“I can’t tell whether my inclination toward ecstasy is a sign that I still believe in God, or if it was only because of that ecstatic tendency that I ever believed at all.”
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Posted inCulture
The Death Artist
Her medium: the cremains of departed loved ones. Her mission: to change your perspective on the end of life.
Posted inStory
The State We Are In: Neither Here, There, nor in Heaven
On vaccine privilege in America and COVID-19 inequities in India.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
The Price of Dominionist Theology
After leaving fundamentalism, Eve Ettinger grapples with the loaded theological heritage of evangelical personal finance teachings.
Posted inStory
The Hare Krishnas of Coal Country
The world is full of make-believe. Some of it is sweet, some of it is sick. It persists because we have found no other antidote for pain.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘I Was Being Used in Slivers and Slices’: On Feminism at Odds With Evangelical Faith
“I wasn’t unified in my being. I wasn’t able to bring my whole self to the table,” says Cameron Dezen Hammon about her life as a worship leader for an evangelical megachurch.
Posted inNonfiction
The Girl I Didn’t Save
Cameron Dezen Hammon reflects on her frustrations as a Christian music minister for the terminally ill, unable to heal a cancer patient she cared for, and struggling to be compassionate at her belligerent Jewish father’s bedside.
Posted inNonfiction
The (Loud) Soundtrack to My Struggle with Faith
After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Anna Gazmarian grapples with her evangelical upbringing, and finds solace in screamo music.
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2022: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
All the stories we’ve selected as number one in our weekly Top 5 newsletter.
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Story
In the Age of the Psychonauts
Three psycho-spiritual “events” of the 1970s — involving Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terence and Dennis McKenna — had a strange synchronicity.
