An essay on the many true and beautiful meanings you’ve never heard of behind “takbir” — the expression of Muslim faith, “Allahu Akbar” — literally, “God is great.”
religion
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
“Madness and the Hurling of Furniture,” or How You Know It Was a Good Night in Ancient Greece
Andrew Curry’s thorough history of our relationship to and use of alcohol is informative, enlightening, and just plain entertaining.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
An Imam’s Jihad Against Ignorance and Radicalization
At The Walrus, Nadim Roberts profiles a Canadian imam who is working to counter radicalization with knowledge.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Lives of Nuns, Part 2: A Reading List
In the two years since I compiled the first installation of “The Lives of Nuns,” Autostraddle wrote about queer nuns in history, Racked shadowed (fake) nuns growing marijuana, and The Huffington Post reported on a nun’s murder and the students who want the truth. Those stories and more are included below. Seclude yourself and read.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Against Confession: On Intersectional Feminism, Radical Catholicism, and Redefining Remorse
Laura Goode investigates her Catholic identity—the radical, feminist, social-justice-oriented version she discovered upon encountering the mysteries of marriage and motherhood—years after her departure from the guilt-stricken, conservative Catholicism of her upbringing.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Uncategorized
God the Gorilla
Not everyone buys into a sky-god with a long white beard, a serious and all-knowing mien, capable of rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad. But it doesn’t take much imagination to recognise that God, as worshipped in most of the world, is remarkably humanoid, widely perceived as a great, big, scary, wilful, yet nourishing and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Rebel Virgins and Desert Mothers
The radical women of early Christianity.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Temptation, Purity, and High-Stakes Evangelism in a Texas Town
Jeff Sharlet spends a day with the sexually pure teens of Battlecry Honor Academy, and learns that renouncing your sins doesn’t mean redacting their memories.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Exorcism and the Catholic Church
Dan Shewan writes about the business of exorcism for Pacific Standard.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why the Church of Scientology Can’t Beat the Internet
Over at The Kernel, Jesse Hicks has put together a fascinating account of the Church of Scientology’s relationship with the Internet. So, how has a notoriously secretive and hierarchical organization dealt with the world’s most “open and radically nonhierarchical platform for communication”? Not well. Scientology’s antagonistic relationship to the Internet dates back to the web’s early days: when an early […]