Tara Isabella Burton

Burton, who received a doctorate in theology from Oxford University, is at work on a book about the rise of the religiously unaffiliated in America, to be published in November 2020 by Public Affairs. Her novel, “Social Creature,” was published in June 2018.

All Stories by Tara Isabella Burton

SoulCycle’s Peoplehood offers a gig-economy cure for loneliness

By Tara Isabella Burton — June 4, 2022
(RNS) — Intimate connection for urban dwellers may be the modern answer to pandemic loneliness.

If a Dr. Seuss book offends us, why not pluck it out?

By Tara Isabella Burton — April 8, 2021
(RNS) — 'Canceling' problematic media properties provides us with a way to talk about the complicated nature of desire.

Mr. Potato Head becomes woke capitalism’s hot potato

By Tara Isabella Burton — March 2, 2021
(RNS) — The drama over Potato Head’s gender is a reminder that the 'culture wars' are now profitable.

How QAnon infiltrated wellness culture on its way to the Capitol

By Tara Isabella Burton — January 29, 2021
(RNS) — The distance between MAGA reactionaries and Goopsters in yoga pants may seem wide, but they share a distrust of institutions and often choose intuition over reason.

Jordan Peterson: The RBG of the young, white and hyper-online

By Tara Isabella Burton — December 3, 2020
(RNS) — Few of his fans, one imagines, are guided by his ‘rules for life.’ Instead they idealize Peterson himself, a shield against the insidious forces of the social-justice-industrial-complex.

Conservative Catholics, Trump and the existential longing to be the ‘heroes’ of our age

By Tara Isabella Burton — November 3, 2020
NEW YORK (RNS) — In Will Arbery’s Pulitzer-nominated play, ‘Heroes of the Fourth Turning,’ the only thing worse than our present age being the harbinger of the end of the world is the notion that it doesn’t matter at all.

Did RBG beat Trump in cosmic court?

By Tara Isabella Burton — October 4, 2020
(RNS) — As social justice takes on the character of a religion proper, it requires demigods like Ginsburg. It’s a valorization that threatens to rob her, and us, of her humanity.

Yoga’s ‘father in the West’ still defining our spirituality and celebrity 100 years later

By Tara Isabella Burton — September 16, 2020
(RNS) — Pioneering a vision of wellness in which spirituality and self-help converge, Yogananda created a new model for pop spirituality.

Kanye West, Christian chaos candidate, trumps the Trump model

By Tara Isabella Burton — August 18, 2020
(RNS) — Kanye’s presidential campaign may tell us as much about our spiritual disillusionment as it does his mental health.

Don’t be fooled by QAnon’s post-apocalyptic fury. It’s really spiritual hunger.

By Tara Isabella Burton — July 21, 2020
(RNS) — Followers of the online Q and white supremacism yearn for a world in which everything makes sense and where they at last have a role to play. 

How wearing masks and masculinity got confused

By Tara Isabella Burton — July 9, 2020
(RNS) — Some of the most robust arguments against masks have also come from some of the political and religious right’s paragons of performative masculinity.

The K-pop election

By Tara Isabella Burton — June 30, 2020
(RNS) — On the eve of the 2020 elections, Gen Z-ers are on the verge of using their digital tools to counteract the political establishment.

How millennials make meaning from shopping, decorating and self-pampering

By Tara Isabella Burton — June 23, 2020
(RNS) — We are experiencing a dot-com bubble for spirituality, a free marketplace of innovation and religious disruption.

Why CrossFit’s founder got crossed up by Floyd protests

By Tara Isabella Burton — June 16, 2020
(RNS) — Instead of capitalizing on the unrest, Greg Glassman espoused the values of the wellness movement's masculine wing, where Horatio Alger does pull-ups with his bootstraps.

‘Safetyism’ only means words have real consequences

By Tara Isabella Burton — June 10, 2020
(RNS) — Better that the Times, that any paper, recognize its own subjectivity, take a clear editorial stand and recognize itself as an inherently ideological vector.
Page 1 of 5