|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
   Pictures from an Inquisition From Goya to Private Lynndie England. By Jeff Sharlet [ Continue reading: ] Go Ahead, Throw the First Stone Everyone has seen those Jesus Christ action figures by now -- but have you seen them put into action by a band of happy campers? Now you can, at Jesus-Christ-Action-Figure (With Walk-on-Water Action). It's kitsch, it's camp, it's probably too damn irreverent -- but it's cute and it's funny, too! [ Continue reading: ] Satan is Real After three centuries of decline, exorcism is booming in the Catholic Church. Tracy Wilkinson of The Los Angeles Times profiles Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's top exorcist, in an intelligent article that offers not only a nuts-and-bolts account of how... [ Continue reading: ] 
HOLY WAR
Iraq for Hire Also new today: "Who Killed Pat Tillman?" AP just reported that the U.S. has a new plan for subduing Fallujah -- hire the same guys who've been fighting the Marines. "A U.S. military officer privy to the negotiations said it... [ Continue reading: ]
HOLY WAR
Who Killed Pat Tillman? According to the paper of record, it was the Taliban. Or it was Al Qaeda. Or it was "other fighters." Or maybe it was bandits. Or maybe it was friendly fire. Or maybe it was corrupt Pakistani forces. Maybe it was Osama himself, with a sucker punch and a scimitar. One thing's for sure: It was Them. The evildoers. The opposite of Us. [ Continue reading: ] Born-Again, Not Really Dead, and a New Reason to Blow Yourself Up in Iraq A daily collage of religion news from the war in Iraq. See also two new Revealer features: "Coffins," by Michael Lesy; and "Secular Confessions," by Scott Korb and Kathryn Joyce. Falluajah Baptism "This is is a good place to be... [ Continue reading: ]  Secular Confessions It’s confession for the voyeur set, with content provided entirely by readers who when they were young “often did gay things,” who have “done nothing but slack off and jerk off for 20 years,” or who “really wish someone would assasinate [sic] Bush.” The confessions are each categorized by the one confessing as a deadly sin, Pride through Anger, with an eighth, add-on category called “Misc.” [ Continue reading: ]  The Light at the End of the Tunnel Everyone thinks they know what they see here. Close one eye and look, and it's a graphic indictment of American foreign policy. Sad evidence of the cost of our President's folly. Close another eye and it's proof of our soldiers' noble sacrifice. Step to the left and look and it's an image of a nation-state's abuse of human trust: men turned into metal boxes, human souls composted by a war machine. By Michael Lesy. [ Continue reading: ]  Personal Training for the Spiritually Unfit “You can know how to dig a foxhole,” Army chaplain Captain Scott McCammon reminds his soldiers, “but unless you are spiritually fit, you won’t have the courage to stick your head out of the hole. Soldiers must practice spiritual fitness to live the life the Army calls them to."...“They need to know that what they’re doing fits in with their own spiritual values and beliefs and is not a contradiction.” Unless, of course, it is. By Kathryn Joyce. [ Continue reading: ]
HOLY WAR
Religion News from Iraq A daily collage of religion news from the war in Iraq. Also new today on The Revealer: Atrios & the "Liberalish" Debate; & Julia Rabig writes on Poor, Poor Clergy. Sadr v. Shrine "Sadr's forces have evicted more than 100... [ Continue reading: ]
BLOGOS
I Say Liberal, You Say Liberalish The number one topic in the blogosphere the past couple of days has been just what Atrios of Eschaton meant when he called liberal Christians liberalish. Allen, one of the liberal Christians at The Village Gate, took it this way.... [ Continue reading: ]
MAMMON
Brethren, Can You Spare a Dime? The inclusion of clergy in Leonhardt’s tally of middle and working-class occupations is evidence of a stark reversal of fortune. Historian Julia Rabig writes in to the reveal the ghost of religion in a contemporary story of class and classes. [ Continue reading: ] 
SCRIPTURE
Better than Mudwrestling "It is easy to think of Vatican II, which convened during Armstrong's convent years, as a switch that was flipped: one day, the Roman Catholic church was full of Latin, and the next day everyone prayed in the vernacular. One... [ Continue reading: ] 
SCRIPTURE
The Invention of Journalism "Junior used to say he liked to live in hotels because he was a son of Englishmen. When he said 'Englishmen,' he thought of the English who came in the 19th century, of traders and smugglers who abandoned their families and everyone they knew to wander the parts of the world still untouched by the industrial revolution. Solitary and almost invisible, they invented modern journalism because they had left their personal histories behind." —Ricardo Piglia, La ciudad ausente (The Absent City). Translated from Spanish by Margaret at Necrophiliac's Diary. [ Continue reading: ]
HOLY WAR
Personal Training for the Spiritually Unfit Into the Kill Zoneby David Klinger "They must practice spiritual fitness to live the life the Army calls them to. There is no other way.” What was for former LAPD officer David Klinger a "horrifying," "harrowing moment," and the root... [ Continue reading: ] 
HOLY WAR
Political Hondurassment "We drank round after round, hitting it off surprisingly well," Taibbi quotes Twatt. "[Negroponte] told me his war stories from the Reagan years; I told him about my 3.4 GPA from Arizona State, my wife Sheryl, my Ford Windstar. When we were quite drunk, John leaned over to me and whispered: "'Come on, David,' he said. 'Let's you and me take this embassy out for a spin. Let's get ourselves a panel truck and round up a bunch of nuns.' "'Nuns, Mr. Ambassador?' 'Of course,' he said." [ Continue reading: ] 
BLOGOS
Our Rabbi Rachel Barenblat at Velveteen Rabbi summarizes last Saturday's Bloggercon session on religion and blogging.... [ Continue reading: ]
MAGIC NUMBERS
One Wicca, Two Wicca, Three... "The notion that Wicca is America's fastest-growing religion has achieved meme status. Everyone says it, but who started it?" Chas Clifton, a Pagan academic, can't answer the question, but he uses some hard data to dispute the assertion. And for... [ Continue reading: ]
HOLY WAR
Thug Life Iraq There's a tendency in the press to understand Iraq as a warped reflection of America, the 51st state or worse, Detroit in flames. Muqtada Al-Sadr seems to be aware of this story, just as he's fluent in American rhetoric. Perhaps that's because he's aware that the colonial myth recycled by a clueless Western press forces Sistani closer to thuggishness as all Iraqis get lumped in with the motley crew, missing fingers, missing eyes, victims of the Iran war, of Saddam, of the Americans. It's worth noting that the word thug derives from a violent anti-British religious sect in colonial India. [ Continue reading: ]
POP CULT
Who's a Jew? The goyim are coming! Not Kimya Zahedi, a Muslim Iranian-American, or Taylor Lasley, a Presbyterian African-American. And Clark Buden, great-grandson of Nelson Rockefeller, sure isn't a M.O.T., regardless of what Z.O.G.-minded anti-Semites say about the W.A.S.P.iest family in America. But... [ Continue reading: ] 
HOLY WAR
"Not This Way" A daily collage of of religion news from the war in Iraq. Also new on The Revealer today: The Rise of Religious Studies. Dawn of the Dead "Most of Muqtada al-Sadr's fighters are young, and the name of their organization,... [ Continue reading: ] The Rise of Religious Studies Last week Raymond McInnis, a columnist for Daily News Online, responded to a Revealer "“Why, currently, do I — as a secular humanist — need to become conversant in theology to understand the current political rhetoric of America?" It's a fair and important question, as is McInnis's reaction—"Somebody else is writing the rules, and I don't like that." In this past week's Village Voice, Tedra Meyer poses, and answers, the same question. [ Continue reading: ]  Who's that Girl? Jeff Sharlet reveals a new motif in the photojournalism coming out of Iraq, an image recurring with such frequency that it may become iconic, a successor to the pictures of Saddam’s statue being pulled down, the pictures of small Iraqi children with big, goodhearted, American lugs, the pictures of Bush in his flight suit. But now, the pictures are harder to parse. And yet just as numerous: There are so many pictures of black-veiled Iraqi women walking past tanks and and Bradley fighting vehicles and American troops with rifles at the ready that you begin to wonder what the news is here, why these particular pictures now? What made photographers start seeing these images? [ Continue reading: ]
HOLY WAR
Some Reasons to F**k Yourself in Iraq A daily collage of religion news from the war in Iraq. Who's that girl? Worse than Vietnam? European Union Commissioner for External Relations Chris Patten says the war in Iraq is already "arguably much more serious" than the Vietnam war.... [ Continue reading: ]
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
A Pigroast in Cordoba A short report in last week’s Financial Times (subscriber only; click on #42 here to sign up for a free trial) describes one of the most divisive issues in the Spanish Muslim community right now: the lack of a divider... [ Continue reading: ] 
POP CULT
Welcome to Godsend In the title story of his collection, Welcome to the Monkey House, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. tells us what all sci-fi enthusiasts already know: “science and morals go hand in hand.” The cautionary equation is always the same: advanced technology plus immoral/ hubristic scientist and/or naïve/lazy/ wrongthinking civilian equals one whopping morality tale, reminding us not to mess with God’s plan/fly too high/want what we can’t have. Now the whole sci-fi package comes in a new format: the mock ad campaign. By Kathryn Joyce. [ Continue reading: ] 
MANIFESTO
Belief Unbracketed At last -- a manifesto! We wish we'd written it ourselves, but, failing that, we're glad it came from our friend Steve Prothero, whose book, American Jesus: How The Son of God Became a National Icon, is one of the... [ Continue reading: ] 
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
Church of Fools A reader writes: "Enough about Blogs already and enough about internet religion!! Another week of this and The Revealer will be off my Favorites...come on!" We know how he feels. Religion blogs are ornery, plagued by bad puns, narcissistic, and... [ Continue reading: ]
BLOGOS
Do You Believe in Blog? Two days to Bloggercon, the open conference on weblogs convened by Dave Winer, a blog innovator and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. The Revealer's publisher, Jay Rosen, will be hosting a... [ Continue reading: ] 
RELIGION IN IRAQ
The "Freedom" of "Religion" A daily collage of religion in the news from the war. "None of these acts is the work of a religion. All are the work of a fanatical political ideology." -- President Bush, on the train bombing in Madrid; the... [ Continue reading: ] 
Religion in Iraq
"Incomprehensible" A NEW DAILY FEATURE With only a few exceptions, the Western press and the elite Arab press are reporting the war in Iraq primarily in political and strategic terms -- despite the fact that many Iraqi combatants see their... [ Continue reading: ]
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
Is Kerry Catholic? Melinda Henneberger launches a new column on "culture war" in Newsweek, "Varia," with a response to the many, many, Catholics calling for John Kerry's head, or at least his excommunication, because he refuses to oppose legal abortion. A Catholic herself,... [ Continue reading: ]  Rara Politics The New York Times's Lydia Polgreen explores some of Haiti's politics of religion in today's story, "An Easter Voodoo Festival with Political Undertones." Learn more about Rara festivals and voodoo here.... [ Continue reading: ]
The Second Coming of Dawn of the Dead
Mel Gibson, wrote Chris Lehmann in reviewing The Passion for The Revealer, turned to the aesthetics of horror to spread his religion. Now Adam H. Becker explains how the creators of the new Dawn of the Dead deploy religion in... [ Continue reading: ]  The Difficulties of Genocide To what end does Rwanda appear in the Western press? By Jeff Sharlet [ Continue reading: ] A Guide for (and to) the Godless Revealer associate editor Kathryn Joyce writes: Atheist-turned-Christian-scholar Alister McGrath has written a new book, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, which will be released this June. According to an early review ,... [ Continue reading: ]  The Difficulties of Genocide The press is marking the 10th “anniversary” of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda with a well-intentioned collage of vicarious suffering, voyeuristic horror, and awkward piety. In an original feature, Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet examines the coverage of Rwanda, ten years... [ Continue reading: ] 
MAGIC NUMBERS
64% and Rising Just released: The Pew Internet and American Life Project's survey on "Faith Online." We're especially delighted to announce this goldmine of data and analysis because it's authored by Center for Religion and Media (another Pew project) associate Stewart M. Hoover... [ Continue reading: ]
HOLY WAR
What Does the Mehdi Army Believe? UPDATE: "River," an Iraqi blogger, writes: "If the situation weren't so frightening, it would almost be amusing to see Al-Hakeem and Bahr Ul Iloom describe Al-Sadr as an 'extremist' and a 'threat'. Muqtada Al-Sadr is no better and no worse... [ Continue reading: ] 
BLOGOS
Bloggercon Gets Religion Jeff Sharlet, editor of The Revealer, writes: I'll be moderating a discussion session on religion, spirituality, and God blogs at Bloggercon, a conference about weblogs at Harvard Law School on April 17th. I'm pulling together a brief essay that'll serve... [ Continue reading: ] 
MARKETING GOD
Only the Best Ted Olsen at Christianity Today's weblog calls our attention to "one of the best religion cover stories [Time]—or any mainstream news magazine—has ever done." Unfortunately, it's available online to subscribers only, so we'll have to settle for The Best Product... [ Continue reading: ]
HOLY DAYS
Matzo Princess "I tell people, 'I wish I'd been an Entenmann,' " Michele Heilbrun, Streit's Matzo heir, tells the NY Times' Corey Kilgannon. "Chocolate doughnuts are so much more exciting then egg matzos." Be that as it may, Kilgannon's Passover special is... [ Continue reading: ]
POP CULT
The Dolorous Passion of Cartman Maybe it's because I’ve actually been to South Park, but when Eric, Stan, Kenny, and Kyle took me on a mystery tour of Mel’s Movie, I found myself drawn in. Sure, the overall arc of the episode is a familiar take on the meaning and putative impact of the film: its anti-Semitism, its violence, its appeal to the authoritarian personality (Cartman makes that trope come alive), its debt to the medieval passion tradition and the feverish dream life of Sister Emmerich, its tacit reception by evangelical Protestants and pious Catholics, and—of course—its commodification. But, its eschatology also becomes scatology when Mel himself comes to South Park (as Mad Max in Braveheart face paint). [ Continue reading: ] 
HOLY WAR
Where's the Why? Why is the American press ignoring the role of religion in Iraq? The question bears that blunt a phrasing in light of today's coordinated Shia uprising and the press' non-coverage of its catalyst. The Washington Post reports that Moqtada Sadr... [ Continue reading: ] 
BLOGOS
Shabbat Reading Shabbat reading below; but first, a scooped report: Is muscular Christianity entering a new weight class? Yes -- and you read it on The Revealer first. Now, from The New York Times: The Return of the Warrior Jesus. The Head... [ Continue reading: ] Godless A few days after we built this page, Norwegianity wrote: "How do you tell if a website on religion is on the up and up or if it's just fronting for Sun Myung Moon, Falwell, Dobson or one of... [ Continue reading: ] 
WHAT'S MISSING
Muscular Christianity Flexes Again Before there was Survivor, there was "The 700 Club." In 1997, a small group of American missionaries was pinned down by Sudanese government troops who considered the Christians they’d come to help to be rebels. The missionaries "threw themselves behind... [ Continue reading: ]  jBlog Scholars, wonks, and rebbeles; mameles and makhers-in-their-own-minds; such are the denizens of jBlog (as the Jewish blogosphere is called). We've started with these blogs because they're smart, or funny, or maybe even both. Some are neither, but they take... [ Continue reading: ]
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
Lies We Tell Ourselves Reader Christopher Bugbee writes in with a comment on Jack Kelley, the former USA Today star reporter recently revealed as a serial fabricator: Along the way to explaining just how much damage Jack Kelley managed to do, John Gorenfeld expanded... [ Continue reading: ] |
