The month of December is all about Christians and a little about Jews (but mostly about Christians).  We talk about the secularization of culture, blah, blah, blah, and for at least one month, we mostly forget about other religions and philosophies that permeate the U.S.  So, if you’re needing a neopagan fix (just to be reminded that Christians aren’t the only ones considered nuts by the intelligentsia), you might enjoy this entertaining dispatch from the Body, Mind, and Spirit Expo recently held in Oregon.

For some attendees the expo and the new age movement must be nice. I saw several people crying while they received readings. Maybe they thought $40 was a fair exchange for someone to listen to them and touch their hand and pretend like they knew what was going to happen in the future for a while. Generally I try not to be one who gets between people and whatever they think they need to make their lives better. Yet at the end of the expo I felt as knackered as if I had made a pilgrimage not to the local convention center, but to the Ganges, Mecca, or Vatican City, and I wondered why I found the expo so exhausting.

Nothing’s wrong with exhausting, but the article makes it clear that many of the expo-goers were in search of something they probably didn’t find there.

In this article on the “new atheism” (translation: old atheism), Dissent editor Mitchell Cohen speaks about the role of religion in politics and how the rise of the Christian Right in the 1980s and 1990s is what brought out the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins now.  This is a good piece (especially in light of the “dominionist” post from yesterday) about what it takes to debate propositions in a pluralistic culture.  Cohen seems to suggest that a “pure” pluralism (where no philosophy dominates) cannot work:

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The holiday Nazi just came up to my office to remind me to stop calling our Christmas party a Christmas party (in a jolly email from yesterday).  I never thought it would happen to me.  She says I may be offending a Jewish man who works with us.  He is a buddhist, I say back.  And he doesn’t care.  And so I was glad to read this paragraph, where a rabbi says Christians should do a better job of defending Christmas:

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Today, Mitt Romney is giving his “Mormon Speech,” probably as a trick play because of what Huckabee is doing to him in Iowa.   If the speech is really good, or really bad, it might be important enough to include in the canon of important American speeches, mainly for its significance as a marker of the cultural techtonics of the American landscape.  Two writers from The American Scene offer their services at what he should say.  The speech starts with an anecdote about Brigham Young, and it’s quite effective. 

HT: The Atlantic Monthly

Christopher Hitchens says, Down with Hannukah!  According to him, it’s a celebration of the backward, fundamentalist triumph of the Jewish people against the reasonable, rational Greeks. 

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The Economist acknowledges that religion, which seemed relegated to obscurity after the Modern age showed us how silly it was, is anything but obscure these days.  What it wants to know, though, is if this is a good thing or not.

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See if you can follow this argument by American philosopher Thomas Nagel: 

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The War on Terror might not necessarily be moving to Iran, but the War on Christmas has definitely spread to Thanksgiving.  The Pilgrims went to church, we know that much.  They believed America was pretty much the New Israel, even though it isn’t.  And they thanked God at the first Thanksgiving.  But that might not necessarily mean that Thanksgiving, as we know it, is a Christian holiday.

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A church in Austin, Texas, cancelled an “interfaith” Thanksgiving service when church leaders realized “interfaith” meant that people from other faiths were coming to their church to worship: “The event, now in its 23rd year, invites Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Bahais and others to worship together.”

Every year, a different faith group hosts the Thanksgiving event, which typically includes food, prayer, song and dance. Last year, St. Louis Catholic Church hosted. This year, because the Muslim groups did not have their own space that was large enough, they decided to rent the Quarries, a 58-acre property […] that the church has owned since 1984.

The director of the interreligious group that sponsors the event, Simone Flowers, was upset.  She said, “As a Christian, my first response is, what would Jesus do in this situation?’” 

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They call him Mellow Yellow, but now they may be calling him nuts.  That’s because:

Donovan, famous for ’60s pop hits such as “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and “Mellow Yellow,” has announced plans to open the Invincible Donovan University, where students will adhere to the principles of transcendental meditation.

He’s teaming up with David Lynch, who we’ve discussed before when it comes to TM.  I’ll bet they don’t have a rugby team.  You have to read the short article, mainly for lines like this:

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