gods. Enlightenment thinkers derided such beliefs as superstition and predicted they would pass away as humans became more scientifically and theologically sophisticated. But in America, scientific and theological hubris came face-to-face with the tornado, …

Why do so many conservative Christians continue to support Donald Trump despite his many overt moral failings? Why do many Americans advocate so vehemently for xenophobic policies, such as a border wall with Mexico? Why do many Americans seem so unwilling to acknowledge the injustices that ethnic and racial minorities experience in the United States? …

Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality Overview Contextualizes spiritual commodities, entrepreneurs, and consumers in the context of neoliberal capitalism Offers a clear and innovative account of cultural appropriation in some of the largest spiritual industries, including yoga Provides the reader with a lens through which to understand the complex relationship between capitalism, neoliberalism, …

by Elizabeth Nelson and Emily Beckman Widely remembered as sites of abuse, isolation, and neglect, many state-run psychiatric hospitals and homes for the disabled were shuttered across the United States in the late 20th century. Indiana’s Central State Hospital (1848-1994) came to a particularly tragic end, after a series of preventable patient deaths in the …

The Other Black Church: Alternative Christian Movements and the Struggle for Black Freedom Overview The Other Black Church: Alternative Christian Movements and the Struggle for Black Freedom examines the movements led by Father Divine, Charles Mason, and Albert Cleage (later known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) as alternative Christian movements in the middle of the twentieth …