Meghan O'Gieblyn, writing for Guernica, forays into the history of CCM, or Christian contemporary music, which also happens to be…
The rise and fall of Christian rock
spirituality
War on drugs may be interfering with Americans’ spiritual awakening
Kevin Drum, of Mother Jones, reports on a study conducted by the esteemed researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of…
After Oprah
On the occassion of the final broadcast of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," Kathryn Lofton reflects, in an On Faith article, on…
Every moment an Aha! Moment!
Kathryn Lofton’s Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon is a work, first and foremost, of cultural anthropology. The back cover…
Oprah the Omnipotent
Lofton tells me she shares with Jonathan Z. Smith the view that difference is the beginning of any good conversation.…
O tedious selfhood, O aftertaste of splinters
It’s striking to me how often, with what little resistance, the many scholarly forums this book has now generated have…
Reading the paranormal writing us: An interview with Jeffrey Kripal
Jeffrey Kripal, who chairs the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University, is an authority on the mysterious. His books…
De-provincializing Oprah
In Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon, Kathryn Lofton holds up a lustrous mirror to the polymorphously perverse dynamics of…
OMG: Oprah Winfrey, pop religion, and the temple of our familiar
I have been—and perhaps in some ways will always be—one of the denizens, the followers, the 100% skeptical and yet…
Oprah, the Rorschach test
Focusing on Oprah as an icon/inkblot, we can use our reactions to her as a Rorschach test: What do we…