The Revealer is a daily review of religion in the news and the news about religion. We're not so much nonpartisan as polypartisan -- interested in all sides, disdainful of dualistic arguments, and enamored of free speech as a first principle. We publish and link to work by people of all persuasions, religious, political, sexual, and critical. The Revealer was conceived by Jay Rosen of New York University's Department of Journalism, and created by journalist Jeff Sharlet and staff. We begin with three basic premises: 1. Belief matters, whether or not you believe. Politics, pop culture, high art, NASCAR -- everything in this world is infused with concerns about the next. As journalists, as scholars, and as ordinary folks, we cannot afford to ignore the role of religious belief in shaping our lives. 2. The press all too frequently fails to acknowledge religion, categorizing it as either innocuous spirituality or dangerous fanaticism, when more often it's both and inbetween and just plain other. 3. We deserve and need better coverage of religion: sharper thinking; deeper history; thicker description; basic theology; real storytelling.
Editor Jeff Sharlet was raised in as many churches, synagogues, and ashrams as his Christian/Jewish parents had friends. His current practice is journalism. He is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Harper's, and a founder and editor-at-large for Killing the Buddha.com. He has also written about religion, culture, and politics for New York, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, Oxford American, Forward, The Baffler, Feed, The Chicago Reader, The San Diego Reader, Washington City Paper, Salon, Nerve, and other publications, and worked as a senior writer covering the humanities for The Chronicle of Higher Education and as editor-in-chief of Pakn Treger, a journal of Jewish writing and history. He is co-author, with Peter Manseau, of Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible.Buy his book. Hear him discuss the weird old religion of America on WBUR's "On Point." Sharlet is currently working on "Power in the Blood," a narrative history of elite evangelicalism from Jonathan Edwards to the present day, to be published by HarperCollins in 2007, and "If I Had a Hammer," a short volume on the history of the song of that name for Basic Books' "Basic Ideas" series.
Editor-at-Large Kathryn Joyce has written for The Nation, SOMA Review, Beliefnet, and other publications. She is currently working on a book about Christian conservative women for Beacon Press.
Managing Editor Nicole Greenfield is a graduate student in New York University's Religious Studies Program.
Books Editor Scott M. Korb is currently working on a co-authored memoir of Catholicism and Judaism in New York City. He's the Catholic. He has written for Harper's, American Book Review, Bridge, and Pindeldyboz. He is also an editor of Killing the Buddha.com and the American Journal of Print, and he plays religious basketball.
Designers
This site was designed by a collaborative team of William Drenttel, Betsy Vardell and Kevin Smith. William Drenttel is a partner in Winterhouse, president emeritus of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and a co-editor of DesignObserver.com. Betsy Vardell is a partner in RubyStudio. Kevin Smith is a partner in Giampietro+Smith.
Co-Director, Center for Religion and Media Faye Ginsburg is the David Kriser Professor of Anthropology at NYU, where she is also the founding Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History. Prior to coming to the academy, she worked as documentary producer, as an independent and for WCCO-TV. Recipient of MacArthur, Guggenheim, and other awards and fellowships, she is the author/editor of four books, including Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community, and most recently the edited collection, Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. She is currently finishing a book entitled Mediating Culture: Indigenous Media in a Digital Age.
Co-Director, Center for Religion and Media
In the early '80's, just as the Cultural Revolution was ending, Angela Zito spent three years in Beijing doing historical research on the social and political importance of rituals performed by the emperor. During that time, she also worked as dayside editor for The China Daily, China's English-language newspaper, and then as a "newstaster" for the Reuter's bureau. Having received her PhD from University of Chicago, she now teaches anthropology and history of Chinese religions at NYU, where she also directs the Religious Studies Program. Some current projects include: "What is religious about Falun gong?" and "Secularizing the pain of footbinding in China: from missionary to medical views." She works in very old media: bodies, paper, stone. She is the author of Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in 18th Century China.
Associate Director, Center for Religion and Media Barbara Abrash is an independent producer, teacher and writer with a special focus on independent and documentary film. She is the also the Associate Director of the Center for Media, Culture and History at NYU, where she teaches in the graduate program in Public History. Her publications include 9/11 and After: A Virtual Casebook, about the uses of media in Lower Manhattan in the days after the attack on the World Trade Center, and a special issue of Wide Angle, "A Festschrift in Honor of George Stoney."
