Religion is subject to controversy today. Faithscape aims to objectively parse its positive and negative impacts, understand why people are drawn to their churches, and extend those insights to secular audiences. New Sage — named after a biweekly neighborhood paper founded in 1946 in Sunnyslope, Phoenix — is where findings, commentary, and opinions get published weekly.
Megachurch USA
Megachurches are the dominant form of religious practice in suburban America. This component extends the Hartford Institute of Religious Research's megachurch database with website content, outreach programs, and online group discussions. NLP methods extract analyzable features on the spatial and narrative dynamics of megachurch growth across the United States.
Annotated Bibliography
An evolving repository pulling from cognitive psychology, narrative studies, urban design, and religious studies. Annotations translate academic language into common-sense implications for building new spaces and ideas.
I sat in silence at the Orange Grove Friends Meeting House in Pasadena. No pastor, no hierarchy — content comes from the bottom up. Quakers require 100% agreement before the group moves forward on anything, from drape colors to queer marriage. They call this unity, not consensus. Unity folds in a shared human foundation; consensus is just agreeing on facts. As someone who's studied group consensus for a decade, I'm still not sure the distinction is practical outside a meeting house.
Can Secular Spaces Capture the Benefits of Going to Church?
What draws people to church isn't theology — it's ritual, routine, a compelling personality at the front, and digestible teaching. All three can be built into secular spaces. Community meals, public talks, workshops. The hard part isn't design. It's getting people to show up consistently.
Americans blame screens for their alienation. The real culprit is how we built our neighborhoods. Garages and driveways eat a third of the average home's footprint. Suburbs route people away from each other by design. Screens fill the void that car-centric infrastructure created — not the other way around. Robert Schuller preached to motorists from a drive-in pulpit in 1950s Orange County. We've been building for cars, not people, ever since.
Weed Is Cheaper Than Food in America Today
A dispensary in North Scottsdale was running $1 pre-rolled joints — 3 cents to produce, practically given away. A round of drinks at a dive bar runs $25. Cooking a stew for nine people cost me $60. The price of socialization keeps going up while the price of numbing yourself keeps going down. Something must change.