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SCRIPTURE
Marxists for Christ "A specter has been haunting Marxism," writes Eugene McCarraher — "the specter of Christianity." The heavyweights of Marxist academe (they still walk the earth) have gone and got themselves some God, reports McCarraher. None more so than the so-called "bad... [ Continue reading: ] 
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
Good Intentions Buried in the Christmas edition of The New York Times was a story that might be characterized as the religion reporter's version of the "last man in town who can whittle worth a damn" genre: "Commune to Close, After Years... [ Continue reading: ] 
POP CULT
God, Superstar Barbara Nicolosi was reading screenplays for a Christian movie production company when she experienced an epiphany: "Somewhere around the 200th dreadful screenplay—most, from nice, godly people—it occurred to me that Christians were not being martyred by Hollywood. We were committing... [ Continue reading: ]  
GRAVEN IMAGE
The Samson Effect To shave or not to shave, that was the question Saddam Hussein's captors faced; and the answer, writes The Washington Post's Philip Kennicot, was to produce photographs of an unshaven Saddam, looking like a disgraced prophet, and then a haggard... [ Continue reading: ] 
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
Civil War? Albany; Pittsburgh; San Joaquin; South Carolina; Florida, Central Florida, and Southwest Florida; Dallas and Fort Worth; Quincy and Springfield in Illinois; Western Kansas; and Rio Grande. Religion writers in or near any of these areas have a lot of work... [ Continue reading: ]
CHURCH V. STATE
British Patriotism Much debate around the legislation known as the Patriot Acts has focussed on whether they will lead to civil liberties violations. But a story about the Patriot Act's British counterpart, the Terrorism Act, and its enforcement lead to another question:... [ Continue reading: ] 
HOLY WAR
Guantanamos All Around British novelist Margaret Drabble calls Guantanamo "the Bastille of America," and the imprisonment without trial of Muslims there one of the U.S.'s worst (current) sins. Why then, asks The Guardian's Nick Cohen, aren't Drabble and other leftist critics equally incensed... [ Continue reading: ]
POP CULT
My Little Red String Paris Hilton and many Orthodox Jewish women from Brooklyn's Boro Park share at least one fashion accessory -- a little red string tied around their left wrists. Known as a "bindle" by traditional Jews, the string is intended to remind... [ Continue reading: ] 
CHURCH V. STATE
Constitutional Christ Now that a European constitution has been scuttled by more worldly concerns, the question of which gods (if any) should find a place in its preamble seems largely moot. But that's no reason not to read this provocative interview with... [ Continue reading: ] 
SELF-REVEALING
Ch-Ch-Changes Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens takes a loyalty oath; The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen considers conversion; and The New York Times' David Brooks plays the part of the A.C.L.U. These and other scenes from the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Key... [ Continue reading: ] 
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
"Like Moby-Dick Without the Whale" Such is any attempt to talk about the whole of American history without talking about Jonathan Edwards, according to historian George Marsden, author of a one of The Revealer's favorite books of 2003, a biography on the 18th-century theologian most... [ Continue reading: ] 
POP CULT
Groundhog Revelations God may have gone missing (or not), but there's no doubting the mighty omnipresence of religion -- it's on our money and in our courts and in our classrooms, a part of every story we tell, whether we like it... [ Continue reading: ]
CHURCH V. STATE
27 Pairs of Shoes Drying on the Front Porch That -- and a medicine-cabinet-raiding house breaker -- is what it took to tip off the residents of a Washington, D.C. suburb that a group home for "four men" was actually a religous retreat for many more, or so reports... [ Continue reading: ]
THE CHOIR
2003 Gospel Album of the Year? You won't find too many surprises in the Grammy gospel nominations, just released last week, but for this -- Outkast, which led the pack with six nods, got shut out of gospel. You didn't know Speakerboxx/The Love Below was a... [ Continue reading: ] 
GRAVEN IMAGE
Pictures of Heaven Iranian photographer Hengameh Golestan’s name means, literally, “spectacular rose garden,” a fact she notes in a feature for the Irish webmagazine Nth Position not to boast, but to point to the sad irony of the village of Mahabad, the name... [ Continue reading: ]
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
Hellmouth Just after the war in Bosnia, a priest showed Rose Marie Berger a cross erected on a hillside. One side depicted a resurrection Jesus, offering the promise of life and joy; the other revealed an angry Christ of eternal judgment.... [ Continue reading: ] 
CHURCH V. STATE
Another Schism, Another Story "Compared to the upcoming [Supreme Court] case on the Pledge of Allegiance and the use of the words 'under God,'" David G. Savage writes in The Los Angeles Times, Locke v. Davey -- a church/state case for which the court... [ Continue reading: ]
SELF-REVEALING
Hurts So Good Ramadan is over, and Christmas is coming; so who better to celebrate the season than a Buddhist named Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey? "Jesus Christ rose from the dead to save these fucking people," Vega-Frey's Muslim boss asked him, "and what do... [ Continue reading: ] 
THE CRITICAL FAITH
Angels in the Material World The angels -- or, at least, the critics -- are already singing the praises of HBO's yet-to-air, six-hour adapatation of Angels in America, Tony Kushner's epic play about Reagan, AIDS, Roy Cohn, and (naturally) God. But much of the mainstream... [ Continue reading: ] 
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
The Oozing Church "A few years back," writes Alan Rifkin in The Los Angeles Times Magazine, "a mentally ill man wandered on the campus [of Fuller Theological Seminary] from the streets of Pasadena, touching off an interdisciplinary turf war that sounds like legend... [ Continue reading: ]
THE CRITICAL FAITH
Sex and God and Religion Writing Novelists bring us the news journalists fail to convey: sex and religion are in many ways two names for the same impulse. Cynthia Ozick distills this intriguing truth from Christian counterpart John Updike, in a lengthy review of of Updike's... [ Continue reading: ] |