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
How fan fiction gave millennials power over their spirituality
By Tara Isabella Burton — March 22, 2019
(RNS) — The internet has transformed our consumption of texts — even sacred texts — into malleable pieces that can be reimagined, reinvented and owned in a new way.
From Theranos to 23andMe, putting our faith in data to figure out who we are
By Tara Isabella Burton — March 13, 2019
(RNS) — We're not just sequencing our DNA, we're discovering our new social identities and, just possibly, overcoming death.
When Lenten fasting is indistinguishable from a New Age cleanse
By Tara Isabella Burton — February 28, 2019
(RNS) — Modern Lent has come to have more in common with Dry January — the viral sensation encouraging New Year's resolvers to give up alcohol for a month — than with its ecclesiastic antecedents.
SoulCycle, capitalism and the selling of self-care
By Tara Isabella Burton — February 21, 2019
(RNS) — At the heart of the SoulCycle faith is a value system of capitalist consumerism, which it imbues, through sweat, with a metaphysical significance.
Witchcraft becomes a political stance — and a booming business
By Tara Isabella Burton — February 14, 2019
(RNS) — Once a fringe spiritual practice, witchcraft has become a key, and increasingly popular, component of feminist political resistance.
The evolution of sin
By Tara Isabella Burton — February 7, 2019
(RNS) — Virtue and vice have long been inextricably linked to self-control. But lately we've been asking, what's it all for?
Secular saints, folk saints and plain old celebrities
By Tara Isabella Burton — January 31, 2019
(RNS) — A Martin Luther King Jr., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Anna Nicole Smith may also carry many Americans' desire for a radical reframing of our collective values.
If God is dead, is it OK if we save ourselves?
By Tara Isabella Burton — January 22, 2019
(RNS) — The rash of 'new utopian' groups isn't just about the collapse of traditional religion. It's about putting our faith in human self-improvement.
The spirituality hiding in our self-help New Year’s resolutions
By Tara Isabella Burton — January 11, 2019
(RNS) — In the rhetoric of self-improvement, ridding ourselves of the old year's bad energy is a matter of social, physical and emotional health. But the notion is loaded with spiritual significance.
From ‘cafeteria Catholics’ to New Age nones, religion is getting personal
By Tara Isabella Burton — January 2, 2019
(RNS) — It makes perfect sense that we would curate our religious self-conceptions the same way we silo ourselves on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.
‘Hacking the good’ from religion at a secular solstice
By Tara Isabella Burton — December 20, 2018
(RNS) — A secular solstice celebration in wintertime is not for everyone. But attending one of these rituals for the religiously unaffiliated helps define our own ideas of 'sacred' and 'profane.'
Why we should stop using the term religious ‘nones’
By Tara Isabella Burton — December 13, 2018
(RNS) — Most of America's religiously unaffiliated millennials are not so much religious 'nones' as they are religious 'manys.'
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