#religion

#religion

"Sir! This is a warning!" an agent yells at a driver in video posted to the Minneapolis subreddit over the weekend. "Stop f**king following us! You are impeding operations! This is the United States federal government!" The driver explained that he lived in the area. "I serve the Lord. Go to church," the driver said. "I will arrest you!" the ICE agent shouted before walking away. The driver continued to say that the agents should let people go to church.

When you think about the goings-on inside an average church, you might envision a sermon, a reading from the Bible or a song or two. Something that's less expected would be, for instance, a guided group meditation - and yet meditation has been showing up in a growing number of religious contexts where you might not expect it. That, at least, is one of the big takeaways from a recent Associated Press investigation by Luis Andres Henao and Deepa Bharath.

"The best way to put this is that I'm not becoming a woman, I'm giving up pretending to be a man," Rev. Dr. Phillippa Phaneuf says in a video posted to Facebook.

I grew up in a very religious, Christian family where Sunday's activities were predetermined and strictly enforced. Like many of my generation, come Sunday, our parents faithfully saw that we were dressed in our best attire and dutifully marched to church like preprogrammed automatons. With unblinking obedience, we reenacted this liturgy-week after week, year after unrelenting year-seemingly ad infinitum. Growing into adolescence, however, my mind began to fill with questions-many of them-but one upstaged the rest: "What was the purpose of our never ending churchgoing?"

He agreed ― we shouldn't be. And that was that. I'd never ended a relationship over religion. Disagreements about having children? Absolutely. Political beliefs? Yes. The guy being a jerk? Oh, sure. But if you'd asked me whether I'd break up with a man I was falling in love with over religion ― Greek Orthodox or any other ― I wouldn't have even considered it a possibility.

But by the episode's last act, Joanne has realized that Noah can't maintain his faith and be with her if she won't commit to conversion. "You can't have both, and I would never make you choose," she tells him tearfully over the din of his niece Miriam's bat mitzvah. And so she dumps him - it's the most painless way to move forward - until the episode's final two minutes, when the pair run back into each other's arms once more.

Vlaemsch (chez moi) is Flemish-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's love letter to his native Flanders. Like so many love letters, it's full of anger, pain and recrimination. Its tone is by turns overblown, infuriated, accusatory, ironic and tender. It is, nonetheless, a love letter in the guise of a piece of dance-theatre. Cherkaoui's background is as complex as that of his native Flanders. He was born in Antwerp, the son of a Moroccan father and a Flemish mother;

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nonfiction books sometimes get a reputation for being hard to slog through. But the qualities that make good novels so enjoyable-the well-paced plot, the engaging characters-can also be found in many of their fact-based counterparts. The Atlantic 's writers and editors answer the question: What is a nonfiction book that reads like fiction?

He waxed on about his military deployment in Washington DC, but also about the possible system that decides the fate of your everlasting soul. There has to be some kind of a report card up there someplace, y'know, like: Let's go to heaven, let's get into heaven.' It's sort of a beautiful thing, he said to Starnes. He's probably hoping they grade on a curve.

He enlisted a whole bunch of Ideology-patriarchy; social conservatism; utterly fake upside-down Christianity-in service of those basic motivations, not only to justify his own appetite for and personal acts of sadism and domination but to cast punishment and predation as far out into the world as he could manage. He studied psychology and the Bible so that he could borrow their authority and instrumentalize them to do widespread cruelty more effectively.

One of the biggest gripes I have about my academic field of social science is that it explains a lot about human behavior but is very short on prescriptions for how to live day to day. Even when it does have something suggestive to offer, the research almost never supplies evidence of whether its widespread adoption would have a positive effect. The same deficiency is even truer for philosophy, a realm in which big thoughts about life usually remain abstract ideas.

The First Amendment's establishment clause forbids the government from establishing an official religion, from giving preference to a specific religion and from favoring or disfavoring religion in general.

Lev Skop paints images of saints and the Virgin Mary on wooden planks salvaged from used ammunition crates, delivering them to soldiers on the frontline.

The Internal Revenue Service made it official, saying that pastors, priests, and other clergy are now free to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, while their churches are able to keep their tax-exempt status.

Pashinyan accused the Church of harboring a 'criminal-oligarchic clergy' involved in terrorism and a coup attempt, claiming that the Church must be liberated from an anti-state group.

Even the White Sox's 'First Baseball Game' booth was shifted to a 'First Mass' booth, blending the rituals of baseball and Catholicism seamlessly.

It took an almost religious level of faith to believe that 'Dogma' would succeed; indeed, upon release, the film was plagued by delays and protests for its alleged blasphemy.

Gabriel Wharton and his followers embody a vision of a vengeful God, which contrasts sharply with June's belief in love as a source of strength and safety.

It's the eyes that stay with you... As Sushma Jansari explains, it's not surprising that the eyes have it. Making direct eye contact, getting a glimpse (or darshan) of the divine, is the whole point.

People with steadfast religious beliefs not only identify strongly with a spiritual being, but also tend to socialize with others who share those beliefs.

Cardinal Bychok described his experience at the conclave as the highlight of his life, relishing the chance to disconnect from the outside world for a few days.

Religion, too, may have evolved as a cultural innovation to address the problem of norm enforcement. Early religious systems invoked supernatural agents who monitored behavior.

Robert Prevost, the newly appointed pope, faces backlash from MAGA supporters after previous social media critiques of President Trump and JD Vance.