Religion Remixed
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.'
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Tara Isabella Burton
Religion Remixed
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.
