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POP CULT
Godzilla, Born Again If Gojira, the original Japanese Godzilla -- just released in its entirety -- was "the A-bomb made flesh," the American Godzilla is the gospel of the A-bomb. Kathryn Joyce goes to the movies. [ Continue reading: ] 
POP CULT
The First Noble Truth of Charlie Brown Charles “Sparky” Schulz began his cartooning career at a Catholic magazine called Timeless Topix, but the strip that became his contribution to American letters--"Peanuts," aka Charlie Brown--was the result of a Zen Buddhist-like meditation. [ Continue reading: ] 
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
While You Wait Designer Betsy Vardell and The Revealer's editors are busy preparing a makeover that'll make the site more comprehensive, easier to navigate, and prettier. It's already begun -- hit refresh a few times to see the photographs of press buildings mixed... [ Continue reading: ]  21 MAY 2004 "Why Don't Journalists Get Religion?" Peter Steinfels, Laurie Goodstein, Diane Winston, and Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet answer in Columbia Journalism Review. Daniel Boyarin is an orthodox Jew and a queer theory academic star, a scholar of early Christianity and contemporary... [ Continue reading: ] 
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
Facts, Faith, and "The Jesus Factor" Faced with what they must have thought were only two options — to present Bush's religion as fanatical or "normal," Frontline rejected the former as simplistic and embraced the latter as fair. Why is his religion "normal"? Apparently, write Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet, because it's sincere. [ Continue reading: ] 
HOLY WAR
Shake Hands with the Devil Gen. Romeo Dallaire, on negotiating with Rwandan genocidairs: Even their hands were cold, but it was like a death cold. Death cold is not a temperature. It's a state. And so I was absolutely talking, negotiating and touching what I would qualify as the most evil, and it is the devil. [ Continue reading: ] 
DEADLINE THEOLOGY
NPR's Little Gods A new kind of religion reporting is gaining prevalence in the mainstream press. It is a broader, less disaster-oriented examination of religion that seems, despite its deliberately neutral, accepting and calming tone, like a new form of activist journalism: a good-faith effort to reintroduce faith to public discourse as something non-crusading, non-jihadist. In short, as something different than the end-times horrors creeping off the television screen and closer to where we live. [ Continue reading: ] 
THE MISSING SUBJECT
Orthodoxy & Orthopraxy at NYRB "Michael Ignatieff," Anthony Lewis writes, "brings history, philosophy, law, and democratic morality to bear on the problem." But not, apparently, insight into the role played by religion in the decisions of the president who prefers the advice of a "higher father" to that of his own, former-president father... [ Continue reading: ] 
BLOGOS
Real Live Preacher Scott M. Korb reviews RLP: "He fancies himself something of a freak, a 'Real Live Preacher' on display through a peephole on the midway of the Internet. And somehow he's both the Coney Island barker and the sideshow oddity. But what’s so odd?" Find out. [ Continue reading: ] How to See Evil Chris Lehmann discusses the end of the world with G.O.P. activist Grover Norquist and bestselling evangelical author Joel C. Rosenberg. [ Continue reading: ] 
POP CULT
How to See Evil Why do so many Americans believe that Saddam supported Al Qaeda when even the White House denies it? The prophecies of bestselling author Joel C. Rosenberg offer clues. By Chris Lehmann Feliks DzerzhinskyIt’s hard to keep focused on the eager... [ Continue reading: ]
EVENTS
Cookies and Coffee to be Served Afterward Nam June Paik, "TV Buddha." Collection of Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.Today begins the three day public conference of New York University's Center for Religion and Media, the institution at which The Revealer is published. It's a stunning line-up that anyone with... [ Continue reading: ] 
SCRIPTURE
The Buddha-Whale The good people at Powell's, the best-stocked independent bookstore in America, requested a tour report from my Killing the Buddha co-author Peter Manseau and me for their newsletter. We were happy to oblige, especially when we learned it has a... [ Continue reading: ] Welcome to the Pantheon Thomas Hamill escapes from Iraq and gets drafted into the cult of American Heroes: a minor deity in the pantheon of "characters" with which it sells the war. Who says it "sells" the war? The bottom line. The media must make money from its reportage on Iraq, so it has to sell a story. It can be anti-war or pro-war, but it's always a product. [ Continue reading: ] 
THE MISSING SUBJECT
Who You Calling Feminist? The unfolding of abuse scandals that accelerated in the Catholic Church over the past few years has forced Church hierarchy to contend with new demands for accountability on a range of issues. "Being archbishop of Boston," Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley tells The Boston Globe's Michael Paulson, "is like living in a fishbowl made of magnifying glass." [ Continue reading: ] 
HOLY WAR
Pictures from an Inquisition The picture on the left is by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828). It's from a series of notebook sketches he drew in an attempt to depict the Spanish Inquisition's (1478-1834) prosecution of "heretics." The picture on the right is a work by Army Specialist Sabrina Harman. By Jeff Sharlet. [ Continue reading: ] Darwin-Free Fun Not everything at Dinosaur Adventure Land, a creationism theme park in Pensacoloa, Florida, is about dinosaurs. For instance, there's the "Nerve-Wracking Ball," "a bowling ball on a rope, dangling from a tall tree branch. A child stands before the ball,... [ Continue reading: ] |